TUBE FOR TOTS

By JAMES COLLINS

We often hear about the extraordinary powers of television: the power to amuse and inform the masses, the power to reshape politics, the power to bring together far-flung peoples. These are all significant, but there's another that's even more impressive--the power to keep a four-year-old quiet. All parents know about this miraculous effect, and many take advantage of it without even caring what program is on--Mannix reruns, Cochran and Company, golf--as long as the child sits staring dumbly at the fires of the TV hearth.

Still, no one wants to put the brain of his or her offspring at risk, even for the sake of a few minutes of peace, so it would be nice if there were shows that actually did small children some good. Under these circumstances, a parent might even regard TV as something positive rather than as a form of sedation. But are there such shows? And are any of them not Barney?

Parents can take heart: the amount of programming for preschoolers has exploded, and much of it is both entertaining and beneficial. The old standbys--Mister Rogers, Sesame Street and Barney--remain, but dozens of other shows are now on the air or are scheduled to appear in the coming months. On the Disney Channel, there is Bear in the Big Blue House, which features a 7-ft. bear and his puppet friends; the WB network is showing Channel Umptee-3, a cartoon that Norman Lear is helping produce; a new Captain Kangaroo is in syndication; Nickelodeon schedules five hours of preschool TV each weekday; and PBS has the Muppet-like Wimzie's House and, coming in the spring, Teletubbies. A huge hit in England, Teletubbies stars four beings who seem to be made out of terry cloth and who all have TV screens in their stomach. Well, it's the English--they also love marmite and Oasis.

Several forces have encouraged the creation of these shows for preschoolers. Cable continues to grow and demand more programming for every conceivable niche; new FCC regulations require broadcast stations to air three hours of educational and informational programming for children each week; recent research in early childhood development has stimulated interest in that stage of life; and, finally, producers have discovered that a preschool show can make a lot of money. "The success of some preschool shows in driving licensing and product sales is extraordinary," says Marjorie Kaplan, who oversees children's programming at the Discovery Networks. "When something like Barney comes along, it changes what the world can expect from preschool success. People tend to fish where the fish are." The creators of Barney caught a lot of fish: he has sold 44 million videos, 34 million books and countless Barney and Baby Bop plush toys.

The good news is that watching some of these shows can actually be healthy for children. Kathryn Montgomery, president of a leading advocacy group called the Center for Media Education, welcomes the new programming. "When they do it well," she says, "it really can educate kids. There's research on it that shows that it does enhance learning." Like their predecessors, the new shows attempt to foster the social, moral and cognitive development of their viewers. Each episode usually imparts a specific lesson, whether it be about friendship or lying or sibling rivalry or the risk of going down the drain with the bathwater. Psychologists and educators serve as consultants (this has become a small industry) and review scripts closely. Harvard psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint advises a syndicated show called The Crayon Box and says he once objected to the phrase "independent strong-willed woman" because he thought that, in the context, it came across as something negative. The words were taken out.

No one can object to the content of the new shows; it's the style of some of them that raises questions. Experts say that preschoolers are best served by shows that are slow-paced, repetitive and simple. Daniel Anderson, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has written extensively on children's television, has been a consultant on several shows and has developed guidelines for preschool programming. "The most fundamental principle is, make it understandable," he says. "It takes a lot of work to get writers and producers to understand what preschoolers are capable of digesting. And the second principle is that any type of narrative structure should be as linear as possible. Also you should not overburden the child with a juxtaposition of visual images and sounds." Finally, Anderson says, a preschooler's daily life is full of things that are new, so shows should not reach for novelty.

Many of the new shows seem to have been created according to very different expectations. Take Channel Umptee-3, which is intended to appeal to children as young as two. The premise is that an ostrich, a snail and a fantasy creature called Holey Moley are operating an underground television station. Old black-and-white film footage is spliced into the show, and static often appears as if a channel were being changed. "This is a show I wish I had as a kid," says Jim George, who created Channel Umptee-3. "I thought, What if there was a show put on by a bunch of wildly enthusiastic people who start their own TV channel? Of course, the whole world is against them." George has a lot of imagination, and Channel Umptee-3 can sometimes be funny, but is it really right for preschoolers?

Blue's Clues does meet Anderson's criteria (he was a consultant). Shown on Nickelodeon, it is the highest-rated show for preschoolers on commercial television; among all shows for the age group, it comes in third behind Barney and Arthur, a cartoon about an aardvark that was developed mainly for older children. Blue's Clues has a rigid structure: in each episode, a young man named Steve (played by Steven Burns, who could not be more likable) tries to figure out the answer to a question. Blue, his animated pet dog, provides clues by putting his paw print on three objects. For example, in one episode, Blue, wishing Steve to guess what he wanted to drink with his snack, put his print on a cup, a straw and a cow. The solution: Blue wanted to drink milk from a cup with a straw. As Steve looks for the clues, he runs into other characters and performs simple logic exercises--asking, say, which item doesn't belong in a group of vegetables in which three are green and the fourth is a carrot. The pace of Blue's Clues is deliberate, the material is presented very clearly, and the same episode airs daily for a week so the viewers can master the material.

Other shows divide up more or less along the lines of Channel Umptee-3 and Blue's Clues. Wimzie's House on PBS, which has received a lot of attention, is another program made by talented people that may be too manic for its intended viewers. Wimzie is half bird and half dragon. She lives with her parents, her grandmother and her little brother; and since her house is a day-care center, it is usually full of her friends. The show is sweet, but it is hard to follow. "Why does [it] have to be so cluttered?" asks Jerome Singer, who with his wife Dorothy directs the Yale University Family Television Research and Consultation Center. "I mean, the amount of jumping around and shouting and noise--there's difficulty for even us as adults in understanding the language."

A show that Singer is very enthusiastic about is The All New Captain Kangaroo. "I think that it's excellent," he says. "Kids need that live person. He talks slowly. It looks to me like it's going to be a significant addition." The show is syndicated, and was created in part to help independent stations satisfy the new FCC regulations. John McDonough, the new Captain, looks disturbingly like Mr. French on Family Affair, and the set is garish, but the show has warmth and charm and maintains a slow pace.

Teletubbies, meanwhile, is without doubt the most inventive of the new shows. The others have the same kinds of puppets, the same kind of scripts. On Teletubbies, the characters, the world they inhabit, their language--which is supposed to be that of two- or three-year-olds--are all unique. Since it is in the process of being Americanized, not very much of it is available for viewing, but it could be strange and wonderful.

Shows for preschoolers must appeal also to another demographic--the parents who end up watching them too. It's paradoxical, but the truly childish programs may actually be more appealing to adults than those that are lively and sophisticated. The rhythm, look and attitude of Channel Umptee-3, for example, are extremely familiar. You've seen all the moves a million times, and watching the show you enter a state of reflexive TV consciousness. The pace and tone of the more simplistic programs, on the other hand, is very unfamiliar, which makes them oddly fascinating. More effectively than a minimalist musical composition or a 16-hour theater piece featuring lots of chanting, they stretch your sense of time and change your mode of thinking. They also exercise an emotional attraction as they reassure the child within that the world is a stable, comprehensible place where he or she is valued. The grownup without knows better, of course, but that just makes the message more appealing.

--Reported by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles and William Tynan/New York

With reporting by JEANNE MCDOWELL/LOS ANGELES AND WILLIAM TYNAN/NEW YORK