The FCC is expected to levy a record-breaking $24 million fine against Univision for violating children’s TV regulations, per a New York Times report over the weekend.  Though the fine is still awaiting final approval by a majority of the FCC’s five commissioners, the Spanish-language broadcaster has reportedly signed on the dotted line agreeing to pay the fine as part of a consent decree in order to finalize the network’s $12.3 billion sale to Haim Saban’s investment group. 

According to the kid’s TV rules, stations are required to air three-hours of kid-targeted educational programming each week.  That said, complaints against Univision allege that between 2004 and the beginning of 2006, Univision and 24 of its stations labeled some of its programming as educational, but those shows included some adult-targeted telenovelas, such as Complices al Rescate with the adventures of 11-year-old identical twin girls.

Getting a hologram card of Wolverine in a pack of the first series of Marvel Universe Trading Cards is one of my fondest childhood memories. I was five. I showed almost all the guys in my class. Unfortunately, if this kindergartener had been inspired to buy the Wolverine comic around that time it would have been tough sledding: in that story Wolverine learns his memories are a result of brain implants. The next arc ended with Wolverine promising a man that he would return to remove a part of his body every year until nothing remained.

Comics were convincing themselves that they were for adults, and that adults required mature, violent stories. But no one told the licensing people whose job it was to pump children’s playthings into the market. I think this is why there are so few of my contemporaries reading comics. As children, we had to claw our way into the medium despite its best efforts to keep us at arms length, the better to succeed as a medium for teenagers and adults.

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