The Smart Television Alliance is a new group formed by a number of non-profits to promote quality television content for children.
STA is being created under the leadership of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest professional organization with 3.2 million members; National Parent Teacher Association (PTA), the nation’s largest volunteer child advocacy association with 5.5 million members; and the National Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO), a coalition of more than 200 organizations representing over eleven million women.
The organizations participating in the STA are quite a collection:
The initial organizations participating in the coalition include After school Alliance, Association for Jewish Family and Children’s Agencies, Coalition for Quality Children’s Media: KIDS FIRST!, National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women’s Health, National Council of Women’s Organizations, National Education Association, National Military Family Association, National Parent Teacher Association (PTA),Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ (OC, Inc.),Rainbow PUSH Coalition, United American Nurses, WE Inc. and YWCA USA.
Children’s television programming recommendations will come from nonprofit experts including Parent’s Choice Foundation, Common Sense Media, Parent’s Television Council, member organizations, as well as from parents and caregivers by means of an interactive Website and Smart News, STA’s twice monthly free newsletter.
Of course, I probably wouldn’t be blogging about this except for the fact that:“Initial funding to support STA will come from TiVo Inc., the leader and pioneer in digital video recorder technology, as part of the company’s continued commitment to helping families identify and manage television content in their homes.” That’s rather interesting. It isn’t like TiVo has a lot of cash to throw around, so they must be anticipating some return on this investment, other than good will. The obvious link is, of course, TiVo KidZone. I would bet that KidZone would become an officially endorsed tool/aid recommended by the STA for parents to help control what their children watch. I think we’ll see cooperative promotions with TiVo and some of these member organizations, pitching TiVo to their members. I think this is an interesting tack for TiVo to take, and it will be interesting to see how it pans out.
EDIT: Of course, as soon as I posted I noticed the TiVo sponsor link on the site. Including the offer for a free 80-hour Series2DT TiVo with the purchase of service and TiVo will donate $25 to one of the STA members. Of course, KidZone is heavily promoted. Seems like a cheap way to get a S2DT if you’re interested. (Click on one of the organizations listed for the actual offer to buy and support that organization.)
Here’s the full press release:
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