Educational television is not an oxymoron

An implicit justification for the Children's Television Act is that curriculum-based television programming, such as Sesame Street, is in fact educational. Such programming, however, has been attacked on grounds that it produces shortened attention spans and retards thought and language development. I review these claims in the Light of research on children's television viewing. The research provides no support for these attacks and instead reveals both short- and long-term benefits from curriculum-based programming.