FCC Fines Disney, Viacom Over TV Ads

Viacom and Disney have been fined a collective $1.5 million for exceeding the number of commercials aired during children’s programs. “The advertising violations were discovered in routine audits of cable system operators. Federal regulations stipulate that children’s programming may contain no more than 10 1/2 minutes of advertising per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour on weekdays.
Viacom acknowledges that Nickelodeon violated that regulation nearly 600 times over approximately 10 months, representing the equivalent of 1,021 extra 30-second ads.”