A "sanctuary" no more, PBS Kids site to resume ads

WASHINGTON — PBS will resume selling advertisements on its popular PBS Kids Web site, angering parents, children's advocates and consumer watchdog groups concerned that the plan would pollute one of the last commercial-free bastions for kids on the Internet.

"Children are basically inundated with marketing, and the PBS Web site was in some ways a sanctuary," said Susan Linn, a psychologist and co-founder of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood in Boston. "This is just one more step in the commercialization of PBS and children's programming."

PBS said it needed to find new revenue sources because its funding is unreliable. The public broadcaster joins other media entities in tapping into the booming online-advertising market by offering podcasts and downloadable video.

"This is going to be very smart and respectful, and anything that will appear online will be in the spirit of what is on PBS on air," said Kevin Dando, director of education and online communications at PBS.

Dando would not say how much money the ads are expected to generate.

Sponsorship messages already appear before and after kids shows such as "Sesame Street" that air on PBS television stations.

Sponsors are also featured on Web pages for individual children's shows that can be reached by clicking on links on the PBS Kids site.

Beginning Oct. 1, PBS will sell advertising banners across the tops of its two flagship Web sites PBS.org and PBSKids.org. In July, its main site drew 2.8 million unique visitors, while PBSKids.org had 3.29 million.

PBS ran banner ads on its Web sites from the late 1990s until 2001 but stopped when the bottom fell out of the Internet economy.

The latest flap is not the first for PBS. The public broadcaster upset watchdog groups and some of its own stations with the 2005 launch of an advertising-supported joint-venture cable-TV channel targeting preschool children, PBS Kids Sprout. PBS also got static in recent years for allowing fast-food giant McDonald's to sponsor "Sesame Street."

Now, these critics worry that once PBS gets a taste of revenue from the sale of commercials online, it won't be able to resist selling traditional advertisements on its television shows.

"Barney and Big Bird are going to find themselves hooked on digital advertising and they are not going to be able to shake this," said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, which encourages noncommercial public-interest uses of the Internet.

PBS receives most of its money in the form of contributions from viewers, corporate sponsorships, foundation grants and cable fees.

About 7 percent of its revenue, which amounted to $36.9 million in 2005, comes from the federal government through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

Public broadcasting funding is a favorite target of Republican budget-cutters. President Bush proposed slicing CPB's 2007 budget by 12.5 percent, to $346 million.

The House and Senate appropriation committees have resisted, proposing to boost the budget to $400 million.

To add to its coffers, PBS since January has been running a small box of sponsored ad links on some of its sites in a deal with Google.

Based on fewer than 10 e-mail complaints about those nongraphical ad links and months of research and focus-group sessions, PBS decided to allow the banner ads, Dando said.

"It's a smart opportunity for PBS to be pursuing," he said.

PBS officials said the banner advertisements on the Web will follow the same guidelines the group applies to its TV sponsorships. Those prohibit sponsorships that feature inappropriate material or that appeal directly to children.