Sad news for anyone who was taught to count, read, or to say anything in Spanish from a puppet on TV: Peggy Charren, the crusading children’s television pioneer, died last week at the age of 86.
Charren became troubled by the shoot-‘em-up Westerns and monster cartoons designed to sell breakfast cereal that were the standard (and only) television fare available to her children in the late 1960’s. Armed with a group of like-minded parents, the courage of her politically liberal, socially-minded convictions, and her formidable personal charm, she founded Action for Children’s Television in her Newton, Mass. home in 1968, lobbying Congress for new legislation requiring broadcasters to offer educational and quality children’s programming commensurate with their federal mandate to “serve the public” interest. In doing so, the diminutive daughter of an Upper West Side Jewish family helped pave the way for Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and myriad other shows that conspired to make the so-called “idiot box” far less idiotic.
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