TV watchdog groups say the Federal Communications Commission needs to better target kids’ programs that have too many commercials, and they want the commission and Congress to strengthen oversight of the Children’s Television Act.

Fueling the drive is a Government Accountability Office report issued last week that highlights FCC shortcomings in enforcing the landmark 1990 law intended to raise the quality and educational value of children’s programming while also limiting advertising. The report said the FCC has been lax in ensuring compliance from cable and satellite providers and questioned the commission’s guidelines for determining the educational value of children’s shows.

“It’s another example of FCC priorities being out of whack and the entire commission not taking its responsibility to uphold the law seriously,” said Dan Isett, director of public policy for the Parents Television Council, a nonprofit group dedicated to responsible entertainment. “When you look at the sort of selective enforcement on this issue … it’s an indictment of the entire agency.”

Aside from parent and child advocacy groups, the FCC is also drawing criticism from one of the original authors of the law, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). Markey called the FCC’s enforcement of the law in some areas “weak.”

“More needs to be done to give parents the knowledge and the know-how to ensure that they have the tools to find educational programming for their children and hold broadcasters, cable operators and satellite providers accountable for their statutory and regulatory requirements,” Markey said in a statement to POLITICO.

The renewed attention to the law already has the FCC in motion. In a bow to the report’s findings, the commission responded by saying it has reinstated an audit program that uses agency investigators to review public filings of cable and satellite operators to ensure compliance with advertising restrictions of the law.

The FCC stopped monitoring cable and satellite operators after 2004. Since then, the commission has had no way of knowing whether violations were occurring because the paid-content providers don’t self-report violations. Traditional broadcasters, which are required to self-report infractions as part of their FCC license renewal process, have reported more than 6,000 advertising violations during that time.

The GAO called it “unbalanced enforcement” of the law. Some observers had stronger words.

“The law is not really being enforced. Clearly, something’s awry,” said Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which is pushing the FCC to cite MTV Networks for a violation of the law over a cartoon the group says amounts to a commercial for Skechers sneakers.

In a letter to the commission, MTV Networks and Skechers defended the cartoon “Zevo-3,” which is based on the shoemaker’s products and airs on Nicktoons, as more than just a show-length commercial. “There is nothing new or untoward about ‘Zevo-3’ or the business arrangement in place here,” the letter from MTV and Skechers contends.

CCFC has asked the FCC to look at the financial arrangement between MTV Networks and Skechers to determine whether “Zevo-3” is more akin to an advertisement.

Linn said the FCC has yet to rule on the group’s petition to cite the companies with a violation of the CTA, “and we’ve met with them several times.”

According to the GAO report, the FCC said it failed to fully enforce the law against cable and satellite operators because “most entities” were complying with the rules “and because enforcement staff and resources were dedicated to higher-priority needs.” But, in a letter to the GAO, the commission maintains it wasn’t sleeping on the job, pointing to a $1.5 million settlement the commission secured from two “well-known children’s cable networks” for possible violations of the law.

An FCC spokesman would not comment, nor would a representative of the National Cable &Telecommunications Association.

But Steve Effros, a cable analyst and a former president of the Cable Telecommunications Association, which later merged with NCTA, said that holding cable and satellite operators to the same reporting standards under the law as traditional broadcasters is unfair because they are different entities. Cable and satellite companies, Effros said, serve more like aggregators.

“Most cable and satellite companies do not own the channels they are distributing nationwide. Some are delivering hundreds of channels and there’s almost no editorial control,” he said.

Congress crafted the law in response to a decrease in educational shows during the 1980s that corresponded with an uptick in commercial blitzes during children’s programming. To shield youngsters from excessive commercials, the law restricts advertising during children’s programs to 10.5 minutes per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour on weekdays.

Lawmakers required the FCC to establish guidelines and carry out enforcement.

In 1996, the FCC gave broadcast stations an incentive to air additional children’s educational programming. The commission set rules that allowed broadcasters to get their license renewal application approved by FCC staff, instead of the full commission, in exchange for airing a minimum of three hours of what the commission considers quality programming.

During the Clinton administration, the FCC was “paying attention to children’s education, and the quality of children’s programming improved,” said Dale Kunkel, a child media expert and a communications professor at the University of Arizona.

“We slowly moved to a posture in the 2000s where they completely ignored the issue and the broadcasters offered whatever they want,” he said.

Standards have not improved under the Obama administration, he said.

“It’s been a big disappointment. I thought in this administration children’s programming and children’s media issues would be a priority, and there’s been nothing of any consequence done in this administration,” Kunkel said.

Among the key recommendations of the GAO’s report: The FCC should work with the media industry to develop guidelines that determine what the commission calls “core children’s programming.”

But that’s a move the FCC has backed away from. Right now, the FCC broadly defines “core children’s programming as any shows designed to further the educational and informational needs of children 16 years old and under.” The commission has steered clear of providing a more precise definition for fear of violating the First Amendment.

Right now, the FCC relies on the public to police the content of children’s shows.

“A lack of widely accepted standards to assess such programming makes it difficult for parents and broadcasters to evaluate the educational content of core children’s programming, potentially leading to wide variation in its quality,” the GAO noted in its report.

Kunkel, the children’s media expert, called the GAO’s language “soft.” The FCC, Kunkel said, has repeatedly ignored its responsibility to answer petitions in cases in which content was flagged by the public. He pointed to a case from 2004 involving two Washington TV stations — WPXW, owned by Paxson Communications (now Ion Media Networks), and News Corp.-owned WDCA — in which the United Church of Christ and the Center for Digital Democracy filed complaints alleging certain shows targeting children failed to meet FCC’s requirement for educational programming.

The petition is still pending.

Even with broadcast TV stations, critics say, the FCC enforcement has been lacking. “Here the tradition is taking no steps at all to make sure stations are making valid claims about their programs,” Kunkel said. “They’re asleep at the wheel.”

Angela Campbell, an attorney representing CCFC, said she has filed petitions challenging the license renewal of four different broadcasters and received only one ruling from the commission.

“It’s not like we haven’t reminded them again, again and again about these pending petitions. They just don’t do anything about them,” Campbell said. “The FCC is just not enforcing that aspect of the law.”