Bad idea for parents

Detroit Free Press: Cable giant Comcast is cooking up a very bad idea for parents of toddlers.
In its rush to dominate the airwaves, Comcast is in talks to unveil a 24-hour network for 2- to 5-year-olds. That's problematic when a mountain of studies shows disturbing links between too much TV time and serious problems such as obesity and delayed reading ability.
Little comfort can be found in Comcast's reported intention to keep its toddler TV channel commercial free and filled with a lineup of educational children's programming such as "Barney & amp; Friends" and "Sesame Street." That may mollify some critics, but it's a weak defense against the old maxim that too much of any good thing just becomes a bad thing.
Attention problems
A study published in April tracked 2,600 children from birth to age 7 and found that the likelihood of a child between age 1-3 developing attention problems increased by 10 percent based on every hour of television viewed per day.
Parents with the time and interest to police a child's TV viewing will not likely allow an overdose of toddler TV. But for other parents, beat down by their workday or simply overwhelmed with the job of parenting, may not find it so easy to turn off this seemingly harmless and even educational entertainment.
The fact that Canada's Treehouse TV is already out front offering 24-hour toddler programming to 5 million households just adds to the impression that we have an unstoppable trend here.
What comes of it will, like so much of a child's early development, be up to parents as keepers of the remote.