Over the last two months we've seen renewed legal struggle at the Federal Communications Commission over so-called fleeting expletives, fleeting derrières, and fleeting imagined g-strings. Now we've got a case of fleeting Pokemon, and the station that broadcast it is facing a $16,500 fine proposed by the agency's Media Bureau on Wednesday.

The FCC has ruled that one of those cute little Pikachu-type fellows (or characters, sorry, whatever) transformed itself into the wrong image at the wrong time on TV station WCIU in Chicago. Four times, actually. Instead of raising itself up as a lightening filled nemesis or some such, it became "an embossed image of itself on several Eggo waffles," according to the station's license renewal application. Then the show announcer said: "And look out for limited edition Pokemon Eggo waffles. You can catch 'em all." Not only that, but twice the station broadcast a commercial spot for "Fruit by the Foot," a General Mills product, during which a Pokemon character also appeared.

WCIU, clearly aware of the Children's Television Act's (CTA) prohibition of this kind of selling, argued that the station didn't do anything wrong and will never do it again. These broadcasts contained only "fleeting images" of the characters who made "fleeting appearances" in commercialized contexts, the station pleaded. In addition: "The Licensee described the measures taken to prevent future violations of the commercial limits and contended that its new procedures have prevented recurrence of similar incidents," the FCC's Notice of Apparent Liability observed.

Perhaps WCIU was trying to associate these broadcasts with the agency's constitutionally dubious crackdown on "fleeting expletives," scheduled for review by the Supreme Court. But unlike the FCC's vague and irrational rules on decency, the CTA is pretty precise about this sort of fare. TV stations can air no more than 10.5 minutes of commercial matter an hour on children's television broadcast during the week; no more than 12 minutes per hour on the weekends. And any time the program associates itself with a product (e.g., the cartoon character endorses or transforms itself into an advertised item), the whole show becomes defined as a "program length commercial"—pushing the broadcaster way over its children's commercial time quota and exposing the license owner to a fine.

Congress put these rules into the CTA, enacted in 1990, because until children get to around the age of seven or eight, they don't have the cognitive ability to know that they are even watching commercials. Kids accept the claims of the ads, many for sugary foods and snacks, as statements of fact. They especially accept them if their favorite animated character endorses the product (or even morphs into the product, as in this case).

And, of course, kids watch tons of TV. An FCC report disclosed last year that most children in the United States have watched the equivalent of three school years of television by the time they enter the first grade. This trend, "combined with the prevalence of unhealthy foods and a more sedentary lifestyle have created a perfect storm that has made childhood obesity a nationwide problem," concluded FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate at a conference on children's' television held in the summer of 2006.

Tate spoke while the Commission was tackling the tricky task of extending these rules from analog to digital TV, where kids programs will increasingly refer and even link to commercial Web sites. In 2004 the Commission proposed a set of revised regulations for children's digital TV. But industry reps said they were too prohibitive and public interest groups called them too weak. Fearing a lengthy lawsuit, the FCC dropped their proposed guidelines and let a consortium of players that included the American Academy of Pediatricians and Viacom bargain with each other.

Finally in September of 2006 the two groups came up with a complex set of new guidelines that the FCC approved. Among other requirements, digital children's TV shows may not display links to Web sites unless the site offers "a substantial amount of bona fide program-related or other noncommercial content" and is "not primarily intended for commercial purposes." In addition, a program related character can appear on the displayed Web site only in sections that are "sufficiently separated" from site product advertisements. And digital stations that split their signal into multi channels have to offer a larger array of children's shows, "roughly proportional" to those offered on their primary signal.

These new rules, however, aren't as precise as the analog TV regs. They also have yet to be extensively applied, so get ready for plenty more fleeting Pokemons and other digital miracles to show up on the FCC's penalty docket in the near and distant future. Maybe some court cases too.