Television Show Aims to Inform Kids About Politics

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• JEFFREY BROWN:

  It's a question many might ask this campaign season, and Linda Ellerbee always has lots of questions.

• LINDA ELLERBEE:

  What makes an ad an attack ad?

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  As host and executive producer of "Nick News," an award-winning program on the Nickelodeon cable channel, the veteran newswoman asks young people for their answers. And this campaign season, she's turned her sights on the negativity of political campaigns for the program "Cheap Shots and Low Blows: How Debate Turns to Hate."

• LINDA ELLERBEE:

  The following program is about the decline of polite debate in American politics and American life in general. This program is for kids, but you might want to invite a parent or other grown-up to watch with you.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  "Nick News with Linda Ellerbee" aired weekly for its first 10 years, and now nine times a year. It's the longest-running, most-watched kids news show on television, recently celebrating its 15th birthday, the upper range of many of its viewers. Some start watching as early as 9 years old.

  But its birth in 1991 took even Ellerbee by surprise.

• LINDA ELLERBEE:

  It was an accident, completely. The first Gulf War had started, and Nickelodeon was afraid that kids, American kids, were frightened of all the noise. It was the first time we'd been to war since we had 24-hour news, since we had all these things.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  And what was your reaction when they called?

• LINDA ELLERBEE:

  My first reaction was, "I don't know anything about kids, I mean, other than having raised two and been one."