Show Business: Tot Telecasters

Señora Teresa Arceo threaded her way through the labyrinthian corridors of a government building in Mexico City to the appropriate office, where her son Luis was to take his examination for a radio-television announcer’s license. In the absence of a baby sitter, the anxious mother brought along her baby daughter Janette as well. During the interview, the overtrained Luis muffed some of the questions; but his precocious, farina-fed sister belted out the answers in such clear, bell-like show-biz tones that the licensing board turned from the eleven-year-old Luis and licensed Janette, making her—at the age of two—one of the world’s youngest TV pitchwomen.

With electronic swiftness, the Puck-eyed, bubbly-voiced infant became the Shirley Temple of Mexico’s commercial television, adored by the country’s boisterous bubble-gum set and avidly sought by manufacturers of candy, soda pop, cereal and children’s medicines. Since then Janette, now 4, has piled up enough pesos to buy a small farm, where she languishes weekends with the aplomb of a Hollywood starlet, tending her flocks of ducks and chickens and her pet pig. Janette’s father, Agustin Arceo, a salesman of auto lubricants, objects to all this, but is solidly outnumbered by the rest of the’ family (Luis, now 13, has also received his announcer’s license).

Janette herself loves television, sometimes bursts into tears when her time be fore the cameras is up, or babbles along on behalf of a product beyond the allotted time. Last week, however, Janette’s fun and fortune—and that of eight other tiny-tot telecasters who enjoy current prominence—were being subjected to a two-way squeeze: tightening government regulation and the tensing of public opinion, which objects to the trend toward young TV and radio performers as both an esthetic annoyance and a violation of Mexico’s child labor law. The consensus is that the piping of all the lisping little pitch people will soon be dialed out, and that Janette Arceo will retire to her farm for a while. A recently passed law requires all radio and television announcers in Mexico to hold a high school diploma.