Traditionally the field of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) is seen as the responsibilities of schools/teachers and parents, and other stakeholders do not/less contribute to the field, this resulted less effectiveness in children’s reading competence. Although, media could be an alternative means for promoting literacy much attention has not been given to it. The potential of media in minimizing the reading crisis happened should be explored, keeping this in mind this research focused on phonics instruction through television in Amharic language based on a local children educational television program called Tsehai loves learning. Data were collected through video analysis and in-depth interviews. Accordingly, four episodes of the program were chosen and analyzed out of eight episodes in total. In-depth interviews were carried out with key informants from Whiz Kids Workshop and Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporate (EBC). The findings of the study indicated that, mainly two kinds of phonics instruction methods named synthetic and analytic phonics are used in the program but, more effort is needed to strengthen the program in terms of paying attention to all the letters rather than focusing on the basic columns. Moreover, the program should include sessions specifically meant for children with learning difficulties. It has also been revealed that, the method applied to make the phonics instruction interactive was calls using the broadcasting agent’s call service number (982), but this line is usually busy as other audiences of the broadcasting agent also use this line to provide feedbacks and comments. It could have been better if they have their own platform for feedback inquiry. The issue of gender stereotyping is highly integrated with the phonics instruction sessions directly and indirectly. Key words: phonics instruction, interactivity, gender stereotyping