CBS Relaxes Policy on Accepting Television Ads on Controversial Issues

CBS said Wednesday it had revised its advertising policy to allow “additional latitude” for commercials dealing with controversial issues, a form of advertising largely absent from network television.

The revised policy came in response to criticism from W. R. Grace & Co., the New York-based chemicals conglomerate that has conducted a one-company ad campaign since November, 1984, against the federal deficit.

In a letter to an attorney representing Grace, CBS Broadcast President Gene F. Jankowski said the network would air a Grace anti-deficit ad it had rejected if Grace made one small change. The ad, called “The Deficit Trials,” shows the children of America 31 years hence placing their elders on trial for letting the national debt go uncontrolled.

Found Too Controversial

Earlier this year, all three of the major television networks rejected the Grace ad because they found it too controversial, although ABC offered to run the spot in its “advocacy time period” between midnight and 12:30 a.m. The networks historically have rejected so-called advocacy advertising, arguing that under the “fairness doctrine” regulation they would be required to provide costly air time for alternate views.

In response, Grace hired prominent Washington attorney Joseph A. Califano Jr. to pressure the networks to clarify and relax their policies. Califano wrote to CBS that network policies against “issue advertising . . . restrict the flow of ideas.”

In its policy statement, CBS said “advertisers shall be afforded maximum latitude to touch on matters of public concern . . . so long as messages do not rise to the level of explicit or implicit advocacy.”

In the case of the Grace ad, CBS asked the company to delete a sentence it thought implied an endorsement of the proposed balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Grace has agreed to the deletion.

At ABC, which also has heard from Califano, spokesman Jeff Tolvin said Wednesday the company “will be engaging in an overall review” of its policies over the next several months. NBC spokesman Helen Manassian said her network had exchanged letters with Califano but had determined to stay with its ad policies.