Condoms: Television’s Dirty Little Secret

At a time when the AIDS epidemic is spreading faster and farther than many researchers had expected, the nation’s most powerful information medium discourages advertising about one of the most effective methods known to prevent the disease’s transmission.

Not one of the major television networks accepts paid advertising for prophylactics, and none allow that word, or the words condom or rubber , to be used in public-service announcements designed to educate viewers about the products’ use.

Despite a parade of entertainment programs depicting sexuality and promiscuity, the networks remain so squeamish when it comes to advertising and public-service announcements that public health organizations attempting to educate viewers about safer sex through condom use have been forced to resort to euphemisms that AIDS activists say are all but meaningless.

The U.S. Public Health Service Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, for example, was not allowed to refer to condoms or to demonstrate their use, and instead produced a public-service spot that showed an actor putting a sock on his foot and likening that action to another that “could save your life.” No mention was made of sex, AIDS or prophylactics.

“It’s a shame that you have to play that kind of game, but that’s what we had to do on that one,” said Fred Kroger, director of the Centers for Disease Control’s national AIDS information and education program. On other spots, Kroger said, “They made us drop the word condom . We can say protection .”

In terms of paid advertising, the official policy at ABC, CBS and NBC is that no spots for condoms--or birth control of any kind--are to be accepted for national broadcast.

In 1987, after intense lobbying by then-U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and AIDS activists across the country, the networks began to allow the local stations that they own to accept them on a case-by-case basis if they choose to do so. Stations affiliated but not owned by the networks already had the right to air what advertising they pleased, but also had avoided prophylactic commercials until 1987.

The idea, according to network spokesmen, is to avoid offending viewers in communities where people are likely to be uncomfortable with advertising about AIDS and sex. Allowing the local stations to decide whether an ad will run, the networks say, means that they will only run in those communities where viewers will tolerate them.

“Our policy is that we leave it up to the stations,” said ABC spokesman David Horowitz. “We deal with a diverse public, a national public, and we feel it’s best left up to the individual stations, who know their communities.”

Their decision three years ago at least to let their owned stations run condom ads generated a tremendous amount of publicity, and advertisers and others expected an onslaught of commercials and public-service announcements.

Condom manufacturers such as Carter Wallace, Inc., which produces the Trojan, Mentor and Magnum brands, and Ansell Americas, which makes Lifestyles, prepared advertising campaigns, and the New York Advertising Council prepared a public-service announcement.

Then came politics. The Concerned Women of America: Anti-Contraceptive Campaign organization wrote more than 100,000 letters to each of the networks within two weeks after the Advertising Council’s first public-service announcements had been aired.

And, after their initial run, the ads disappeared from most local stations, and the number of public-service announcements specifically directed toward condom use diminished dramatically at the network and the local levels. How many condom-related public-service announcements are currently on the air is difficult to determine because most television stations don’t keep or won’t release records on the subject. But most station executives interviewed agreed that there are fewer of them now than in 1987.

The condom manufacturers and the makers of public-service announcements blame the networks, saying that restrictions on content, relegation to late-night time periods and--for the paid advertisers--the inability to make a national buy at a network level makes it useless to advertise. The networks say they have made the time available through the individual stations, where advertising executives say the manufacturers just don’t seem to want to buy time.

There appears to be some truth to both arguments.

Andrew Weisser, spokesman for AIDS Project Los Angeles, said that his organization had not even approached ABC, CBS or NBC with its new public-service announcement, which shows a man and woman on a bed and uses the word rubber , because organizers believed that the spot would not be accepted. But the group was surprised to find that even Fox Broadcasting and MTV rejected it. The organization was also rebuffed by network affiliates in Los Angeles.

“We are so envious of European countries, where talking about sex, talking about AIDS, talking about intravenous drug use and anything else that American society labels as taboo is so much easier,” Weisser said.

Having virtually given up on television, the organization, with the help of Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Woo, is trying to persuade movie theaters to run the spots. Some theaters have expressed interest, but commitments have not yet been made, according to Weisser and Woo.

“Television is a medium which is not available to us,” said Mark Klein, marketing director for Carter-Wallace’s Trojans brand of condoms.

Klein said that his company would like very much to advertise on television, but is stymied by a combination of standards and the need to purchase time on individual stations, a process that is expensive and time consuming.

“You can’t do a campaign if you have to do it hit and miss,” said Klein, whose company is in the middle of a radio and print campaign to promote Trojans as the condom to use for safer sex. Effective advertising, he explained, is based on reach, frequency and cost-per-thousands. “It doesn’t make sense to be able to run a spot in San Francisco and Chicago and leave the rest of the country blank.”

In addition, Klein said, those stations that do accept the ads require that they focus only on AIDS prevention. And the condom companies do not want to be solely identified with disease.

“We did do condom advertisements on television at one time,” said Marie Kraemer, product manager for Ansell Americas’ Lifestyles condom. “It basically appeared on various cable networks--Lifetime, MTV, VH1.” But NBC, CBS and ABC would not accept the ads.

“We could only appear on cable, and that wasn’t enough exposure to make it worth it,” Kraemer said. “We just decided not to continue with television advertising.”

Indeed, even those stations that allow condom advertising are not exactly reaching out to the manufacturers. None of the network-affiliated stations in Los Angeles and other cities contacted for this article have assigned salespeople to solicit ads from condom manufacturers, and neither have the so-called “rep” firms, the companies that sell air time as representatives of groups of local stations.

“After that first initial wave, we never got another order again,” said Richard Cerussi, vice president and general sales manager of San Francisco station KRON, which was the first in the nation to accept ads for condoms. “They were selling them and they didn’t need to advertise. They got the splash, and with the AIDS epidemic, they’re selling a lot of condoms.”

In addition, Cerussi said, a condom advertisement “has a certain stigma to it. I’m not certain I would even think about assigning someone to go after them. There are a lot of fields that we can go after.”

According to statistics provided by the New York media representation firm John Blair and Co., one reason for the lack of interest is simple: Condom companies just don’t tend to advertise very much--on television or anywhere else.

In 1989, for example, the nation’s 11 prophylactic manufacturers spent only $3.3 million on all types of advertising, including magazines. Of that total, only $160,000 was spent on television. The buys were made on cable systems by Carter Wallace.

Tim McAuliff, president and chief operating officer of John Blair, said that the low numbers were partly due to the difficulty of placing ads in the first place.

“There are a lot of challenges to clearing such an advertisement, such as time period and content,” McAuliff said. “Because of these obstacles, these condom manufacturers have chosen to market their product a different way.”

David Mayer, president of Bay Area-based condom company, Mayer Laboratories, said that the condom industry--with $200 million in yearly sales--is too small to have the kind of economic clout that would persuade television stations to put aside their worries and encourage the advertising.

“I don’t have $50 million to walk into the network and help persuade them it’s worth trying condom ads,” said Mayer, who advertises extensively in magazines and has staged safe sex events in San Francisco, Berkeley and other cities.

In contrast with the reception for condom advertisements in the United States, Mayer said that his proposal to run commercials and public-service announcements in the Soviet Union was accepted enthusiastically.

“The barriers are not nearly the same, because they have recognized that they have an epidemic,” Mayer said. “And they’re looking at this as a much greater issue than some people getting upset because they don’t believe in promoting promiscuity.”

Nonprofit organizations have cut back their public-service announcements for different reasons. Health educators are divided on the effectiveness of a single 30- or 60-second spot. And with public-affairs departments of most television stations swamped with PSA’s on all sorts of topics, even those spots that are accepted run infrequently and often late at night.

“Unless the stations make a specific commitment to play the ads in good prime-time slots, we’re wasting our money,” said Rene Durazzo, media relations coordinator of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

According to AIDS activists, lack of access to television means that a crucial medium for changing societal attitudes is simply left out of the fight against the deadly disease.

Others, however, argue that promoting social change is not the responsibility of the advertising departments at either the condom manufacturers or the stations. And television executives say there’s a difference between the inability to run an advertisement and a complete lack of discussion on the topic.

At KCBS Channel 2 in Los Angeles, for example, where, like most stations, there are no advertising salespeople assigned to condoms, and where public-service announcements about safe sex are relegated to the post-midnight hours, locally produced health information programs and documentaries have repeatedly addressed the AIDS epidemic.

“We do specials throughout the year that address AIDS, and we have public-affairs programs and programs on the network that address the issue,” said Robert Hyland, the station’s general manager. “I think we have done a good job in bringing information to the public. We’re on the cutting edge of the situation.”

But AIDS activists say the only way to exert the kind of influence needed to change Americans’ sexual behavior--and evidence shows that most high-risk adults and teen-agers are still not using condoms--is through a coordinated campaign that involves repeated display of the same dramatic message in all media: in the morning newspaper, on billboards and transit ads, on radio and, in particular, on television.

“Television is the most important medium right now,” said Richard Rouilard, editor in chief of the Advocate, a magazine geared toward the gay community. “It’s much more important than any print medium. The only way to get the information out is TV, and television is doing a miserable job.”