Fox to Air Ads for Condoms

Fox Broadcasting Co. said Monday that it will become the first of the four major television networks to accept paid advertisements for condoms.

Fox President Jamie Kellner confirmed that the network would accept the ads, but only if they talked exclusively about disease control, not contraception.

The news that the upstart network would run commercials for prophylactics came just days after basketball star Earvin (Magic) Johnson told a stunned national TV audience that he had contracted the HIV virus, which causes AIDS. Johnson exhorted Americans to practice safe sex by using condoms, but until now, no major network would accept advertisements for them.

Kellner would not say why Fox decided to allow the ads, or when the first commercial might run.

C. Jay Key, whose company handles promotional marketing for Schmid Laboratories, the division of London International Group that makes Ramses, Sheik and Fourex condoms, said Fox agreed to work with his client about two weeks ago to create an acceptable ad.

“I approached Fox and said, ‘Would you guys consider breaking the code against condom ads, since you’re mavericks anyway?’ ” Key said.

ABC, CBS and NBC said they had not changed their policies on condom ads. Those networks now do not accept condom ads at the national level, but individual network-owned stations are allowed to accept them on a case-by-case basis.

A spokesman for CBS said that the network did not want to offend viewers who might perceive ads for condoms as an endorsement of promiscuous sexual activity.

In Los Angeles, a number of local stations broadcast advertisements for contraceptive sponges and suppositories, but refuse ads for condoms.

AIDS activists and other critics have charged that the networks were being hypocritical by showing programs in which unmarried teen-agers and adults engage in sex but refusing commercials for condoms.

“That’s my problem with America--they show sex with teens and everything else, and yet when you want to show a condom commercial, (the networks) are afraid that they’ll be boycotted,” said Key, who said that his firm has no trouble placing ads for its condoms in Europe.

“Something has got to happen to wake up America,” Key said. “And I think this Magic Johnson thing is going to do it.”