Messages Delivered From the TV Soapbox : Television: Advocacy groups help develop soap operas around the world that deal with family planning, women’s issues and other social concerns.

In the United States, soap operas are generally thought of strictly as entertainment.

But a New York-based advocacy group has convinced networks and producers in more than a dozen other countries to use daily serials to promote its pet cause: population control.

“We’re in the business of conditioning attitudes,” said Sonny Fox, a longtime producer of children’s television in the United States and a member of the board of the organization, Population Communications International.

The organization has helped to develop soap operas that treat family planning and women’s issues in India, Mexico, Brazil, Kenya and the Philippines, according to material provided by Fox. A new soap is in the works for Nigeria, according to the material, and the organization has been asked to help with similar efforts in China, Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt, Botswana, Ghana, Malawi, Zaire and Zambia.

On Monday night in New York City, in an event designed to co-ordinate with Tuesday’s Emmy Awards for daytime television, Population Communications International plans to present its first EarthSavers award to TV Globo, a Brazilian commercial broadcasting company, for its portrayal of family planning issues.

Called “Soaps Salute Soaps,” the event will be hosted by U.S. soap stars A Martinez of NBC’s “Santa Barbara” and Celeste Holm of ABC’s “Loving,” and will feature soap opera luminaries from the United States and abroad. It will be co-sponsored by the publication Soap Opera Digest.

A spinoff of the ‘70s population-control movement, Population Communications International did not originate the idea of using soap operas to influence the public. That notion began with Mexico’s Televisa network, which used a soap opera, or novela , to encourage literacy. After the novela ran for several months, Mexico’s adult education centers experienced a 700% increase in registration.

Soon after, the network started a novela whose storyline promoted family planning. Within a year, sales of contraceptives in Mexico increased 23% and more than 560,000 women enrolled in family planning clinics, an increase of 33%, according to Fox.

The success of those efforts coincided with the development of Population Communications International, and persuaded its founders to meet with Mexican television executives to expand the notion of soap opera advocacy to other countries.

“We had heard that Indian television was starting up a soap, so we took (the producers) to Mexico and showed them a model of how it could be done,” Fox said. “We even got them a sponsor.”

Meredith Berlin, editor-at-large for Soap Opera Digest, said that soap operas are an ideal format for imparting social messages.

“The series format lends itself to intimacy,” Berlin said. “People who watch soap operas tend to watch them not once in a while, but several times a week. There is a great audience and a great opportunity to influence them.”

To be sure, the group’s admission of its conscious desire to mold public opinion through television could be criticized as arrogant and possibly unfair. But Fox defended the idea, saying that television frequently seeks to condition viewers, particularly through advertising.

While Population Control International concentrates its efforts outside of the United States, there are organizations in this country--the Center for Population Options, for example--that work with writers and producers to encourage messages about teen sexuality, birth control and safer sex on television here.

Fox said that his group concentrates its efforts outside of the United States partly because there is greater interest by governments and networks in family planning and population control and partly because the activists feel that there is a greater need for the information they impart in other countries.

In Brazil, a soap’s storyline involved an unmarried teen-age boy whose girlfriend became pregnant. In India, one popular soap featured the story of a 14-year-old girl who was forced into an arranged marriage by her parents. She was pushed into early pregnancy by her husband and his mother, who burned the girl’s schoolbooks to keep her tied to the home. She later will die in childbirth.

“These are the stark realities in these countries,” Fox said. “And television has a chance to be effective in changing these conditions.”