Demographic Fragmenting Tears Society Apart : Television: Creative forces have a responsibility to acknowledge the power of their message, which is contributing to a divided marketplace.

Two recent articles in The Times depressed me, but did manage to reinforce and intensify my belief that the creative forces in television have a responsibility to acknowledge the power of their message, and to be pro-active rather than reactive as the shape of the marketplace changes.

The first was producer Barry Kemp’s explanation of the bountiful creative possibilities available to television writers and producers as a result of the dispersion of the audience (“TV an Eroding Medium? Creatively, It’s Exploding,” Calendar, Sept. 9).

Kemp writes about the “demographic fragmenting” that has come about as a result of the ever-broadening choice of channels, but what he does not mention is that this is also a tool advertisers have been using increasingly to divide and conquer the marketplace.

My troubled reaction to Kemp’s article was compounded when I read “Advertisers Take Aim at Children” (Business, Nov. 10), in which experts define children as the fastest-growing market segment, representing $6 million in direct purchases annually with an additional $132 billion that their parents spend on them.

That article describes marketing techniques that aim to turn children into consumers, with entire TV ad campaigns designed to develop “brand awareness” in children as young as 2.

William Paley began using comedy sketches between cigar ads on CBS radio, later television, to entertain people and keep them interested enough to stay tuned for the next ad. Essentially, the process continues.

Advertisers demand that their falsely created demographic groups develop “preferences” for everything from tennis shoes to toilet paper.

In the meantime, our society is manifesting more and more symptoms of generational isolation, lack of the comfort and enrichment that comes from community, and violence bred at least partially from frustration and despair at the disparity between the haves and the have-nots. Kids attack each other, even kill each other, for the right pair of sneakers.

Television is a powerful tool, with the ability to shape people’s ideas about their world. Advertisers realize this power, analyze the effectiveness of their campaigns and act accordingly.

That Kemp sees creative opportunities in the fragmenting of the audience could be seen as very adaptable, even optimistic, but displays a dismaying lack of a larger social conscience. It scares me to think that one of television’s most talented writer-producers (creator-executive producer of “Coach,” executive producer of “Delta”) is contemplating the creative possibilities of a strategy that has the potential of further isolating members of our society, rather than discussing using his considerable gifts to counteract some of the negative effects of these divide-and-conquer tactics.

Television educates, whether or not that is the creators’ intention. Kids and adults who are already ghettoized from other socioeconomic groups could benefit from exposure to ideas that challenge their limited view of their place in the world, rather than reflecting and reinforcing it: cultural enrichment, historical education, creating heroes for an age that has few, showing people that they are part of a larger world community rather than lowering their sense of possibility by showing them more of what they already know about.

Our society needs the talented people, who are in control of the programming content and style of a medium with access to so many, to have a larger vision than that of their advertisers--a vision that discourages the disintegration of our culture.

Producers and programmers alike need to use their vision to expand the audience’s sense of what is possible, rather than further institutionalizing “what is.”