Advertisers’ Push for Wholesome Shows

A group of advertisers has come up with a brilliant campaign to convince Washington and the religious right that they, too, are sick and tired of all the sex and violence on television.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Create a group called the Family Friendly Programming Forum with the stated goal of encouraging more shows for family viewing in the 8-10 p.m. block of prime time. The Assn. of National Advertisers (ANA), the driving force behind the forum, promises to use its Washington office to “facilitate discussions of TV content on Capitol Hill and in government agencies.”

Step 2: Announce a Sept. 9 awards ceremony to recognize excellence in family-friendly programming.

Step 3: Give the WB network some tip money (by advertising standards) to pay for the writing of “family-friendly” scripts. The deal is leaked to the Wall Street Journal, which runs a story saying the advertisers are “fed up with sex and violence during prime-time viewing hours.” Story is picked up by newspapers nationwide. The Rev. Donald Wildmon’s American Family Assn. praises the advertiser effort.

The total amount given to WB is less than $1 million--roughly the cost of creating eight scripts, half the cost of one episode of a drama series. But it’s a no-brainer for WB because the network has burned through millions of its own dollars in failed attempts to find a family-friendly companion show for Monday’s family-friendly “7th Heaven.”

Finally, Step 4: Announce scholarships to teach aspiring writers how to craft family-friendly programming.

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Sounds great. And sure to make the Brent Bozells of the world very happy. You see, several members of the Family Friendly Programming Forum--including Procter & Gamble, General Motors and McDonald’s--are on a list compiled by Bozell’s Parents Television Council of most frequent sponsors of shows containing an “objectionable” amount of sex, “obscene language” and / or violence. Other forum-ites who pop up as sponsors of “Red Light” shows are AT&T;, Warner-Lambert, Nestle, Coca-Cola and Sears. (It should be noted that some of the same names appear on Bozell’s list of frequent advertisers on family-friendly fare.)

Which, if you look at the fine print in the forum’s mission statement, pretty well sums up the game plan: quietly advertising on the kind of shows that drive the Bozells of the world crazy--”edgy content” in forum-speak--while loudly and publicly pronouncing their appetite for family-friendly fare.

Look closely at the forum Web site and you’ll read the following statements:

* “We support a wide range of programming options, and we will continue to advertise on shows that appeal to different target audiences.”

* “Forum participants have also stressed that censorship of edgier content is not an objective.”

“Many of these members of the forum plan to continue to advertise in edgy programming . . . because that’s appropriate for a brand,” ANA Senior Vice President Robin Webster explained. The forum is “not looking to get rid of anything that’s there.”

One of the forum’s most intense debates was how to define family-friendly programming. It decided a “family” is a household unit with at least one parent and that a “family-friendly” show is one the average parent would not be embarrassed to watch with a child 18 or younger, Webster said.

But there’s more.

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A family-friendly program must have “substance.” “It’s all right if it has edgy subjects,” such as teenage sex, as long as there is “value to the message” and some “substance to it,” Webster said.

How about homosexual teenage sex?

OK, as long as there’s that message with value, Webster said. In other words, “Dawson’s Creek”--the WB show that last season featured a teenage boy who came out of the closet and had a tough time of it--is in, she said.

This will not make the Brent Bozells of the world happy. Bozell almost never mentions “Dawson’s Creek” without the word “trash” in front of it.

Also on the “in” list is NBC’s broadcast of “Schindler’s List,” the first network broadcast to get a TV-M content rating, meaning for mature audiences only. NBC put that rating on its broadcast of the much-heralded holocaust movie because of its disturbing story, which contains nudity, adult language and graphic violence. But, notes Webster, “it’s the kind of thing that opens a dialogue with a family.”

On the other hand, HBO’s miniseries about the Apollo space program, Tom Hanks’ “From the Earth to the Moon,” doesn’t qualify for a Family Friendly Programming Forum award.

Because of its content.

Specifically, because its content didn’t include ads.

The FFPF is, after all, a bunch of advertisers trying to encourage family-friendly programming in which they can advertise.