Music Industry Defends Lack of Marketing Policy

With federal lawmakers divided over how to police entertainment, a new report issued Tuesday forced record executives to defend their failure to revise marketing practices as promised.

The report by the Federal Trade Commission, which gives the movie and video game industries faint praise, refocuses attention on an issue that had lost steam on Capitol Hill after last fall’s highly publicized hearings.

The music industry was singled out in the report, which said the five major record conglomerates “had not visibly responded” to criticisms that they were targeting ads for explicit albums toward children.

“We need to do a better job of following our own guidelines,” said Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Assn. of America. “People in the music community are just not comfortable characterizing lyrics [under a uniform rating system] and never have been and I doubt ever will be because of the interpretive nature of words,” she said.

The industry drew especially harsh criticism for rescinding its promised policy not to advertise albums with “parental advisory” warning stickers on TV shows or in publications whose primary audience is minors.

That advertising policy, according to Rosen, was withdrawn after lawmakers earlier this year proposed empowering the FTC to sue companies that violated it.

“There’s nothing wrong with people implementing voluntary decisions to make advertising choices for their products, but an official guideline would have set the industry up” for lawsuits, Rosen said.

Legislation to allow the FTC to penalize companies that failed to adhere to such voluntary policies “was a huge disincentive to implement new age-based guidelines,” she said. “It sort of proves the adage that no good deed goes unpunished.”

As another example, Rosen pointed to a Los Angeles County Superior Court lawsuit filed against the major movie studios last year charging they had marketed R-rated films to minors in violation of their voluntary rating system.

A Los Angeles judge ruled the film studios’ ads weren’t protected by the 1st Amendment, and the studios now are seeking to have the case heard by the state Supreme Court. Music industry officials this week filed a letter of support, saying that “without a voluntary system, there will be no system at all.”

Other record executives also cautioned against using the film industry’s system as a benchmark for other media, saying song lyrics can’t be rated according to a listener’s age.

“There’s never been a concept that parental advisory [stickers on] records were only for people over 17,” said Danny Goldberg, a former president of Mercury Records who now runs independent label Artemis Records. “There’s really not unanimity of belief among parents about what kind of language is appropriate in their house. All you can do is advise people there’s profanity in the lyrics.”

Several executives echoed that defense of the sticker program.

“Your kid brings home a record. It says ‘parental advisory.’ We’re advising the parents it might have lyrics that are explicit. Well, parent them,” said Bryan Turner, chief executive of Priority Records, which releases albums by such acts as Snoop Dogg and Master P.

Rosen noted that the music industry has made other policy changes in response to last year’s FTC report--such as revised standards suggesting the use of the warning stickers in print ads--which have yet to fully take effect.

On Capitol Hill, reaction to the FTC follow-up was mixed as lawmakers said they were heartened by the progress made by the movie and video game industries. At the same time, they indicated deep disappointment with the lack of response from the recording industry.

“All we’re asking is they not target market material with a parental advisory warning to kids,” said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). “If they think that parents should be advised and warned about it they shouldn’t spend millions of dollars selling it to kids.”

But the next step for Washington’s culture warriors remained unclear--with Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said to be unlikely to call further hearings until a second more comprehensive follow-up report by the FTC is delivered this fall.

And while Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said Tuesday that he would introduce legislation this week giving the FTC the authority to prosecute entertainment companies that market mature-rated content to children, many of his fellow legislators have expressed concern about that approach. The bill, which would label such marketing efforts as “deceptive,” has struggled to find a Republican co-sponsor in the months since Lieberman began touting it.

With the movement to crack down on explicit entertainment appearing to have lost some of its momentum since last year, Tuesday’s report met with more upbeat responses from the industries that escaped harsh criticism.

Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, said the FTC’s new findings were “very gratifying,” though it attacked studios for continuing to display movie ratings inconsistently in TV and print ads.

On the video game side, Interactive Digital Software Assn. chief Doug Lowenstein expressed satisfaction with the fact that the report gave his industry credit for limiting its advertising of violent games in teen-oriented media. “I’m not exactly clicking my heels over this report,” he said, expressing frustration that the standards the FTC used as a guideline might not be reachable.

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Megan Garvey in Washington contributed to this report.