Pro-Family Activism Gets ABC Advertisers to Drop Soap
by Jenni Parker
October 14, 2004
(AgapePress) - After hearing from thousands of concerned consumers, two major corporations have backed out of sponsoring the ABC television show Desperate Housewives, claiming the salacious prime-time soap opera sinks beneath their companies' strict, pro-family standards.This Wednesday (October 13) Lowe's Home Improvement Company vowed that the company would be taking its advertising agency to task for violating Lowe's advertising policies. After thousands of phone calls and e-mail messages poured into the company's corporate headquarters, Lowe's vice president of communications Brian Peace promised the company's ad placement on ABC's Desperate Housewives would not be repeated.
ConAgra, the food company that produces Banquet Pot Pies, was another of the show's initial sponsors, and had purchased ad time during the show's October 3 premiere episode. But after receiving more than 36,000 protests via e-mail, ConAgra also yanked its advertising and was absent from the show the following week.
Many parents in the television viewing audience had reacted strongly to ABC's sleazy fall offering. Chad Meli, director of the Parents Television Council chapter in Little Rock, Arkansas, even wrote a letter to the editor of the local Sun-Times newspaper, protesting the show's content. The letter described Desperate Housewives as "a non-reality show" in which a woman kills herself and then observes from beyond the grave as her suburban housewife friends and their spouses cheat on one another and otherwise act suspiciously.
Meli commented that the show "illustrates adultery and suicide not only as commonplace, but also as socially acceptable." The parents advocate notes, "These are not messages that should be conveyed to anyone, ever. And what possible redeeming value does such a plot line have?"
Randy Sharp is special projects director for the American Family Association and editor of the web-based pro-family advocacy and activism sites, OneMillionMoms.com and OneMillionDads.com. He says all too often, he has seen parents and other consumers frustrated by the lack of corporate responsibility from companies that sponsor shows containing profuse amounts of violence, profanity, and illicit sex.
But now, with online tools like OneMillionMoms.com and OneMillionDads.com, Sharp says parents can contact corporate executives directly, without having to wade through low-level customer service phone banks. "With a single click of the mouse," he notes, "parents can make their displeasure heard at the highest levels of management."
The Power of Pro-Family Activism
Last week the AFA-related websites encouraged mothers and fathers around the nation to contact the SC Johnson Company over its purchase of advertising spots during a "reality show" scheduled to air on TBS October 19. The show, called "He's a Lady," features male contestants who compete by trying to pass themselves off as women. SC Johnson was the show's only sponsor -- until the complaints began pouring in. (See Related Story)
Members of One Million Moms and One Million Dads were contacted about the show during the first week of October, and they responded in force. Sharp says the consumer outcry brought SC Johnson's corporate leadership to full attention, and fortunately the company "saw the true nature of the program and did not want to be a part of it after all and pulled out of the program completely."
The AFA spokesman says pro-family consumers want to know that the companies with which they do business hold to a certain set of corresponding values. "What these companies have got to realize," he asserts, "is that on network television and many major cable networks the content of the programming is just offensive to a lot of families. And this is reflected in the ratings."
Sharp says it is always a good idea to remind companies occasionally that the consumer is still the key to their success. The pro-family action advocate believes the networks are also getting the message about indecent programming, albeit slowly, as they see their family audience falling off. "People are growing weary of this type of offensive program," he says, "and they're just not watching it."
