More Advertisers Divorce ABC's Offensive 'Housewives'
by Allie Martin
October 20, 2004
(AgapePress) - An Internet activism campaign is being credited with an exodus of advertisers from the ABC primetime drama Desperate Housewives.Recently American Family Association-sponsored OneMillionMoms.com and OneMillionDads.com encouraged members to call sponsors of the Sunday evening show to encourage them to rethink their ad placement. So far Banquet Foods, Lowe's, Kellogg's and Tyson Foods have yanked their advertising spots from the show.
ConAgra, the company that produces Banquet pot pies, advertised on the show's October 3 premiere, but pulled out as a sponsor the following week after receiving 36,000 e-mailed protests. And Lowe's home improvement company made the same decision after thousands of phone calls and e-mail messages poured into the company's corporate headquarters. Kellogg's and Tyson's too, have abandoned Desperate Housewives in response to concerned consumers' outcry within the past two weeks since the show first aired.
A number of media outlets have highlighted the One Million Moms and Dads activism websites, reporting on their success in convincing major corporations to put their advertising dollars into more family-friendly shows. Meanwhile, both sites are urging parents across America to keep making their voices heard about Desperate Housewives and other offensive programs, because some sponsors -- Swanson Foods, for instance -- apparently have not received the message.
Randy Sharp, AFA's special projects director, says the ratings for the sleazy prime-time soap opera are strong, but pro-family advertisers will be concerned about the show's sexually explicit content. "While ABC does not care about the average parent and their children -- the average family viewer -- these corporations do," he says. "They know that people are their bread and butter, whereas all the networks care about is money."
The AFA spokesman says many advertisers, once they learn they are financially supporting a show that is offensive to average customers and their families, quickly take measures to correct the problem. "I believe corporations will rise above ratings," he says. "They're looking at the content, the offensiveness of this programming and its effect on our culture."
Sharp points out that, in one week alone, three major corporations listened to the voices of a concerned public and put Desperate Housewives on their "Do Not Advertise" list. He expects the new ABC drama, with its explicit sexuality and other morally questionable content, will continue to lose advertisers as more complaints pour in from concerned moms and dads across America.
