Will NBC Have the Grace to Bow Out and Avoid More Controversy?
by Allie Martin and Jody Brown
February 3, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The founder of a prominent pro-family group is convinced that NBC is trying to mock Christians. As evidence he cites an upcoming episode of a popular sitcom, announced just days after the network's cancellation of a controversial series that was panned by Christian groups across the nation.
Recently NBC announced it was pulling the plug on The Book of Daniel after protests from pro-family forces led to a sharp drop in advertisers for the show. Now the network has made known its intention to air an upcoming episode of Will & Grace that will feature pop star Britney Spears as a Christian conservative sidekick to homosexual character Jack, played by actor Sean Hayes, who has his own talk show on the mythical "Out TV" cable channel. In the episode Jack's network is bought out by a Christian network, which leads to Spears appearing in a cooking segment called "Cruci-fixins."
Don Wildmon is founder and chairman of the American Family Association, one of the major players in guiding complaints about Daniel to NBC. Wildmon says NBC's agenda is clear. "NBC is clearly mocking the Christian faith," says Wildmon. "They clearly have hostility toward the Christian faith. They absolutely will not treat Jews or Muslims in this manner, but I think they are smarting from the Book of Daniel defeat that they suffered, and this is their way to get even."
The AFA founder calls the Spears episode a "childish and immature response" by the network to being forced to cancel The Book of Daniel. The decision to mock Christ's crucifixion, opines Wildmon, is "an angry, knee-jerk reaction" by NBC that exposes its "deep-seated anti-Christian bias."
Will & Grace is slated to go off the air after this season. Regardless, Wildmon encourages Christians to contact their local NBC affiliates and also take part in an online petition drive, found on the AFA website, to network officials.
"There's information steps and links [on the website] that people can take," he explains. "One thing they can do is to call their [local] NBC affiliate and complain, in a nice way, and ask them that they not air this episode of Will and Grace." The episode is set to air on April -- the night before Good Friday.
In a recent press release, AFA contends NBC has been "bombarded" with phone calls from its affiliates about the program while at the same time being pressured by the show's producers to keep the segment -- thereby putting the network between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
"If they don't drop the segment, the network stand to lose millions of dollars in advertising revenue and have the episode dropped by about 40 percent of their affiliates," says the pro-family leader. "But if they do drop the segment, it puts them at odds with the producers and Hollywood for bowing to pressure from what they say is a tiny number of right-wing fundamentalists."
He asserts it places the network in a bit of a quandary. "Do they offend Christians -- or do they offend Hollywood?" he asks.
Wildmon, who says he is basing his views on feedback that AFA supporters are receiving from NBC affiliates, is predicting the network will yank the segment because "they don't want to suffer another defeat as they did with The Book of Daniel."
