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March 31, 2005
Oregon Court of Appeals Hears Channel One Case
Today, the Oregon Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in our lawsuit to expel Channel One from every school in Oregon.
Channel One is a company that forces 8 million children to watch two minutes of ads in schools each schoolday.
Most of today's argument were over procedural questions regarding whether or not a parent has standing to sue on his child's behalf, or because his interests in his child's education are being compromised.
The case is Gary Boyes v. Salem-Keizer School District (Case no. A123176).
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 12:42 PM | Comments (5)
March 30, 2005
Commercial Alert Criticizes PBS for New Kids TV Channel with Ads
Today, the New York Times reports that "On Monday Comcast is to announce the details of its new 24-hour digital cable channel for preschoolers, which will feature Elmo, Big Bird, Barney - and commercials. PBS not only approves, but is a partner: the channel's co-owners are PBS, Sesame Workshop and HIT Entertainment, producer of 'Barney and Friends' and 'Bob the Builder.'"
In response, Commercial Alert sent a letter today to PBS, criticizing it for partnering with Comcast in a 24-hour cable channel for children that will carry advertisements.
Take action now: send an email to PBS executive vice president Wayne Godwin, telling him that PBS should not broadcast commercials to children. Click here.
Here's our letter.
Wayne Godwin
Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
Public Broadcasting System
1320 Braddock Place
Alexandria, VA 22314
Via fax: (703) 739-7500
Dear Mr. Godwin:
The New York Times reports today that PBS and Comcast are partners in a new 24-hour digital cable channel for children that will play commercials along with programs such as Elmo and Sesame Street. Other co-owners will be Sesame Workshop and HIT Entertainment.
Public broadcasting is supposed to be an alternative to the commercial networks and a refuge from the huckstering that assaults children there. It is supposed to give kids, and parents, a real choice in this regard – a choice where kids won’t be seduced with junk food, junk entertainments and noxious commercial values with which parents may disagree.
In case you somehow haven’t noticed, American children already are subject to an unprecedented barrage of commercial propaganda. And, not surprisingly, they suffer from an epidemic of marketing-related diseases, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. Recent research by Juliet Schor found that “High consumer involvement is a significant cause of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and psychosomatic complaints” in children. Why would you want to make this any worse?
Your descent into commercial predation has been swift. In 1998, PBS first ran national commercials before and after Sesame Street. And despite shocking rates of childhood obesity, in 2003, PBS began running ads for McDonalds before and after Sesame Street. What’s next? A partnership with Philip Morris? If there’s enough money in it, why not?
Children need adults who will stand up to the commercial culture. They need adults who will put their health and development above the interests of money. It looks as though they aren’t going to find these adults at PBS any more.
Sincerely,
Gary Ruskin, executive director, Commercial Alert
<------letter ends here------>
Following is an article in today’s New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/arts/television/30pbs.html
Bob and Barney, With a Few Words From Sponsors
By Julie Salamon
Has Big Bird sold out?
On Monday Comcast is to announce the details of its new 24-hour digital cable channel for preschoolers, which will feature Elmo, Big Bird, Barney - and commercials. PBS not only approves, but is a partner: the channel's co-owners are PBS, Sesame Workshop and HIT Entertainment, producer of "Barney and Friends" and "Bob the Builder."
"I don't like pitching products to young children and I never have," said Joan Ganz Cooney, a co-founder of Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) and the chairwoman of the executive committee of its board. "But to some degree that is nostalgia for a time that is past. The whole society, the whole business is so commercialized, even public television. This is another way of getting PBS's excellent programming to children."
Some public television station managers worry that the Comcast deal represents a potential threat to an essential ingredient of the Public Broadcasting Service's shows for young children. "The crucial issue is providing a commercial-free haven for over-the-air delivery of children's programming as opposed to a commercial entity that is out of our control," said John Hesse, general manager of KUHT, the public television station in Houston.
The distinction between public and commercial television has become increasingly ephemeral in the last decade as traditional underwriter announcements have taken on the trappings of regular advertising. The merchandizing of popular characters like Barney and Elmo is big business. Meanwhile, technology has upended traditional ideas of what people watch and when.
The new channel "is responding to a television industry that is in revolution," said John Boland, executive vice president at public television's KQED in San Francisco. "We're moving into an environment of total audience control. This channel is just one little part of that."
Others think the revolution is not so benign. "This is a slippery slope," said Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an education professor at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., who has been a consultant for WGBH, the public television station in Boston. "What can prevent them from going further once they see what an inviting territory that is?"
"I don't blame PBS for this," Professor Carlsson-Paige said. "It's a society-wide problem. We aren't adequately funding public television and public programming for children. PBS doesn't have enough funds and so they are doing this."
Public television stations will continue to operate their usual children's programming schedules, and provide the premiere runs of "Sesame Street" and other familiar shows. But these schedules vary market to market and are limited, Ms. Cooney of Sesame Workshop said. "If you don't have children around, as I do grandchildren, I don't think it's understood how difficult it is to get a schedule of little children's programming when you need it," she said.
Local public television stations must decide whether they also want to be affiliated with the new channel. That would mean promoting the channel as well as giving up any digital channels providing preschool programming that they might be operating locally without advertising.
KUHT in Houston decided not to affiliate. "The spots that are going to run on the commercial channel are outright commercials, product endorsements, superlatives, all that sort of thing, which we don't have on our underwriting spots on our channel," Mr. Hesse, the station manager, said. "I have some concern about pointing our viewers toward a commercial station when we have touted ourselves as a safe haven from commercial programming."
KQED in San Francisco has signed on, even though it already operates a digital cable channel called KQED Kids. That channel will no longer carry preschool programming. "We plan to redirect it to kids who are too old for 'Barney' and 'Teletubbies,' " Mr. Boland said.
Comcast and its partners, which announced the deal in October, plan to provide details - including the channel's name - on Monday at the annual trade show of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.
The digital channel that will provide a 24-hour diet of PBS-branded children's-show reruns won't begin until this fall. On Monday, however, Comcast will begin a video-on-demand service containing 50 hours of reruns of "Bob the Builder," "Thomas & Friends," "Angelina Ballerina" and "Sesame Street."
The video-on-demand programs will come commercial-free, at least at the beginning, a Comcast spokeswoman said. On the 24-hour channel, however, commercials will appear before and after the programs, though not during them.
Wayne Godwin, chief operating officer of PBS, stressed that the commercials on the new channel would be in terms of their placement and intended audience. "We at PBS were a part of shaping the message around what was and what was not appropriate," he said. "Messages will be targeted to parents and caregivers as opposed to things aimed directly at children."
But James Day, a co-founder of KQED who was on the original board of Children's Television Workshop, said he wondered how easy it would be to control commercials and their content. "It's awfully hard to choose your advertiser," he said. "You get who wants to reach that audience, not what you want that audience to be reached with."
PBS and its partners have veto rights over the question of commercial interruption as well as the educational nature of the channel. But, as Mr. Godwin said, "I don't think you'll find someone from PBS screening each one of the commercials."
Participants in the venture, as well as many public television station executives, said the Comcast deal simply reflects financial and cultural realities. For years PBS was in a league of its own when it came to children's programming. But with cable television came competition from the likes of Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel, the Cartoon Network and Discovery Kids. Digital cable opened the door to more competition from more channels.
"It made sense to have private industry leverage up money to create a new channel, which will give children the opportunity to view these characters which are right now in limited time periods," Gary Knell, president of Sesame Workshop, said. "If public television doesn't take bold steps like creating this new service, it's going to be a wind-down. The trend isn't going to get better, and it's naïve to say you can simply do what you are doing and pretend the world isn't changing."
Except for people with long memories, it has become a given that children as well as adults should be able to watch what they want 24 hours a day. Mr. Day, however, is dubious. "Anybody who sees me quoted will recognize that I'm an old-fashioned crank," he said. "But I believe the competitiveness that leads to such a proliferation tends to degrade the quality of television itself. It may be there's a downside to choice. My point is not 'What's the harm?' but 'What's the value?'"
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 10:49 AM | Comments (13)
March 28, 2005
PBS Goes Commercial
The New York Times reports today on the latest steps PBS has taken towards displaying regular advertising, including having sponsors speak on camera while displaying products.
Let's face it: public television has sunk so low that there's almost no difference between its sponsorship content and that of network television.
"We can solve our short-term or annual needs by loosening the reins on sponsorship content, but in the end we lose our soul," Willard D. Rowland, president of KBDI-TV in Denver, told the Times.
Here's today's New York Times article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/28/business/media/28adcol.html
On Public TV, Not Quite an Ad But Pretty Close
by Nat Ives
Welcome back," says a man who appears to be the host of a public-television pledge drive. "This program was made possible by a grant from Chipotle Mexican Grill." Behind the host, more than a dozen volunteers tend telephones beneath a sign that reads "Pledge Drive."
But as the host talks, the ringing of unanswered phones drowns him out. The volunteers can't answer because they are all eating burritos.
The scene is not an actual pledge drive, but it will appear on public television starting next month. The 15-second commercial for Chipotle, a Mexican restaurant chain owned by McDonald's, will accompany "How to Cook Everything: Bittman Takes On America's Chefs," on some 150 public television stations across the country. The program features Mark Bittman, a cookbook author who writes a column for the Dining section of The New York Times, which is a sponsor of the program.
The Chipotle spot, spoofing public television pledge drives, neatly encapsulates a significant shift in public television: to raise money for noncommercial programming, producers and distributors increasingly allow their corporate underwriters to turn their credits into something resembling regular commercials. Since the mid-1990's, the underwriter announcements that precede and follow many public television programs (and usually conclude with the narrator thanking "viewers like you") have gradually adopted many trappings of regular advertising, despite appearing on "commercial-free" television.
In March 2004, the Public Broadcasting Service, a nonprofit membership organization of public television stations, loosened its guidelines on the content of the credits. The new rules opened the door for the first time to the possibility of sponsors speaking on camera and displaying a product. Brands and products like Chuck E. Cheese's, Intel, McDonald's, Microsoft and Lipton Noodle Soup have taken advantage of the new guidelines to create livelier sponsorship segments with traditional trappings, including jingles and corporate slogans.
But the Chipotle credit, by having an on-screen actor address the camera and showing people eating the product, pushes closer to traditional advertising than ever before. Another Chipotle ad shows a British newscast that is disrupted when a cameraman gets too involved in his burrito. A third parodies the introduction to "Masterpiece Theater," presenting an Alistair Cooke look-alike and a sign-language interpreter whose duties are hampered by, yes, the burrito she is eating.
Judy Barlow, vice president for business development at American Public Television in Boston, which distributes "How to Cook Everything," said that underwriter credits "have evolved" from the spartan, static slides of early public television.
"But you couldn't get a funder today with just that simple text credit," Ms. Barlow said. "They really require much more than that."
Many station managers argue that these new sponsorship arrangements are necessary. Federal funding for public television has grown each year since 2000, but not enough, managers say, to keep up with rising operating costs and the additional expense of converting to digital signals. And the states' support has been hampered by money woes.
But slicker, more commercial underwriter messages have already produced unintended consequences, according to some public television executives.
"The drawback is that we begin to look like commercial broadcasters, so what is the difference?" said Rodney L. Bates, general manager of Nebraska Educational Television, which received more than 40 percent of this year's funds from the state legislature. "It is harder to articulate those differences. In the case of someplace like Nebraska, where we're a state licensee, it makes it more difficult to go in and ask a state legislator for the budget."
Even some ad agency executives said the new underwriter spots are greasing an already slick slope toward commercialism. "You start here with a spoof of a membership drive," said Charles Rosen, managing partner at the agency Amalgamated in New York. "All of a sudden it looks possible that the pledge drive volunteers might have Coca-Cola cups in front of them on their desks."
Dan Fogarty, who oversees advertising at Chipotle, said that he was sorry if the spots offended anyone, but that the company's intent was pure.
"I'm all for the guidelines of noncommercial radio and television," Mr. Fogarty said. "Our goal is to just not bore people."
At the dawn of federally supported public television in 1967, the Federal Communications Commission set tight limits on underwriter credits. But the commission relaxed its policy in 1984 to allow company logos and "value-neutral" descriptions of products or services, as long as they do not actually promote the products or services.
"By 1993 or 1994, you began to see the evolution of 'enhanced underwriting,' " said Wayne Godwin, the chief operating officer at PBS. Still, he said, an enhanced credit was defined as much by what it could not do as by what it could. "It was not allowed to have a call to action. It had to be careful and cautious about the language; it could not use superlatives or comparative claims like 'we're the best in the country.' "
In 2003, PBS offered 30-second underwriter messages for the first time. Among the 13 advertisers that have paid enough to qualify - originally $2.5 million, but later $1.5 million - are Archer Daniels Midland, Allstate and Ernst & Young.
But the new ads sidle right up to the edges of guidelines governing the content of underwriter messages. Many employ images from advertisers' traditional campaigns, while some others include specially adapted marketing slogans. McDonald's is identified as a supporter of "Sesame Street" in credits that end with the company logo and its global ad theme, "I'm lovin' it."
The credits for Chuck E. Cheese's, a sponsor of five PBS Kids programs including "Arthur" and "Barney and Friends," show the company Web site and include a voiceover saying "PBS Kids - Where a kid can be a kid." The Chuck E. Cheese's corporate slogan is "Where a kid can be a kid."
The Chipotle spots had to toe some very fine lines. For example, the guidelines allow people in the spots to consume a product as long as they do not appear to enjoy it overtly. So the producer instructed the actors in its pledge drive spoof not to look too thrilled.
"There are people eating, but they are kind of in the background and just going about their business," said Charles L. Pinsky, president and executive producer at Frappé Inc. in New York, which produced "How to Cook Everything."
PBS says that its standards and practices rest on several principles, including the conviction that public television's "noncommercial status must be preserved." In addition to propping up public television's independence, that noncommercial status provides certain financial and other benefits to public television, PBS says.
So even as public broadcasting takes on an increasingly commercial look, many executives in the system are searching for more permanent solutions. Some hope to see a special tax levied on for-profit television companies that would provide a dedicated revenue stream to public television. Another idea envisions an endowment built on funds from Congress and other donors.
"We can solve our short-term or annual needs by loosening the reins on sponsorship content, but in the end we lose our soul," said Willard D. Rowland, president of KBDI-TV in Denver. "If we don't want the institution to be more commercial, then we have to find better guaranteed revenue sources for it."
Jonathan Schoenberg, creative director and partner at TDA Advertising and Design, which created the Chipotle spots, called them homages, but acknowledged that they reflect the awkward dilemma of public broadcasting today.
"This work is embracing what I love about PBS," he said. "At the same time, with my deep love of PBS, they're in kind of a funky place right now."
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 06:54 AM | Comments (7)
March 25, 2005
Trampling on the Memory of Bobby Kennedy
Talk about knowing no shame. The Washington Times reported today that the D.C. Sports & Entertainment Commission is seeking to sell naming rights to RFK Stadium.
The stadium was named for the late U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1969, after he was assassinated.
Sometimes it seems as if there's nothing the commercial culture won't deface, or erase, or obliterate, if there's a dollar to be made.
Bobby Kennedy was a civic hero. He deserves much better than than to be insulted like this. The DC government should not sell naming rights to RFK Stadium.
To those who may think that the DC government can't be stopped, recall Kennedy's words in June, 1966 in Johannesburg, South Africa:
"Let no one be discouraged by the belief that there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills --- against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence.... Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
Here's today's article in the Washington Times:
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050325-122843-1271r.htm
Sponsor sought for RFK Stadium
by Eric Fisher
The D.C. Sports & Entertainment Commission is pursuing a multimillion-dollar sponsorship deal that would give a new name to RFK Stadium.
The commission is soliciting companies to bid on a corporate-sponsorship package that provides status as the "primary sponsor" of the stadium named in honor of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
Corporate signs will be posted on the building's facade and in the parking lot and, perhaps, additional signs will be put up inside the facility.
The name "RFK Stadium" will not be replaced; rather, the name of a corporation likely will precede it.
The commission is strongly leaning toward placing a corporation's name in front of the words "Field at RFK Stadium."
The home of the National Football League's Denver Broncos used a similar construction, "Invesco Field at Mile High," to combine a sponsor's name with a traditional name that was a fan favorite.
The commission hopes to have the deal and a new name in place for the home opener of the Washington Nationals on April 14.
Commission officials are seeking $1.5 million to $2 million per year for a deal that would run the duration of the three years the Nationals plan to use RFK Stadium. A portion of that money would go to D.C. youth and recreation facilities.
"All aspects of this sponsorship will continue the legacy of RFK, and we also intend to honor his legacy at the [Nationals'] new stadium," said Mark Tuohey, sports commission chairman. "This program is an adjunct to the RFK name."
A newspaper ad soliciting bids for the sponsorship stated that a goal of the sponsorship is to "maintain the stadium's historically significant identity as a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial."
Nonetheless, the move represents a marked and historic shift for the facility that until 1969 was known as D.C. Stadium. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall renamed the stadium for Mr. Kennedy after he was assassinated.
"I don't think this is going to be received very well. The Kennedy family is very proud of this name," said Frank Mankowitz, former press secretary for Mr. Kennedy and now a District-based public relations executive. "I'm not happy about this."
Members of the Kennedy family could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Mr. Tuohey said sports commission and D.C. officials consulted with the Kennedy family before deciding to solicit bids. They declined to provide details of those talks.
"The Kennedys are enthusiastic about the benefits of this program," Mr. Tuohey said.
Five companies have expressed interest in the sponsorship — Mr. Tuohey declined to name them — and the commission expects to make its choice in the next three weeks.
The projected annual payments are less than the $2 million to $6 million per year typically reaped from sponsorship deals by operators of other Major League Baseball stadiums.
However, the RFK sponsorship does not include long-term naming rights or a package of high-end luxury suites that usually accompany such deals.
Meanwhile, the commission's efforts to select an architect for the new Nationals stadium in Southeast continue to drag on. A public announcement of the choice is not expected until next week. HOK Sports remains the favorite, but the selection process is now more than three weeks behind schedule.
Natwar Gandhi, the District's chief financial officer, also plans to release next week his revised estimate on the land acquisition and environmental remediation costs for the stadium site, as well as a new analysis of two offers of private financing for the ballpark.
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 06:43 PM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2005
Every Nook and Cranny: The Dangerous Spread of Commercialized Culture
The Multinational Monitor just published an article by Professor Juliet Schor and me, titled "Every Nook and Cranny: The Dangerous Spread of Commercialized Culture."
Professor Schor is the author of Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, which is the best book about how the commercial culture hurts children. She is also on our board of directors.
And the Multinational Monitor is -- by far -- the best magazine covering issues of corporate power, crime and violence.
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 03:27 PM | Comments (1)
March 22, 2005
Channel One and the "Masters of Sleaze"
David Brooks has a hilarious op-ed in today's New York Times, titled "Masters of Sleaze," about Channel One lobbyists Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed. It's the funniest article you'll ever read about the people who represent Channel One in Congress and the states.
Masters of Sleaze
by David Brooks
Down in the depths of the netherworld, where Tammany Hall grafters and Chicago ward heelers gather amid spittoons and brass railings, a reverential silence now spreads across the communion. The sleazemasters of old look back into the land of the mortals and they see greatness in the form of Jack Abramoff.
Only a genius like Abramoff could make money lobbying against an Indian tribe's casino and then turn around and make money defending that tribe against himself. Only a giant like Abramoff would have the guts to use one tribe's casino money to finance a Focus on the Family crusade against gambling in order to shut down a rival tribe's casino.
Only an artist like Abramoff could suggest to a tribe that it pay him by taking out life insurance policies on its eldest members. Then when the elders dropped off they could funnel the insurance money through a private school and into his pockets.
This is sleaze of a high order. And yet according to reports in The Washington Post and elsewhere, Abramoff accomplished it all.
Yet it's important to remember this: A genius like Abramoff doesn't spring fully formed on his own. Just as Michelangelo emerged in the ferment of Renaissance Italy, so did Abramoff emerge from his own circle of creativity and encouragement.
Back in 1995, when Republicans took over Congress, a new cadre of daring and original thinkers arose. These bold innovators had a key insight: that you no longer had to choose between being an activist and a lobbyist. You could be both. You could harness the power of K Street to promote the goals of Goldwater, Reagan and Gingrich. And best of all, you could get rich while doing it!
Before long, ringleader Grover Norquist and his buddies were signing lobbying deals with the Seychelles and the Northern Mariana Islands and talking up their interests at weekly conservative strategy sessions - what could be more vital to the future of freedom than the commercial interests of these two fine locales?
Before long, folks like Norquist and Abramoff were talking up the virtues of international sons of liberty like Angola's Jonas Savimbi and Congo's dictator Mobutu Sese Seko - all while receiving compensation from these upstanding gentlemen, according to The Legal Times. Only a reactionary could have been so discomfited by Savimbi's little cannibalism problem as to think this was not a daring contribution to the cause of Reaganism.
Soon the creative revolutionaries were blending the high-toned forms of the think tank with the low-toned scams of the buckraker. Ed Buckham, Tom DeLay's former chief of staff, helped run the U.S. Family Network, which supported the American family by accepting large donations and leasing skyboxes at the MCI Center, according to Roll Call. Michael Scanlon, DeLay's former spokesman, organized a think tank called the American International Center, located in a house in Rehoboth Beach, Del., which was occupied, according to Andrew Ferguson's devastating compendium in The Weekly Standard, by a former "lifeguard of the year" and a former yoga instructor.
Ralph Reed, meanwhile, smashed the tired old categories that used to separate social conservatives from corporate consultants. Reed signed on with Channel One, Verizon, Enron and Microsoft to shore up the moral foundations of our great nation. Reed so strongly opposes gambling as a matter of principle that he bravely accepted $4 million through Abramoff from casino-rich Indian tribes to gin up a grass-roots campaign.
As time went by, the spectacular devolution of morals accelerated. Many of the young innovators were behaving like people who, having read Barry Goldwater's "Conscience of a Conservative," embraced the conservative part while discarding the conscience part.
Abramoff's and Scanlon's Indian-gaming scandal will go down as the movement's crowning achievement, more shameless than anything the others would do, but still the culmination of the trends building since 1995. It perfectly embodied their creed and philosophy: "I'd love us to get our mitts on that moolah!!" as Abramoff wrote to Reed.
They made at least $66 million.
This is a major accomplishment. And remember: Abramoff didn't do it on his own.
It took a village. The sleazo-cons thought they could take over K Street to advance their agenda. As it transpired, K Street took over them.
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 09:24 AM | Comments (1)
March 16, 2005
Childhood Obesity and What to Do About It
Our hero of the day is U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, who held a news conference today on marketing junk food to children.
I missed the news conference (got stuck on a runway for four hours). But here was my statement:
I want to talk today about responsibility, honesty and traditional values in the schools.
We are gathered here because of an epidemic of marketing-related diseases that is afflicting American children. Obesity and type 2 diabetes are not acts of God or nature. For the most part, they are manufactured by adults who have decided that the health of children is less important than their own desire to make money.
And that brings us to the root cause, which is the breakdown of personal responsibility – and the system of enforcing it – on the part of these adults. The government actually has served as an enabler for this, and it has to stop.
Subsidies are a prime example. Junk food makers such as Coca-Cola and Kraft, PepsiCo and McDonald’s have developed a welfare mentality. Under Treasury regulation section 1.162-1(a), they have enjoyed tax deductions for advertising through which they lure children to eat fatty and sugar-laden food. This advertising drives a wedge between parents and their own children, and enlists children as nags for foods that many parents do not want their kids to have.
It’s sick. Yet the junk food industry thinks it is entitled to this subsidy. They think it’s their right in effect to take our tax dollars to use against us to degrade our health, and to meddle in our families.
It’s time to end the tax deduction for advertising of junk food – to children and adults too. If there are going to be subsidies they should be for the promotion of healthful living and healthy families, not the junk food and family strife the industry is promoting now.
Now honesty. The latest trend in the industry is stealth advertising. They call it “product placement,” but it really is the sneaking of ads into movies, TV shows, video games and the like.
The TV show American Idol, for example, is essentially an infomercial for Coca-Cola. There isn’t much research on stealth ads that is available to the public. One study in the British medical journal Lancet found that half of teen age smoking probably can be traced to tobacco product appearances in movies. Let me repeat that – half of all the teenagers who start smoking, were helped along by the smoking that they saw in a movie. There’s no reason to think the effect is any different for junk food and other things. It’s no wonder that the junk food industry is using product placement so much. According to Nielsen Monitor-Plus, in the top 10 TV programs in 2004, the number one and three brands using product placement were Coca-Cola Classic and Pepsi-Cola.
Product placement is fundamentally dishonest. It pretends that an ad is something that it’s not. The Federal Trade Commission tells advertisers to disclose that their ads are ads, in infomercials, newspapers, magazines and search engines. Movies, video games and TV shows should be no different. And, of course, most of the European Union either bans product placement in TV shows or else restricts it severely.
Now the schools. In this country we traditionally have drawn a line at the school house door. We have said to corporations and their ad agencies, “Schools are for learning, not for advertising.” But over the last fifteen years or so the industry has breached that line. They’ve broken down the door and declared open season on our kids. Ads in the hallways. Vending machines there too. Even TV sets in classrooms where kids are compelled to sit and watch ads on something called Channel One.
Parents are starting to fight back. The once-mighty Channel One is collapsing. The junk food marketers have met partial or complete defeat in Arkansas, California, Maine, Texas, and in many cities, such as Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, Oakland, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle.
Now it’s time for the Cokes and Pepsis of this country to take some responsibility for their own actions, and just leave the schools.
Sometimes you have to wonder if the people who run this industry have a special antipathy for American children. On January 6, 2004, Refreshments Canada, which is a Canadian beverage industry association, announced that it would pull all soda pop out of vending machines in elementary and middle schools in Canada. It’s an example of corporate self-restraint that the American junk food industry has yet to follow. Why not? What do they have against our kids?
Americans are getting fed up with corporations that think children – and the rest of us too, for that matter -- exist solely to pump up their quarterly profit figures. You can see the opposition building in public opinion, as well as school boards, state legislatures and in Congress. A poll last year by the Yankelovich Partners found that “60% of consumers have a much more negative opinion of marketing and advertising now than a few years ago,” and “65% think there should be more limits and regulations on marketing and advertising.”
If these junk food companies keep it up, they can expect to be just as popular as telemarketers, Enron, Worldcom, HMOs, and, of course, tobacco companies. And that is a natural result of having no respect for our children or their health.
If these companies are growing unpopular, it’s their own fault. They are signing their own arrest warrant. We’re just helping to hold the pen. Thank you.
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 04:22 PM | Comments (1)
March 14, 2005
Channel One Stumbles Due to Financial Woes, Old TVs and Opposition
Advertising Age reported today that Channel One has run into a multitude of troubles: “Its equipment is badly in need of an upgrade, advertisers are fleeing, critics are declaring they want to put it out of business, and the top executive, one of the founders, is leaving.”
Channel One is a company that uses the schools to advertise to captive audiences of about eight million children in about 12,000 schools across the country. It was founded by Chris Whittle in 1990, and is currently owned by Primedia, Inc.
“Channel One’s repugnant business model of forcing children to watch ads in school is failing.” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, a nonprofit organization that opposes the commercialization of education. “This is just the latest instance of the rejection of the commercial culture and its spread into the schools.”
Tell your governor and state legislators to enact a law baning Channel One from your state's schools. Click here.
“Parents are fed up with corporations interfering with their relationship with their own children,” Ruskin said. “Across the country, people are finally coming to realize that pushing advertising at schoolchildren is intolerable, outrageous and wrong.” Some examples are the disintegration of the ZapMe! Corp, the defeat of Time-Warner’s plans to put ads on CNN Student News, and the removal of soda pop or other junk food marketers in California, Texas, Maine, Arkansas, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, Oakland, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle, among other places.
Americans are increasingly turning against the commercial culture. Overwhelming majorities of Americans are sick of advertisers efforts to dangle an ad in front of us at every waking moment. According to a Yankelovich Partners poll last year, 60% of Americans have a “much more negative opinion of marketing and advertising now than a few years ago,” 61% of Americans “feel the amount of marketing and advertising is out of control,” 65% feel “constantly bombarded with too much advertising and marketing, ”and 65% “think there should be more limits and regulations on marketing and advertising.” (To read the poll, go to http://www.commercialalert.org/Yankelovich.pdf.)
Commercial Alert is a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy. For more information, see our website at: http://www.commercialalert.org.
-30-
Today’s article in Advertising Age follows.
Channel One hits bump, losing ads and top exec
In-school TV network often targeted by critics hurt as Kellogg, Kraft shy away due to kid obesity debate
By Claire Atkinson
Its equipment is badly in need of an upgrade, advertisers are fleeing, critics are declaring they want to put it out of business, and the top executive, one of the founders, is leaving.
Channel One, once proclaimed by its founder Chris Whittle as "a good business" that wouldn't work "unless it makes sense to the sponsors," no longer seems to work for some of its key advertisers.
Primedia's latest financial results show the extent of the network's problems attracting advertisers. In a year that saw overall U.S. ad spending up by 10%, according to TNS Media Intelligence, Primedia's Education segment, dominated by Channel One, saw ad revenue fall 12.3% for the year to $39.1 million. During the fourth quarter 2004, a major holiday selling period, ad revenue was down 12.1% to $13.1 million.
"The concern by certain advertisers about the obesity issue in schools caused them to stop or reduce advertising in schools," said Primedia in the full year results released Feb. 28. A Kraft Foods spokeswoman said Kraft has not advertised on Channel One since it enacted its policy to eliminate all in-school marketing in July of 2003.
Last week the company anointed Judy Harris as president-CEO of Channel One. Ms. Harris starts on April 4 and replaces outgoing Jim Ritts, the last executive with ties to Channel One founder Mr. Whittle.
"We took a big hit from Kellogg and Kraft," said Mr. Ritts, who went on to say, "future revenues are going to come." Food marketers are reorienting their messaging toward health, he said. A spokesman said ad revenue would be up in the first quarter.
raising the profile
New York-based Ms. Harris plans to be "highly visible" to advertisers over the next few weeks as she makes the rounds with outgoing chief Mr. Ritts. She has her work cut out for her. The network is hardly high profile at the media agencies. Aaron Cohen, senior VP-director of national broadcast at Horizon Media, New York, said: "I haven't seen a sales effort by Channel One in the longest time. I can't remember the last time we were approached by Channel One."
The service, now 15 years old, operates by providing schools free TV equipment, including a satellite dish, monitor and VCR. The network broadcasts two minutes of ads during a 12-minute daily show reaches 8 million secondary-school children in 370,000 classrooms. That reach has remained fairly constant in the last few years. An ad-supported Web site, Channelone.com, is also available.
But its very presence in classrooms has drawn the ire of critics, including Commercial Alert, a Portland Ore.-based consumer advocacy group, which has pushed the charge against Channel One to the top of its agenda. "The coalition which opposes the presence of Channel One is bigger and stronger than ever before. We expect to run them out of every school in the country," said Executive Director Gary Ruskin.
Jim Metrock, president of Obligation, a Birmingham, Ala.-based child advocacy organization, charges on his Web site that any school district that has a contract with Channel One is "not serious about education * and they are inviting the wrath of parents and other citizens who don't want school time replaced with commercials for junk food and sleazy movies."
no plans to sell
Ms. Harris reports to Primedia chairman Dean Nelson, rather than CEO Kelly Conlin, which some observers posit means the company is considering a sale. Mr. Nelson strongly denied that speculation, and said that Channel One is still and always has been profitable, and that the company would not have recruited Ms. Harris if it had plans to sell.
Channel One's ad declines date back years. In 2002 ad revenue at Channel One was $50.2 million, that dropped by 11% to $44.6 million in 2003. Primedia once packaged its teen titles together with Channel One, but Seventeen and its related titles were sold to Hearst for $184.2 million in May 2003. Ms. Harris was not yet sure whether there were other cross-company packaging opportunities.
A second headache for Ms. Harris will be overseeing the company's digital upgrade. Some observers close to the company report Primedia has put off upgrading the network as long as possible. A handful of schools are testing a new digital format, but an insider said the board has not yet given the green light to doing a full upgrade, and won't address it for at least another 6 months.
"It would be very difficult for Primedia to justify the capital investment if the ad revenue is down," noted one executive close to the company.
Primedia, when it was known as K-III, purchased Channel One from Whittle Communications in 1994 for $250 million, based on annual revenue of $70 million and $20 million in operating profit. At the time, K-III expected to spend $100 million over the next decade on upkeep and technology for its 12,000 satellite dishes, 6,000 miles of cable and 350,000 classroom TVs, according to published reports.
Primedia executives said Channel One is quite capable of supporting its infrastructure and any required changes with its current revenue stream. However, Mr. Nelson did say Ms. Harris had already been in touch with foundations willing to underwrite the cost of programming, and a spokesman said one option is to bring in a partner to supply TV equipment to schools in exchange for promotion.
The estimated cost of digital transition could be anywhere between $4 million to $6 million according to an executive familiar with digital upgrades, and replacing TV equipment could add millions more. Said Mr. Ritts, "We are at the beginning of digitizing content. We are in the pilot phase of the first 15 to 20 schools." He declined to say what kind of investment was necessary to convert the network, but said it was nowhere near the original start-up investment, reported to be around $250 million at the time.
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 10:49 AM | Comments (3)
March 10, 2005
Bad Portents for the Privacy Invaders
Our nation's privacy invaders and listbrokers must be a little more nervous today. A key legislator has stood up for the idea that personal information should not be for sale without prior consent.
Three cheers for Rep. Joe Barton, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, who said yesterday: "I personally see no socially redeeming value in anyone having the right to give away and sell my personal information unless I approve it....Under current law these companies have a legal right to package it and do almost anything they want to do with it....I just think that's fundamentally wrong. And in the Internet age, it's dangerous."
Hopefully, this means greater likelihood of wining new privacy laws like the Children's Listbroker Privacy Act, which would prohibit corporations from selling the personal information of children under 16 without parental consent.
Here's today's article in the New York Times.
http://nytimes.com/2005/03/10/technology/10datas.html
Another Data Broker Reports a Breach
by Tom Zeller Jr.
The LexisNexis Group, a major compiler of legal and consumer information, said yesterday that information on about 30,000 people - including names, addresses and Social Security numbers - may have fallen into the hands of thieves.
The announcement follows the recent disclosure of several other cases involving the loss or theft of consumer data. ChoicePoint, another major data broker, said last month that it had inadvertently sold the records of about 145,000 individuals to criminals. And the Bank of America said more recently that backup computer tapes containing information on more than a million of its customers had been lost.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Treasury Department are investigating the LexisNexis incident, people close to the inquiry said. The concern in such cases is that criminals could use the information to open credit card accounts under the stolen names or engage in other forms of so-called identity theft.
LexisNexis said it had not yet determined how access might have been gained to the files but that it appeared to have involved unauthorized use of passwords of legitimate subscribers to its databases, rather than a hacker attack on its system.
The LexisNexis breach is almost certain to accelerate calls from privacy advocates and state and federal officials for greater scrutiny of the companies that buy, store and sell consumer data. The issue will be taken up today in a hearing before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, and next Tuesday at a similar hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
"I personally see no socially redeeming value in anyone having the right to give away and sell my personal information unless I approve it," the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Joe Barton, said yesterday. "Under current law these companies have a legal right to package it and do almost anything they want to do with it," Mr. Barton, Republican of Texas, said. "I just think that's fundamentally wrong. And in the Internet age, it's dangerous."
Some lawmakers expressed similar sentiments.
"We need to think proactively and treat these data troves with the same level of care and protection that we would any other valuables," a Senate Democrat, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, wrote in an e-mail statement. On behalf of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Leahy is scheduled to testify before the Senate banking committee hearing this afternoon. "Our peace of mind, our economy and even our nation's security depend on it," he wrote. The Judiciary Committee also plans to conduct hearings on the issue soon.
The industry is currently governed by a hodgepodge of state and federal laws. Critics have argued that because those laws are ill-defined and often at odds, companies like ChoicePoint and LexisNexis are permitted to police themselves as they market consumer data to insurance agencies, background screeners, private detectives, law firms and even the federal government.
Some control is provided by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which governs the use of personal information maintained by financial institutions. And the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970, along with its 2003 amended version, the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, established rules for accessing and disseminating consumer reports.
But it has been a matter of debate over how those rules apply to vast information warehouses like ChoicePoint and LexisNexis, which offer a blend of both public and private information, only some of which is of interest to identity thieves.
The information services industry has lobbied hard in the past to stall legislation that would limit the kinds of information that can be peddled and to whom. But the succession of large-scale breaches, and the sheer number of consumers being affected by each new incident, could make it harder for the industry to resist some sort of legislative yoke.
"This is going to be hotly fought by people who are gathering and packaging this information," Mr. Barton said. "But I don't see why you have to have Social Security numbers available that are really extraneous to the product at hand."
Several new bills have been introduced in Congress to address concerns about consumer privacy, including three submitted in January by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, a Democrat. Mr. Barton has said that he and colleagues from both parties have been discussing possible legislative approaches.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who chastised another data compiler, WestLaw, in February for making sensitive information like Social Security numbers easily available, said he planned to introduce a bill next week.
"If we do nothing, identity theft is going to go through the roof," Mr. Schumer said yesterday. "It really means we should get on the stick and do something here. We're in the Wild West where companies can do anything they want."
LexisNexis and its parent company in London, the publishing and information services giant Reed Elsevier, said the recent breach involved databases acquired last July through the $775 million purchase of Seisint, a compiler in Florida of consumer background and asset information.
Seisint has two main products: Accurint, a service for locating people and determining their assets, and Securint, a background screening service. LexisNexis has been in the process of folding those Seisint databases into its fleet of legal, news and consumer data archives.
Exactly how access was gained to the Seisint databases remains murky, but LexisNexis, which said the breach was discovered as part of "an ongoing extensive review of the verification, authorization and security procedures and policies," said that the breach appeared to have occurred well after the Seisint acquisition. The company also said it has been asked by law enforcement officials investigating the matter not to reveal too many details of the crime.
Kurt Sanford, the chief executive for corporate and federal markets at LexisNexis, which is based in Dayton, Ohio, emphasized that the company's own computer systems did not appear to have been broken into by hackers.
Instead, Mr. Sanford said, it appears that thieves were able to secure the login names and passwords used by what he described as a handful of legitimate subscribers to the Seisint databases.
Mr. Sanford would not comment on whether the passwords were somehow stolen by hackers breaking into those customers' computers or were compromised by less technical means. But once logged in, the thieves were able to sift through a trove of consumer data without being detected until the legitimate subscribers were billed for their monthly activity.
In early February, Mr. Sanford said, those customers notified LexisNexis of the activities on their bills. The company took about two weeks to investigate the billing questions, Mr. Sanford said, and then notified law enforcement officials when it became clear that a break-in was involved. Reed Elsevier disclosed the breach in a public announcement yesterday morning in London.
The timing is of particular interest in the wake of the breach at ChoicePoint, which has been criticized for delaying notification of the 145,000 affected consumers for more than five months.
In that case, the company learned that it had been fooled by thieves posing as legitimate subscribers to its service in late September of last year. Law enforcement officials were notified, who said they asked the company to delay a public announcement. ChoicePoint did not publicly disclose the breach until mid-February.
LexisNexis said it planned to begin sending letters to the 30,000 consumers in the next few days, similar to the notification process that ChoicePoint recently completed.
More than one-third of the people whose data was compromised in the LexisNexis case appear to reside in California, according to a breakdown provided by the company. Massachusetts, New York, Florida and Texas were also heavily hit.
All 30,000 consumers will be offered free credit monitoring for one year, Mr. Sanford said. ChoicePoint made a similar gesture in notification letters that it mailed in the wake of the security breach there.
But privacy advocates argue that such gestures are not commensurate with the damage such security breaches can cause.
"Thieves will just put this stuff on the shelf until the heat is off," said Beth Givens, the director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a consumer advocacy group in San Diego.
"They know that there is increased scrutiny of these individuals at this time, and if they read the newspapers, they know that ChoicePoint and Lexis have purchased credit monitoring for one year," Ms. Givens said. "They need to tell these individuals that they need to be monitoring their credit for the rest of their lives."
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 07:02 AM | Comments (0)
March 08, 2005
Banks Branch Out Into Schools
Part of the problem with the commercialization of education is the message it sends to children: that education isn't really that important. It's shopping that matters. Put down your books, kids, and get out your checkbooks.
This message comes through clearly in a Wall Street Journal article today on how banks and credit unions are setting up branches in schools.
It's time to kick all the banks and credit unions out of schools, and re-dedicate schools to teaching our children to read, write, add and reason.
Here's today's Wall Street Journal article.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111024344838272986,00.html
Personal Finance: Banks Are Heading Back to School; Credit Unions, Big Players Are Establishing Branches For Students of All Ages
by Jennifer Saranow
In an effort to reach young savers and spenders, a growing number of banks and credit unions are opening branches in high schools -- some even in middle and elementary schools.
The ventures range from simple setups such as tables once a week in cafeterias to small-scale offices complete with tellers -- some of them students -- and neon bank signs. Many of the branches offer savings and checking accounts along with debit cards.
Most of the in-school branches are from credit unions and community banks that are looking to stay competitive by attracting more local customers. There are about 150 credit-union branches in high schools now, up from 100 in the fall of 2003, according to the Credit Union National Association. But some big banks are going back to school, too. This year, SunTrust Banks Inc. of Atlanta opened branches at an area high school and middle school, bringing its total number of "youth banks" to nine. Four of those banks are at elementary schools and the bank plans to open another one at a high school this fall.
Wells Fargo & Co. has operated a branch at East High School in Anchorage, Alaska, since 2000 and is in discussions on opening a branch at a Denver high school.
The move into schools marks financial institutions' recent push to build branch networks, which has accelerated over the past five years. Banks had previously closed offices in the belief that customers would do their banking at
ATMs and online, which involve little infrastructure costs. Customers, however, were reluctant to give up the branch experience.
"This is just one tactic financial institutions are using to generate more accounts," says Chris Gill, a senior consultant with Dove Consulting, a Boston financial-services consulting firm.
The branches are a sign that banks are recognizing children's spending power. Teenage Research Unlimited, a Northbrook, Ill., market-research firm, estimates that teens spent $169 billion in 2004, up 38% since 1997. According to a recent
Teenage Research survey, about 62% of individuals ages 12 to 19 years old, have a savings account, but only 22% have a checking account and 17% have a debit card.
Some branches are part of educational or community-development efforts on the part of the financial institutions, which are looking to develop financial literacy in kids or in some instance -- such as in poor or immigrant neighborhoods -- their parents. In Chicago, Park Federal Savings Bank is working
with the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, a Chicago nonprofit organization, to open next month a branch at Curie Metropolitan High School on the city's South Side, an area with a large Hispanic and African-American population. In Denver, the nonprofit MicroBusiness Development Corp. is in talks with both Wells Fargo and Colorado's Heritage Bank to build a student-run branch at Manual High School, in one of the city's poorest immigrant areas.
Parent and consumer groups, however, worry about such incursions. Financial literacy doesn't need to be tied to actual banks, says Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, a Portland nonprofit that aims to curb commercialization. "This is just another step of turning schools into shopping malls," he says.
The institutions hope that by introducing themselves to school-age children, they will gain loyal customers at an early age. Robert Allen, president and chief executive of Teachers Federal Credit Union, says students who "open accounts with us are more likely to continue with us when they come out of high school." The credit union has seven branches at Suffolk County, N.Y., high schools, including two opened this year.
Generally, the agreements between financial institutions and schools involve the school providing space in exchange for the bank paying for setting up the branch. In addition to hiring and paying the school's students, Park Federal is investing more than $50,000 to construct the branch and train the student bankers. In some instances, banks pay a small amount of rent. Park Federal will pay $1 a year in rent for the school's space since the Curie school branch isn't expected to be immediately profitable but rather to build deposits and profitability over time.
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 07:03 AM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2005
[Your Name Here] University
Philip G. Altbach has a fine op-ed in tomorrow's Christian Science Monitor about the sale of naming rights at colleges and universities. The trend towards sale of naming rights, Altbach writes, will "inevitably weaken the concept of the university as an institution that is devoted to the search for truth and the transmission of knowledge, of an institution with almost a millennium of history."
Kudos (again) to the Christian Science Monitor for printing so many thoughtful pieces on the effects of commercialism on our culture, government and educational system.
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 08:45 PM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2005
Net Loss
The Newark Star-Ledger is reporting today that former NASCAR executive Brett Yormark has persuaded the New Jersey Nets basketball team to sell a "presenting sponsorship" to Jackson Hewitt, the tax preparation company.
Incredibly, they want the Nets to be known as "the New Jersey Nets presented by Jackson Hewitt." This is part of Yormark's effort to "NASCAR-ize the Nets."
We urge fans to keep using the name "the Nets," and to get their taxes prepared somewhere other than Jackson Hewitt.
Here's today's Newark Star-Ledger article:
http://www.nj.com/business/ledger/index.ssf?/base/business-9/1109833031311460.xml
Industry Insider: Nets score groundbreaking Jackson Hewitt sponsorship
Brett Yormark promised to breathe life into the Nets' sagging sponsorship business, and after seven weeks as the team's chief executive, he is beginning to deliver.
The former NASCAR executive has yet to persuade the NBA to allow him to stitch corporate patches on his team's uniforms, but suddenly the Nets are "the New Jersey Nets presented by Jackson Hewitt."
That makes the franchise the first big-league sports team in the metropolitan area to sell what is known as a "presenting sponsorship." Such a deal is the highest level of team sponsorship in the sports industry, because the company name is so closely associated with the team name.
"I want to brand my coaches, my training staff, everything," Yormark said, only half-joking, on Tuesday. "It's been a great first 35 days. There is a new culture, and we're instilling a whole new attitude here."
Part of that attitude is Yormark's philosophy to sell the Nets brand morning, noon and night. During his first week on the job, he called Mike Lister, chief executive at Jackson Hewitt, the Parsippany- based tax services firm, and asked him to try something no other NBA team has right now -- a sponsorship that puts a corporate name right below the team name nearly everywhere, including the emblem.
Yormark had previously persuaded Lister to become the official tax services company for NASCAR. The Nets deal includes signs in the arena and gets the Nets radio and arena announcers to introduce the team "presented by Jackson Hewitt" several times each game.
"It won't be every time they announce the score, but I modeled this on the Nextel deal with NASCAR," Yormark said. "Everywhere the Nets go, Jackson Hewitt goes, too."
That may sound like crass commercialism to sports traditionalists, but David Carter, who teaches sports business at the University of Southern California, said most fans "long ago accepted a massive corporate presence in sports."
"Any potential revenue source is going to be tapped going forward," he said.
Lister, whose company is already running Nets ticket promotions, said Yormark's plan to "NASCAR-ize the Nets" impressed him.
"You're going to see a lot from this organization in terms of bringing the team to the fans," he said.
Yormark said he is considering getting a computer company to sponsor press row, and a camera company to sponsor the area where kids take pictures of the players as they warm up.
"I tell my people here that as long as it relevant and it's authentic, we are going to do it," he said.
WNBA in New Jersey?
Devils owner Jeff Vanderbeek acknowledged this week he has discussed bringing a WNBA team to the arena he plans to build in Newark.
Vanderbeek cautioned the discussions were only preliminary, but a WNBA team would play 20 home games during the summer, when his hockey team is idle -- assuming the NHL lockout gets settled eventually.
"The arena business is all about filling dates, and we are going to look at all possibilities" Vanderbeek said.
For the WNBA, a New Jersey franchise would help establish a local rivalry for the Liberty, who play at Madison Square Garden.
In several markets, including New York, owners of the local NBA franchise also own the WNBA team and share an arena. But Bruce Ratner is planning to move his Nets from the Continental Airlines Arena to an arena in Brooklyn, and it's unclear whether a second WNBA franchise could succeed in New York City.
"David Stern is a smart commissioner, and he's interested in any new arena that's going up in this region," Vanderbeek said.
And finally ... New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority chairman Carl Gold berg said state budget matters and NFL meetings have prevented the Giants and state officials from meeting again to negotiate a deal for a new Giants Stadium. The two sides are expected to sit down in the coming days.
-- Matthew Futterman
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)
March 01, 2005
Bush and Kids: Standing Small
Jonathan Rowe and I wrote an article for Alternet today comparing the Bush Administration's feeble response to the childhood obesity epidemic with the stronger response in Europe.
Want Congress to crack down on junk food marketing to kids? Send emails to your Members of Congress in support of the Parent's Bill of Rights. Click here: http://actionstudio.org/?go=1201.
Here's the article we wrote for Alternet.
http://www.alternet.org/story/21369/
Bush and Kids: Standing Small
by Jonathan Rowe and Gary Ruskin
President Bush may be asserting friendship with "Old Europe," as Donald Rumsfeld, his defense secretary, famously called it. But it is no secret that the Bush administration holds that part of the world in less than high regard. Time magazine reported that the Bush people frequently call their European allies "Euro-wimps."
Well, guess what? When it comes to standing up for kids, those "Euro-wimps" have shown a lot of guts of late. The Bush people, to put it politely, haven't.
For those who have been out of the cultural loop, the U.S. marketing industry has launched an all-out war on kids. It is saturating their lives with come-ons for junk food, junk-entertainment, junk anything. Not coincidentally kids have become hosts to an epidemic of marketing-related diseases: obesity, type-II diabetes, a general inability to focus their own attention.
On top of that, there is chronic strife and tension in American homes as kids whine and nag for things they've been seduced to want. Market research companies actually teach corporations how to tap this "nag factor."
Parents do their best to cope. Many have gotten rid of their TVs. But the commercial seductions are everywhere now, even in the schools. The dominant institution in our society – the corporation – has injected itself into the relationship between parents and their own kids in a major way. Parents can't fight this battle by themselves. They need some help.
One would think that the Bush administration, with its family values and macho swagger, would be eager for the challenge. Instead it has cut and run. Tommy Thompson, the former secretary of health and human services, actually stood before the Grocery Manufacturers Association – the main lobby for the junk food industry – and urged them to "go on the offensive" against critics. By that he means people who think parents, and not corporations, should guide the eating habits of children.
As for President Bush, he has said and done very little on the issue. The administration has talked about exercise, which is fine as far as it goes. But the thought of whipping kids through calisthenics, just to burn off the extra calories that the junk food purveyors are pushing at them, is grotesque to say the least. Are kids today really just consumption machines at the service of Coke et al.?
For a long time, Europeans thought that childhood obesity was an American problem. But as marketing has gone global, so too have the pathologies connected with it. According to the International Obesity Task Force, childhood obesity has "increased steadily" in Europe during the last two to three decades. Close to one in five school-age children in the European Union are overweight.
Unlike the Bush administration, however, the Europeans aren't cowering from the task. On Jan. 1, 2005 Ireland banned television advertising for fast food and candy. John Reid, the U.K. health secretary, has said he will call for a ban or restrictions on junk food marketing to children if the marketers don't show some self-control. And Markos Kyprianou, the European Health Commissioner, has drawn the line in the sand. "I would like to see the [food] industry not advertising directly to children any more," he told the Financial Times last month.
The food industry must take responsibility for its own behavior, Kyprianou said. But "if this doesn't produce satisfactory results, we will proceed to legislation." He gave the industry a deadline of one year.
Kyprianou and his colleagues have faced plenty of industry pressure, just as public officials do here. The difference is they are standing up to it.
Political courage is seen in the willingness to be tough with your friends. For Democrats, that means primarily organized labor. For Republicans, it means big business; and the commercial assault on children is a case in point. The junk food industry has been among the administration's biggest supporters. Among those who bundled $200,000 contributions to the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign were high executives or lobbyists for Coca-Cola, Safeway, Florida Crystals (a big sugar company) and Altria, which is majority owner of Kraft Foods.
Those who bundled $100,000 included executives or lobbyists from U.S. Sugar Corp., Nestle USA, Coca-Cola Enterprises and Yum Brands, which owns Taco Bell and KFC.
In his State of the Union address, President Bush told Congress, "Over the next several months, on issue after issue, let us do what Americans have always done, and build a better world for our children and our grandchildren." If the president really means what he says, he might start by expelling junk food from the nation's public schools, and instructing his Federal Trade Commission to tell the junk food marketers to butt out of the relationship between parents and their kids.
We'll see whether the president walks his talk, or whether he just keeps caving to the big shots in the junk food industry.
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 09:16 AM | Comments (1)
