“While nearly all would agree that schools need more “support,” “private sector involvement” in the schools these days largely means corporate marketing to captive students, or using schools as public relations props and backdrops.”

“If businesses really want to help “reform” local high schools, they can pay their taxes, stop negotiating special tax breaks, and give back their corporate welfare.”

More information about today’s hearing is available at: http://edworkforce.house.gov/mediaadvisory.htm

Commercial Alert is a 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.

Our Members of Congress should do much more than just require the FTC to study food marketing to children. For example, they should ban the marketing of junk food in public schools, and eliminate all federal tax subsidies for marketing to children under 12 years of age.

Nevertheless, the Harkin amendment is a step forward in reducing the incidence of childhood obesity in the United States. Kudos to Senator Harkin for winning the amendment.

Stanley C. Garnett, director of USDA’s Child Nutrition Division, wrote to Commercial Alert that “At this time, we do not intend to undertake the activities or measures you recommended in your petition.”

“It is outrageous that the USDA is refusing to enforce its own rules against selling junk food in public schools,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert. “They have turned their back on American children, who are suffering from an epidemic of obesity.”

“Last week, the Bush administration caved in to tobacco industry, and this week they caved in to junk food industry,” Ruskin said. “For the Bush administration, big corporations come first, and our children’s health comes last.”

The USDA denied Commercial Alert’s petition for rule-making, despite overwhelming public support for restricting the sale of junk food to schoolchildren. A Wall Street Journal poll in February, 2005, found that 83% of American adults believe “public schools need to do a better job of limiting children's access to unhealthy foods like snack foods, sugary soft drinks and fast food.”

In March, the USDA admitted in a report that it does not know whether schools are complying with prohibitions against the sale of foods of minimal nutritional value during school mealtimes. The report stated, “it is unclear to what extent federal and state regulations [against the sale of foods of minimum nutritional value] are enforced at the local level”.

Foods of minimal nutritional value are defined as soda pop, water ices, chewing gum, and certain types of candies, such as hard candies, jellied candies, licorice and marshmallows.

Executives and lobbyists from companies that produce junk food for schoolchildren generously contributed to the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign. Rangers, who bundled at least $200,000 to the Bush/Cheney ’04 campaign, include:
• Jose P. “Pepe” Fanjul, vice chairman, president, and COO, Florida Crystals Corp., a top U.S. sugar producer;
• Richard F. Hohlt, Hohlt & Co., lobbyist for Altria, which owns about 85% of Kraft Foods;
• Robert Leebern Jr., president, federal affairs, Troutman Sanders, lobbyist for Coca-Cola; and,
• Barclay T. Resler, vice president for government and public affairs, Coca-Cola.

Pioneers, who bundled at least $100,000 to the Bush/Cheney ’04 campaign, include:
• Kirk Blalock, Fierce Isakowitz & Blalock, lobbyist for Coca-Cola Enterprises
• Marc Lampkin, Quinn Gillespie, lobbyist for Coca-Cola
• Joe M. Weller, chairman and CEO, Nestle USA

Junk food producers also gave large contributions to President Bush’s inauguration this year. Altria Corporate Services (majority owner of Kraft Foods) gave $250,000, while Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola gave $100,000 each.

In his State of the Union address, on February 2nd, 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."

“President Bush says he wants to help children, but his resolve has been pretty flabby where the junk food lobby is concerned.” Ruskin said. “This administration just hasn’t shown the gumption to stand up to these people. It talks Main Street but walks K Street,”

The refusal to enforce the competitive food rule is just the latest in a long series of favors for the junk food industry. For example, the Administration has opposed restrictions on junk food marketing to children. It worked hard to weaken the World Health Organization’s global anti-obesity strategy, and went so far as to question the scientific basis for “the linking of fruit and vegetable consumption to decreased risk of obesity and diabetes.”

Former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson even told members of the Grocery Manufacturers Association to “‘go on the offensive’ against critics blaming the food industry for obesity,” according to a November 12, 2002 GMA news release.

In January, Lynn Swann, chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, was paid to appear at a public relations event for the National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA), a vending machine trade group.

Commercial Alert’s petition to USDA is available at: http://www.commercialalert.org/fmnvpetition.pdf.

The USDA’s response to Commercial Alert’s petition is at: http://www.commercialalert.org/usdaresponse.pdf.

"Reach a hard to get target group where they spend all their parents' money," says a McGraw-Hill brochure touting its planned ads. "Do you really think 18-24 year olds see those on-campus magazine ads? Do you really think they could miss an ad that is placed in a very well-respected textbook?"

Want to keep textbooks commercial-free? Send McGraw-Hill an email from their contact page.

Publisher pushes textbook ads; McGraw-Hill targets students; Critics warn plan could backfire
by Rick Westhead

The first thing Tamy Zubyk sees when she wakes up and peels the curtains back in her Ryerson University dormitory room is the sea of flashing, dazzling billboards that pepper Toronto's downtown skyline.

From then on, the 21-year-old says she spends the rest of her day being targeted by ads in subways, on storefronts — even in the women's washrooms at Ryerson, which feature ads alongside hand dryers and on the inside of the toilet stall doors. The classroom is one of the few advertising-free zones for Zubyk and Canada's other 785,000 university and college students.

Perhaps not for long.

For the past several months, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., one of the country's largest publishers of university textbooks, has been quietly trying to coax companies into buying advertising space in their texts.

"Reach a hard to get target group where they spend all their parents' money," says a McGraw-Hill brochure touting its planned ads. "Do you really think 18-24 year olds see those on-campus magazine ads? Do you really think they could miss an ad that is placed in a very well-respected textbook?"

The Whitby-based publisher, which has made presentations about its prospective textbook ads to more than a dozen advertising agencies, says in its brochure that ads can be purchased nationally or regionally, and "can be so targeted, you can even buy a specific major.

"We've never offered this before and we'll only offer it to the right organizations," McGraw-Hill's brochure says. The company plans initially to charge as much as $1.40 per book, and the ads would be inserts, instead of being placed permanently alongside text.

Several media planners whose companies weren't involved in the ad push said McGraw-Hill's efforts are likely to backfire.

"Textbooks are one of the last bastions," said Randy Stein, a partner at Grip Media Ltd., a Toronto ad agency. "There are some things that should remain pure and sacred. What's next, university professors with logos on their blazers like NASCAR?"

McGraw-Hill business development specialist Diana MacDonald said in brief interview that university students are already targets of ads.

So-called "frosh packs" aimed at first-year students include dozens of company brochures, she said, adding that banks often try to pitch prospective account holders by paying for exclusive rights to place automated teller machines on a school's campus.

In a subsequent statement to the Toronto Star, MacDonald wrote that the publisher's textbook ads have two purposes: to bring "beneficial corporate and social awareness campaigns to the attention of students" and to "generate revenue to support programs which help professors and teachers cope with the rapid changes in their environment."

MacDonald said marketing wouldn't affect the price of the textbooks and that "all of the funds we receive from the direct to student marketing program will be directed to support the (Institute for the Advancement of Teaching in Higher Education) and conferences that are organized" by the publisher.
"Advertisers are carefully chosen to ensure their products and offerings provide value to students and maintain an ethical presence," she wrote.

"Social issues are also promoted through the same means to provide awareness in areas such as drinking and driving, federal government initiatives to encourage students to vote, and health departments' promotion of immunization programs such as meningitis."

The publisher is pitching to advertisers at the same time as it is trying to weather a recent sales decline.

With corporate roots dating back to 1829 when the Methodist Church established Canada's first publishing company, McGraw-Hill Ryerson last year sold about 1 million textbooks and reported revenue of $88 million, a 7 per cent slip from the $95 million the company generated in 2002.
McGraw-Hill is a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill Cos., a U.S. publisher that also owns credit-rating company Standard & Poor's Corp. and Business Week magazine.

The publisher's higher education division reported a 2 per cent sales increase in 2004, printing textbooks on topics such as English, psychology, business and engineering.

Several ad agency executives said the ads would probably face a backlash similar to when soft-drink companies placed vending machines inside schools.

"This is just a minefield," said David Gibb, general manager of ad agency J.Walter Thompson. "The reaction would be horrible. It'd be a disaster."

Rebecca Rose, president of the Ryerson Students' Union, said McGraw-Hill's portrayal of students "as mooching off their parents" in the brochure was inappropriate and insulting.

Heather Campbell, a 24-year-old sociology student at the University of Toronto, agreed, adding "this is supposed to be a place of learning ... textbooks should be free of corporate influence."
McGraw-Hill isn't the first company that has coveted school-aged consumers and their parents.
Procter & Gamble is trying to lure Grade 5 American students by presenting a number of schools with a package of reading materials, a video and product samples that include an Old Spice deodorant stick for boys and a Secret stick, plus Always maxi-pads, for girls.

Students like Ryerson's Zubyk, who's admittedly influenced by ads — "I see a McDonald's ad, I crave McDonald's" — said McGraw-Hill's plans are a disturbing sign of the times.
"We're faced with it all day. I think it's just getting to be too much."

Maybe this is part of the new corporate takeover of public television. Merrill Lynch employees were big donors to the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign.

As a part of the Sesame Workshop plan, "Merrill Lynch employees in North America, South America, Asia and Europe" will teach children in "pre-schools, community centers and child care agencies in their communities."

And what will they teach? To support tax cuts for the wealthy, social security privatization, lower taxes on savings & investment, etc.?

Merrill Funds Sesame St to Boost Money Know-How

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. investment bank Merrill Lynch is expanding its ties with "Sesame Street" to help boost children's financial literacy and improve their awareness of global cultures.
Building on a joint three-year program to boost financial know-how among children, Merrill Lynch on Thursday launched the WorldwideKids initiative with Sesame Workshop, the non-profit educational organization that produces the TV series "Sesame Street."

The Wall Street firm is giving $5 million to the five-year program to produce research materials to teach children good financial habits and expand their global perspective.

"The sooner you become familiar and comfortable with the concepts, the better able you are to be a responsible and successful citizen," Merrill Lynch's Chief Executive Stanley O'Neal told Reuters in an interview.

"The world is no longer a world of fixed interest rates or very slow moving interest rates, fully amortizing mortgages and easier choices in terms of retirement plans. It is much more complicated and much more personal."

O'Neal said Merrill Lynch joined forces with Sesame Workshop because no other group so effectively and memorably captured the minds of children, working with youngsters in about 120 countries since it was founded in 1968.

Sesame Workshop's chief executive, Gary Knell, said WorldwideKids would give educators, caregivers and parents access to information on DVDs, the Internet, and printed resources to boost youngster's understanding of money.

These materials will be distributed through partnerships with local community-based organizations and companies.

"We are building a foundation for financial literacy. Learning that you can't always get what you want is an important lesson in life," said Knell late Wednesday as the program was announced at a gala evening in New York.

The "curriculum" is full of enlightening "lessons," such as "I used to be really worried about sweating a lot, but since I started using an antiperspirant every morning, I'm dry all day.''

Sex Ed, Provided By Old Spice
by Marek Fuchs

In the spring, county schools generally start preparing fifth graders for the transition to adulthood. In many districts, there are middle-school orientation visits, and there is also a preliminary birds-and-bees talk.

Many of us may have squeamish memories of our schools' efforts at enlightening us about our soon-to-dawn sexuality. I remember being part of a crowd herded into the auditorium at the H.C. Crittenden in Armonk to watch a grainy film. I was seated next to a girl I had a wild crush on, and as the earnest narrator touched upon the subject of sweat glands, I nearly spontaneously combusted with embarrassment.

Embarrassment is part of the experience, perhaps inevitably; but in many Westchester schools -- indeed, at 85 percent of the fifth-grade classrooms in the nation -- Procter & Gamble is, too. At least, that's the figure according to Michelle Vaeth, a spokeswoman, who verified that the company provides an education package with reading material, a video and product samples: an Old Spice stick for the boys, and a Secret stick plus Always pads for the girls.

The title of the package is ''Always Changing: About You,'' and the subtitle is ''Puberty and Stuff.''

Here's a sample of the content, from Page 13 of the pamphlet: ''I used to be really worried about sweating a lot, but since I started using an antiperspirant every morning, I'm dry all day.''

How best to advise fifth graders on sweating is debatable. But when the adviser is a consumer-product behemoth trading educational material for access to a captive audience, well, that occasions second thoughts.

''It's just wrong to use compulsory-attendance laws to compel students to review ads,'' said Gary Ruskin, the executive director of Commercial Alert, a watchdog group based in Portland, Ore. ''A school's mission is to teach children to read, write, add and think. Not to shop.''

The first real outcry against what many parents perceived as a commercial incursion into the classroom came 15 years ago when Channel One, the Chris Whittle creation, installed televisions in schools to deliver news in exchange for advertisements. Supporters said the commercials were merely bankrolling the content and asserted that children were hardly naifs living in a commercial vacuum. But many others were using terms like ''devil's bargain.''

Over the years, the deals have kept coming, with progressively less fuss: advertisements on gymnasium scoreboards and wrapping paper for textbooks; pacts to vend a particular brand of soda; even signage on the roofs of schools near airports, said William Chipps of the International Events Group Sponsorship Report, a trade publication that addresses sponsorship issues.

''It's just happening more and more in schools, given the budget shortfalls,'' Mr. Chipps said.

But even parents who have witnessed this trend disapprovingly probably hadn't anticipated Procter & Gamble's pushing product samples while holding forth to fifth graders on sweat glands.

Most of the ''lesson plan'' is pretty tame. Aside from the product handouts, there's not much you wouldn't see elsewhere. That is all the more reason, Mr. Ruskin argued, to eliminate Procter & Gamble's involvement. ''There's nothing in the P&G material that couldn't be done without the commercial content,'' he said.

The company says it is merely trying to help itself while also helping the community. It has never pushed the program into schools, Ms. Vaeth added; it has merely accommodated the many schools that have signed up. And with limited resources and teachers who already juggle course material on different subjects, she said, a ready-made package comes in handy.

Kelly Adams, who teaches middle schoolers health and physical education in Briarcliff, says she doesn't see the harm in having a corporate source; students are so used to being bombarded by ads and fads that they will not become lifelong Old Spice users just because they are given a free stick.

But Mr. Ruskin says that's not the point. ''At school, children are taught to obey,'' he said. ''So anytime the authority of the school is harnessed, it can be very influential.'' In this case, he sees the corporate sponsor as too easily preying on children's insecurities -- whether about menstruation or perspiration -- for financial gain.

''There is a special vulnerability in discussions about uncomfortable subjects at times -- like fifth grade -- when students are so impressionable,'' is how he put it. ''That's the principal reason why corporations love corporate indentured education.''

Adelstein said “In fall 2003, a group called Commercial Alert asked us to take a number of different actions regarding product placement, and its filing, and the recent press reports I mentioned, clearly indicate that the time has come for us to step up our enforcement in this area.”

“We are greatly encouraged by Commissioner Adelstein’s defense of viewers’ right to know by whom they are being persuaded,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert.

Take action now: tell the FCC to require disclosure of covert commercial pitches on TV. Click here:
http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/commercialalert/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=775

Commercial Alert’s petition for rule-making to establish adequate disclosure of product placement on television is at http://www.commercialalert.org/fcc.pdf.

“Saying that sugar has nothing to do with diabetes is like saying that tobacco has nothing to do with emphysema,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert. “The American Diabetes Association has been so corrupted that they have sunk to the mentality of ‘tobacco scientists’ who denied the link between tobacco and lung cancer.”

Incredibly, when Kahn was asked whether sugary drinks have anything to do with diabetes, he responded “No one has a clue of whether they do or don’t.”

There is ample evidence linking diets high in sugar, and sugary drinks, with obesity. For example, a study in the Lancet, titled "Relation Between Consumption of Sugar-Sweetened Drinks and Childhood Obesity: a Prospective, Observational Analysis" found that the likelihood of obesity in children “increased 1.6 times for each additional can of sugar-sweetened drink that they consumed every day.”

As if that's not bad enough, they are also planning tunnel ads, TV screens with commercials on some trains, and are contemplating selling naming rights to Metro stations.

Tell the Metro's board of directors to keep the ad creep out of the Metro. Click here:
http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/commercialalert/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=694

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/09/AR2005050901101_pf.html

Cash-Strapped Metro Rolls Out Ad-Wrapped Trains; Some Decry 'Visual Spam,' Others Welcome Revenue
by David Cho

Like giant green billboards rolling down train tracks, Metro's first rail cars wrapped completely in an advertisement debuted on the Orange Line yesterday in an effort the transit agency hopes will bring much-needed revenue.

The "McDonald's train" -- a great, big ad for the fast-food restaurant chain's new fruit salad -- is only the beginning of a major advertising push by the cash-strapped and rapidly aging transportation system. For the 29 years since Metrorail began operating, its trains have never ventured past the predictable silver and brown shells. Now, Metro officials say, the only limit to their exterior design is a marketer's imagination.

The new look started yesterday in New Carrollton with a spinach green and radish red background to McDonald's bright golden arches on the sliding doors. The ad campaign is scheduled to last three months, but Metro officials are hoping other deep-pocketed corporations will follow.

Coming soon will be television screens inside trains and buses that will broadcast news, sports scores and, of course, commercials. Tunnel ads -- a series of panel drawings that will appear to move like so many flip cards as the train passes -- could be in place as early as the fall. ATMs and banner ads will debut in stations soon.

Owners of local McDonald's restaurants paid $54,000 to put the ad and the chain's motto, "I'm Lovin' It," on the trains. Appearing beneath the windows are the phrases "New Fruit & Walnut Salad" and "get a fruit buzz."

Metro generates about $29 million annually through advertising on buses and trains. But with a budget of more than $1 billion, transit officials are hoping for more.

To some riders, the ad was an ironic reminder of a Metro rule that is vigorously enforced: It is illegal to eat on the train.

"They are taunting you," said Kevin Fry, president of the District-based anti-commercialization group Scenic America. "Not only can you not eat your McDonald's fruit salad on the Metro system, but now you can't even enjoy the system itself."

Fry called the new ads "visual spam on wheels."

"It really is sad to see one of the most beautiful transportation systems wrap its trains in garish advertising," said Fry, who added that he has been using Metrorail since it began in 1976.

But Kevin Moore, who heads a passenger advocacy group called MetroRiders.org, countered that "it's absolutely appropriate that Metro explores and takes advantage of other sources of revenue."

"When Metro does something like this and they are bringing in more money, then I have no problem with it," Moore added, "as long as it keeps reliability up and fares down."

Metro Board Chairman T. Dana Kauffman said he isn't crazy about turning Metro trains into something akin to an ad-laden NASCAR racecar. But budget shortfalls are prompting Metro to find nontraditional ways to raise revenue.

The money from the McDonald's ad will cover part of the cost to upgrade the monitors that tell passengers waiting on station platforms when the trains will arrive. Sensors will be added so that the operations center is alerted when those monitors break down.

Other advertising revenue will be used to improve service, clean trains and replace old equipment.

Metro raised fares in each of the past two years, with the last increase making up a $23.4 million budget shortfall. This year, local jurisdictions have been asked to cover an 8 percent increase in the agency's proposed budget, which topped $1 billion for the first time, Metro officials said.

Buses will not be spared from the billboard material. Most already have a panel ad on the side. And last year, buses wrapped in advertising began with an ad for the German Embassy.

"We are at a time now we have our limitations on our funding, and we are looking at creative ways to bring in revenue into the system," said Leona Agouridis, Metro's assistant general manager for communications.

Besides, she added, several passengers riding on the new McDonald's train told her yesterday morning that seeing a giant fruit salad ad on the Orange Line "was really cool."

USDA rules currently prohibit the sale of “foods of minimal nutritional value” during mealtimes in school cafeterias. But the enforcement provisions for these rules are extremely lax, so some schools may not take them seriously.

“We’re asking the USDA to side with parents who want their kids to grow up healthy, not with the junk food companies that want to stuff our children with sugar and caffeine,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert. “The USDA should strengthen existing rules against the sale of junk food in school – before the childhood obesity epidemic gets any worse.”

Foods of minimal nutritional value are defined as soda pop, water ices, chewing gum, and certain types of candies, such as hard candies, jellied candies, licorice and marshmallows.

According to a Wall Street Journal poll in February, 2005, 83% of American adults “believe public schools need to do a better job of limiting children's access to unhealthy foods like snack foods, sugary soft drinks and fast food.”

“Maybe the American Diabetes Association should rename itself the American Junk Food Association,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert. “What will it do for an encore? Start selling candy bars for M&M/Mars?”

“The American Diabetes Association should return this corrupt contribution to Cadbury Schweppes immediately,” Ruskin said.

More information about the American Diabetes Association-Cadbury Schweppes “alliance” is available at: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050421/dcth002.html?.v=7

The bill is called the "Prevention of Childhood Obesity Act" (S. 799), and it has several excellent provisions.

Most importantly, in schools that receive federal funds, the bill would ban vending machines that sell "foods of poor or minimal nutritional value," including soda pop, some candy, chewing gum, etc. It would provide grants to schools that prohibit advertising and marketing of "foods of poor or minimal nutritional values such as fast foods, soft drinks and candy," or provide food options low in fat, calories and added sugars, such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains. It would require daily physical activity classes, and would encourage the consumption of water in school and in communities.

Click here to send emails to your senators in support of the bill.

Modern advertising relentlessly attacks girls' body image, leading to low self-esteem and depression.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-1573008_1,00.html

Teen magazines blamed for rise in girls’ suicide
by Mark Macaskill

Depression and low self-esteem are fuelling a dramatic rise in suicides among teenage girls in Scotland, a government-funded study has revealed.

The suicide rate among young women aged 15-24 has risen more rapidly than in any other group.

The alarming trend is exposed in a study by academics at Glasgow University, which shows that the number of suicides has risen to nearly two a week — a rise of almost 50% over the past 20 years.

Leading academics and children’s campaigners are calling for urgent government action to tackle the problem, which they believe is fuelled by pressure on young women to conform to images of female perfection in teenage magazines.

A recent survey of 2,000 teenage girls in Britain found that 70% dislike their faces and only 8% are happy with their body. Two-thirds think their lives would improve dramatically if they lost weight. Most said they were made to feel bad about their bodies by images of “perfect” celebrities.

USA Today reported today on the The Rail Network, and its efforts to put put TV screens with ads on subway systems in Atlanta, Washington, Denver, Boston ane elsewhere.

State and local legislators should reject these mass transit TV's, and reserve public spaces like the bus and train for reading, quiet reflection, prayer, homework and the discharge of civic duties.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-04-07-subways-tv_x.htm

Subways tune in to new revenue
By Larry Copeland

ATLANTA — Subway riders here soon will be able to watch television and hear piped-in music in a first-of-its-kind venture designed to raise money for the city's cash-strapped transit agency.

A television plays on a MARTA train as Astride Justin from Norcross, Ga., tunes her radio to the first TV and radio network for rail riders.

The Rail Network, a private company based in New York, is installing five 15-inch, flat-screen televisions inside each of 100 rail cars and eventually will put them in all of the Atlanta system's 338 cars. Later this spring, trains will feature updated news programming in English or Spanish from Atlanta's ABC affiliate, as well as three music channels.

Passengers will have to bring their own headsets. Televisions will have closed captioning, and audio will be available only through FM radios and FM-ready cell phones.

The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) expects to generate $20 million over 10 years in advertising revenue from the deal. That's a small part of MARTA's $316 million operating budget and is unlikely to delay a proposed one-way fare increase from $1.75 to $2.

But for today's transit agencies, every little bit helps. David Lane, CEO of the Rail Network, says company officials have met with "every major transit system in North America" and received indications of interest from all of them.

He says the transit agencies in the Washington, D.C., area and in Vancouver, British Columbia, have requested proposals from companies to modify rail cars for the TVs.

Systems get on board

Most of the nation's transit agencies are facing deficits and struggling to get back in the black while holding fares as low as possible. Several are turning for help to televisions on the trains, tapping into a relatively captive audience. The concept is similar to elevators in office buildings that feature TV screens offering news updates and advertising. Among the cities looking at transit TVs:

•Washington, D.C. Metro, the capital region's public transit system, is planning a two-year pilot program with a private company that will install TV monitors on two six-car trains and 25 buses. "The video monitors would display news, weather, sports, transit authority information and ads," says Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel, who won't identify the firm. Taubenkibel says that over two or three years, the video monitors — along with new advertisements in subway tunnels and ATMs in stations — are expected to generate "a couple of million" dollars. The Metro budget for the current fiscal year is $943 million.

•Denver. The Regional Transportation District is studying Atlanta's experiment to see if it could work in Denver. In February, the district approved a pilot program to install 19-inch screens and speakers on some buses and light-rail cars. But the agency was unable to agree on a contract with the provider of television programming, assistant general manager Tony McCaulay says.

•Boston. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, facing a $10 million deficit next year, announced a plan last month to install television screens in subway cars on three lines within a year. The agency says the plan could generate $3.5 million a year in advertising revenue.

More transit systems are likely to follow suit, says Bill Millar, president and CEO of the American Public Transportation Association, which lobbies to improve public transit. "Pressures on governmental budgets have been building over the years, and transit systems have been seeking sources of revenue so they can keep their fares low while maintaining the tax revenues necessary to run them," he says.

While subway TV appears to be a new concept, Orlando pioneered TVs on buses several years ago, Ruskin says. The Orlando transit system, nicknamed Lynx, now has them on 162 of 238 buses, spokesman Brian Martin says. The audio is broadcast through the speaker systems of the buses, but he says few passengers have complained.

Using technology it invented, the Rail Network televisions will provide subway riders with news and advertising programming that is updated throughout the day. "The passengers will get content that is relevant to them," Lane says. "They're going to see what they would see at home while they're riding in that rail car."

But viewers at home increasingly have ways to avoid TV and radio advertising. Systems such as TiVo and older technology such as videocassette recorders allow people to fast-forward through ads to watch their favorite shows. Commercial-free satellite radio is increasingly popular.

Public opinion

Commuters on subways have no such options. Even if they don't have headsets, they will be exposed to the video — an idea that doesn't thrill every passenger. During public hearings on Washington's plan, "some people were concerned about the video monitors intruding upon the quiet of the buses and trains," Taubenkibel says.

Despite assurances from transit officials here and in Boston that their systems will be silent, television on the subway is "a bad idea for a lot of reasons," says Gary Ruskin, head of Commercial Alert, a group based in Oregon that opposes commercialism in government.

"First, people shouldn't be forced to watch ads," he says. "This is part of the advertising industry's trend toward coercive advertising. The ad industry is so unpopular, they think they have to force people to watch ads. Second, those (rail cars) are civic spaces that are used to discharge civic duties like read the newspaper and do homework."

Commuters in Atlanta — MARTA has about 225,000 rail riders a day and another 225,000 bus riders — are taking a wait-and-see approach.

"I think as long as there's news being presented and people can have access to educational content, it's probably a pretty good idea," says Marselle Harrison-Miles, 31, getting off a train at the Hamilton E. Holmes MARTA station in west Atlanta. She says she'll ride MARTA "a lot more now that gas is going up."

Marcus Snell, 35, a valet parking attendant at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, says he usually brings a compact disc or digital music player for his commute. "I'm into music," he says. "So it really won't affect me. If it'll help them raise money and keep fares low, I'm fine with anything that keeps money in my pocket."

“I’ve spent much of my adult life promoting a child-honoring society, in which love and respect for children takes precedence in our institutions, laws, and customs,” Raffi said. “Our children need us to work together to achieve this goal.”

“We must create a culture of deep compassion in which the well-being of our young guides public policy. I’m pleased to join with Commercial Alert to help protect children from commercial assaults,” Raffi said. "We have a duty to safeguard our children from exploitation."

For more information about child honoring, see the Troubadour Foundation’s website,
www.troubadourfoundation.org