Our Gov’t is now offering funds to the varied
networks if the shows presented push anti-drug, anti-violence, Etc messages. The networks present the scripts to the congress before airing and if the message is strong enough the network will recieve money. These are not P.S.A. but regular programs atlered to suit to specific issuses.
Is there a question hidden somewhere in that statement?
I guess the question is when does it stop?
I’m a ‘bleading heart’ liberal and do believe
in big gov’t, but this seems to me to be to much. I’m ok with PSA, they are straight up and honest (and useless). This feels dirty. and tricky. More then a question, I wanted to know if people knew this was happening and why this is going on.
Uhh, that’s not the case, if what I’ve been reading in the newspapers is true.
What’s happening is this: for some time now, the networks have been required by federal law to use a certain amount of air time each week running anti-drug messages. The government has recently begun allowing the networks to count regular shows that happen to include anti-drug themes as taking up part of that quota. There is no transfer of funds involved.
Having said that, I’ll note that many of the network show producer/director types are livid about this new tactic, as they feel the networks will begin pressing them to include anti-drug themes on their shows in order to free up anti-drug-message time slots for other things.
The paper in Houston reported it differently. The government bought a big block of commercial time for anti-drug use.
If the networks broadcast an anti-drug message on their own, in one of their shows, then the government returns a commercial spot to the network, which can resell it.
As long as it was secret, networks liked it, it got them more money. As you note, they have to broadcast what the government wants in order to get this extra money.
[Smells like a GD to me…]
Salon.com did some investigative reporting into that. Starfish is correct. What happened was the gov’t and 5(?) networks made a deal that the gov’t would buy a bunch of ads, at half price.
The networks said OK, because at the time, ads weren’t selling well, and a 5 year commitment to half price ads is better than none at all.
Then all the .com companies started advertizing, and the networks wanted to get out of the deal. So they and the office of drug control policy made a deal where the networks could use regular programming in exchange for some of the ads they were comitted to. It got to the point where the gov’t would not only suggest content, but review scripts and make changes.
This sounds like a slightly veiled payola to me, but sadly I don’t think anyone will complain too loud, because they’d end up looking like they were “soft on drugs”.
My bad - I looked up relevant articles on cnn.com and I’d remembered things incorrectly.
From how I heard it on NPR, the producers of the shows in question were never made aware of this, and thus, while they are not keen on the idea, it never once altered their “art” in any way.
Once can assume that since they did not hear about it, they were not pressured in any way by the network suits.
Besides, the criteria for an “anti-drug” message interwoven into the plot of a show was up to the government to decide anyway. And how much of a stretch is it for, say, ER to have a guy come in who was fucked up on smack and have a doctor say something about how that really sucks?
Happened all the time on TV, way before this compromise between the government and the networks went into place, and would still be there if not.
Yer pal,
Satan
Originally posted by Satan:
Yeah, but its the prinicple of the thing. I guess. sorta.
Anyway, according to this Salon.com article an episode of the WB’s The Smart Guy was significantly changed, with the cooperation of the shows producer, so that it would have an anti-drug theme that would qualify for an ad exemption.
The other articles about this are the first article, a followup, and a rebuttal
(guess who just learned how to embed URLs. wohoo!)