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Photo
courtesy of Association of National Advertisers
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If you are embarrassed while watching television with your
family because of the increased amount of sex and violence,
help is on the way from a group of advertisers. They’ve listened
to your concerns, and they’re finding it increasingly difficult
to find shows where they want to place ads: programs
that are consistent within the guidelines of their companies,
programs that won’t offend their consumers, programs they
can be proud to sponsor, programs they want to watch with
their own families.
Family Friendly Programming Forum, a group of over 40 major
advertisers, was cofounded by Robert L. Wehling, global marketing
and government relations officer at The Procter & Gamble Company,
and Andrea Alstrup, vice president of advertising at Johnson
& Johnson. Fans of WB’s Gilmore Girls can thank the
Forum, which financed the script development.
Family Is Priority
From his office in Cincinnati, Ohio, Bob Wehling explained
to St. Anthony Messenger last spring why he and other
advertisers are committed to this project, what they’re doing
and what viewers can do. Wehling, who began his career with
Procter & Gamble in 1960 and will retire this month, is ranked
number one on Advertising Age’s list of the 50 most
powerful marketing people in the year 2000. His numerous awards
include recognition from Unda-USA, the national Catholic association
for radio and television communicators (for leadership in
marketing and for his work as cofounder of the Family Friendly
Programming Forum). Recently, he participated in the Kaiser
Family Foundation’s “Sex on TV” panel discussion, which reported
the obvious last February: The sexual content on TV has increased
in recent years.
Wehling explains why most of his activities focus on education
and children. “I’m not doing anything a lot of other people
wouldn’t do if they had the same opportunities. I’m just thankful
that I was given six wonderful daughters, that they turned
out healthy, that they got a good education and that they
got off to a good start in life. I feel I have an obligation
to do what I can to see that as many kids as possible have
those kinds of opportunities. There’s nothing noble about
it; I just feel that’s my job.”
Bob and Carolyn Wehling have been married for over 40 years.
They raised their family in the Cincinnati suburb of Wyoming
and then moved to a farm in Augusta, a small river town in
Kentucky where Carolyn raises Tennessee walking horses and
other animals including llamas and donkeys. “Our grandchildren
absolutely love it,” he says of the farm.
He explains his order of priorities: “Through my whole career,
I’ve always scheduled my work around my children’s activities.”
When his children were younger, he would mark their athletic
and school events on his calendar and then schedule business
commitments around those dates. “I’ve always thought that
the most important thing was to have your priorities right
and make sure that your family is your first priority.”
Concerned Advertisers
Wehling notes that the term soap opera was coined
because Procter & Gamble’s Oxydol laundry detergent sponsored
Ma Perkins on radio in the 1930s. Today the company
is one of the world’s largest advertisers. But finding the
right TV shows to sponsor isn’t easy, he explains.
As a family man and as an advertiser, Wehling has observed
an escalation of sex, innuendo and violence on prime-time
TV in recent years. Quite often, a program is “generally O.K.
except for one scene or a couple of lines that are thrown
in” that make the sponsor feel uncomfortable. “If we held
to a rigid standard, and we didn’t look at the gray areas,
and we didn’t look at the total context of a program, we wouldn’t
have enough shows on broadcast television to help our brands
reach their target audience.”
In 1998, Bob Wehling heard Andrea Alstrup give a speech at
an Advertising Women of New York function. That speech sparked
the formation of the Family Friendly Programming Forum.
Alstrup recalls her message in a 31-page magazine supplement
produced by Adweek about the Forum: “I described the
kind of programming that kids had access to when channel-surfing
and asked the audience to think about the kind of stress that
exposure to sex and violence could represent for kids. Then
I said that, as a mother myself, I am embarrassed and outraged
by a lot of what I see in the media. I pointed out that the
environment in which a message runs is part of the message.”
Then she announced that Johnson & Johnson would underwrite
the creation of a group effort.
“She was saying exactly the same things we were saying,”
recalls Wehling. He knew from experience that when individual
companies met with network executives to request the types
of programs that consumers said they wanted, nothing much
happened. But a group effort could be more influential. Thus,
he spoke to Alstrup after her talk, and they each invited
some other advertisers to a meeting.
That first meeting attracted 10 advertisers, recalls Wehling.
When they had a difficult time defining family—whether
it was two parents with two or more kids, divorced parents,
multigenerational and so on—he realized this could be a sticking
point. He suggested that they ask the networks for more choices
that multiple generations (children, parents and grandparents)
would enjoy watching together. “Each of them would find it
entertaining and relevant.”
This was agreeable, and the group decided to start with the
8 p.m. time period, once known as “the family hour.” By the
end of 1999, 36 companies had joined Family Friendly Programming
Forum.
“We have most of the top advertisers in the country involved,”
explains Wehling. Some who joined early include Coca-Cola,
Ford, IBM, Nestlé, Sears and Wendy’s. (A complete list of
members and additional information are available at the Forum’s
Web site, www.familyprogramawards.com.)
The Forum’s Web site says, “As marketers, we are concerned
about the dwindling availability of family-friendly television
programs during prime viewing hours—the environment in which
we want to advertise. As members of American society, we are
concerned about the TV imagery, role models, themes and language
to which our young people are exposed.”
Long-term Plans
The Forum underwrites the development of new, family-friendly
scripts but does not participate in the script-approval process.
If the script is made into a pilot, the network reimburses
the Forum. WB was the first network to participate in this
initiative. Jamie Kellner, CEO of WB, says on the Forum’s
Web site that the first year “yielded a number of high-quality,
family-friendly scripts, three pilots and one series, Gilmore
Girls, which television critics call the best new show
of the season.” And this season WB will air another series
resulting from the Forum’s script-development fund: Raising
Dad, a new comedy starring Bob Saget as a widower raising
daughters.
ABC and CBS joined the script-development initiative last
fall, and then NBC came on board in the spring. “NBC aims
to serve a broad, diverse audience with a variety of programming,
including high-quality shows that the whole family can enjoy
together,” says Jeff Zucker, president of NBC Entertainment,
on the Forum’s Web site.
Regarding long-term goals, Bob Wehling tells St. Anthony
Messenger that he would like to see two new series each
fall, with enough surviving to “change the landscape of the
8 p.m. time period. Then we’ll turn our attention to other
subjects that people have asked us to look into, like the
9 o’clock time period, or magazines or the Internet.” He stresses,
“We’ve told everybody we’re in this for the long term. The
problem didn’t get created overnight; the solution won’t happen
overnight.”
Encouraging Quality Programs
In addition to funding the development of new scripts, the
Forum sponsors scholarships at university television-studies
departments to encourage student interest in family-friendly
programming.
The Forum also sponsors Family Television Awards.
“We’re not trying to be against whatever is out there in television.
We’re not trying to censor in any way,” Wehling said during
a TV interview on Odyssey’s Personally Speaking With Msgr.
Jim Lisante. “What we’re trying to do with the Forum is
to celebrate the kind of programming that we’re looking for”
to encourage more of it.
He also explained the difficulty advertisers encounter when
trying to place ads on TV: “We all try very hard to make sure
that what we sponsor doesn’t have gratuitous, excessive sex
or violence; it’s not overly polarizing or controversial;
it doesn’t denigrate key elements of the population or religious
groups or minorities.”
Wehling’s background includes teaching Sunday school for
over 20 years with his wife. When St. Anthony Messenger
asked if family-friendly programming also means programs with
positive religious values, he replied, “It can...but that’s
not a driving factor....The ideal is positive societal values,
which in many cases includes positive religious values.”
What Viewers Can Do
Wehling communicates with other groups that are concerned
about the content of TV shows, too. He notes the efforts of
Parents Television Council, whose newspaper ads featured Steve
Allen, prior to his death, urging viewers to appeal to sponsors
for more “family-safe programs.” Wehling says of his meeting
with the Council’s board members, “I think their heart is
in the right place.” When they asked him if the two groups
should work together, the Forum’s cofounder replied, “No.
I think you’re effective in what you’re doing; we’re effective
in what we’re doing.”
In addition to appealing to the sponsors, what else can viewers
do? “Letting people know what you like is important,” says
Wehling. “The networks get a lot of negative mail about what
people don’t like, but they don’t get as much positive mail
on the good-quality family programs. Support good programs
when you see them,” he emphasizes. (Web sites and addresses
are frequently listed on products, in the credits of TV shows
and in many television guides.)
“The single most important thing that every parent can do
is to exercise more control over what is watched in the household,”
says the father of six. “The ratings don’t lie: Many of the
programs that we feel queasy about, from a sponsorship standpoint,
get really good ratings. That means lots of people are out
there watching. That includes children as well as adults.”
When Gilmore Girls began last fall, TV Guide
said, “A rare achievement in family drama, this thoroughly
endearing series is sweet and smart: touching without being
schmaltzy, sardonic without being nasty.” But the highly praised
series suffered in ratings, blamed on the fact that it aired
Thursdays opposite Survivor and Friends. (Gilmore
is scheduled to air on Tuesdays this fall.)
Wehling says, “We’ve gotten a lot of criticism about Gilmore
Girls,” because the mom is single and the family isn’t
perfect. His response: “Do you see a lot of excessive sex
and violence in this show? No. Do you see a mother and daughter
trying to work out issues together? Yes. It’s a step in the
right direction.”
He admits that it’s probably more difficult to write a script
for a program that is targeted to multigenerational audiences,
but it has been done. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
and Survivor are examples he cites of programs that
“bring families together to watch something at the same time
and talk about it together, which I think is positive for
our society.”
Optimistic Future
Wehling says that the Forum hopes to “generate enough scripts
so we get enough pilots to get enough series on the air so
enough of them survive.” But, he admits, “In some ways your
odds are better in Las Vegas than they are in television.”
He explains that one pilot might get produced out of every
four or five scripts. And one series might get made out of
every two or three pilots. And only one or two series out
of five are likely to survive and return the following season.
But he’s optimistic about the future. “I think the reason
we’re having a positive impact is because unlike a lot of
other groups, we’re not throwing stones at the rest of the
network schedule. We’re truly trying to work constructively
with them on more choices,” he emphasizes.
“Look at what we do over the long haul,” he continues. A
few years from now, if your family’s viewing habits are different
in a positive way, especially during the 8 p.m. time period,
“give us credit for it.”
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Mary Jo Dangel is an assistant editor of this publication
who looks forward to more family-friendly choices when watching
TV with her family.
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