But was weapon relinquished too soon to effect real change?
If you want to do something to rid television of profanity, sex, and violence, switch off your set, write protest letters to network officials, or join a PTA lobby. But if you really want to do something, pull together a large group of people (three to five million will do), get backing from the Moral Majority, and plan a boycott. Threaten to stop buying products of companies that sponsor offending programs—and watch the fur fly.
That’s just what Donald B. Wildmon, founder of the Coalition for Better Television, did. He proposed a one-year boycott of products from sponsors of television shows marked offensive by 4,000 volunteer monitors during a three-month period (CT, Mar. 13, 1981, p. 74).
The monitors produced a list of sponsors—but Wildmon never used it to effect his boycott. One week before the scheduled announcement of his list, Wildmon met with advertisers in Memphis and made an eleventh-hour decision to hold off on the boycott.
Justifying the boycott, Wildmon, a United Methodist clergyman, had said, “Our values, our principles, our morals—those things which are very dear and meaningful to us—have been ridiculed, belittled, mocked, and insulted by the networks. We feel the boycott will be criticized very loudly by the networks and the companies, but that’s nothing new to us. The only thing that matters to them is money and we’re ready to see the boycott through to prove our point.”
Wildmon’s bark had some bite. The National Federation for Decency, which he founded, has successfully pressured television sponsors in the past. Last year CBS lost $5 million from worried advertisers who were warned about a film that contained an incestuous relationship.
Advertisers are deeply afraid of such consumer action, said an official from Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne (BBDO), one of America’s largest advertising agencies. “It only takes a percentage point or two of shift in the retail sales of washing machines or K-cars to make a tremendous difference in profits. If push came to shove, the advertisers would lean on the producers to make sure that the boycott ended fast” (Saturday Review, Feb. 1981).
Wildmon planned to announce his list of offending sponsors at a June 29 press conference, but Proctor Gamble, television’s biggest and most influential sponsor, made an announcement of its own two weeks earlier. P & G would withdraw backing from more than 50 shows.
Although P & G denied that Wildmon’s impending boycott forced its decision, Owen B. Butler, chairman of the company, said at a meeting of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, “We think the Coalition for Better Television is expressing some very important and broadly held views about gratuitous sex, violence, and profanity.”
He added, “I can assure you that we are listening very carefully to what they say.” Even more surprising than the P & G announcement, however, was Butler’s speech. According to Broadcaster magazine (June 22, 1981), “Except in marketing and advertising, P & G has long sought to maintain a minimum profile.… Butler’s speech … was in fact believed to be the first public speech by any P & G head in at least five years.”
Reaction to P & G’s move was immediate and angry, much of it directed against the coalition. “The Coalition has indicated that it intends to boycott advertisers,” stated the Association of National Advertisers. “Its purpose in doing so can only be to gain control of television’s economic base and thereby impose its own wishes and standards on both the television medium and on television viewers. Such means are coercive and contrary to the spirit and purpose of our free institutions.”
The networks also saw teeth in the impending boycott. Fred Silverman, then NBC president, warned that if the boycott proved successful, the coalition and Moral Majority might seek control over all future programming.
Gene Jankowski of CBS said, “We are now faced with an organized attempt not just to block or remove a specific program or series, but to set the standards that will prevail for the entire medium—an unprecedented usurpation of the individual viewer’s right of choice and a direct assault on the creative community’s freedom of enterprise. It is an attempt at prior restraint on a grand scale.”
Not all commentary was directed against the group, however. Said Grant Tinker of MTM Productions in Hollywood, “If we did our job better, we wouldn’t have the Moral Majority telling us to clean up our act.”
As incoming NBC chairman and chief executive officer, replacing Fred Silverman, Grant Tinker will undoubtedly exert a new influence on network programming. “Tinker will probably delegate more responsibility, place a greater emphasis on quality shows, and be more willing to listen to the Moral Majority and other critics of sex, violence, and profanity on TV,” predicted TV Guide. In reference to right-wing group attempts to censor television, Tinker said, “There may be some rocky moments, but I think that all this really is healthy. It is a good time for self-examination for the industry.”
In the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger quoted a popular editorial writer: “A prudent public would be suspicious of groups that are more interested in demonstrating their boycott power than patiently persuading listeners to their point of view.” He added: “The fact is the prudent public is about plumb out of patience. This country is now bursting with reasonable, well-educated, and very upset young parents who are quite willing to sit quietly while the undainty folks from the Moral Majority go out there and clean up the mess.”
Columns, editorials, cartoons, and news stories evidenced the mounting impact of the coalition boycott. Television network officials, big-name sponsors, the news media, and the public all awaited the big day in June when Wildmon’s “hit list” would be announced.
But the announcement never came. June 29 came and went, and with it went the coalition boycott resolve. Wildmon carefully explained why: the boycott was no longer necessary because meetings with executives of companies that advertise on television had shown him that advertisers “basically share these same concerns” (New York Times, June 30). Furthermore, advertisers had “pledged to clean up television,” and, as far as he was concerned, “conversation, consultation, and fair compromise [provide] a far more commendable course to resolve conflict than confrontation.”
But just to make sure those advertisers lived up to promises made to him, Wildmon said his group could still institute a boycott in the fall if the new season’s programs contain too much sex, violence, or profanity.
Do good guys always finish last? Did a naïve coalition succumb to the blandishments of the savvy networks? Tune in this fall to see from the TV prime-time fare whether the coalition won its spurs—or flinched too soon.
North American Scene
Guess who got a predawn telephone call from the prime minister of Israel shortly after his raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor. Moral Majority’s Jerry Falwell, of course. Falwell said Begin called because he was worried U.S. religious leaders would misunderstand the bomb raid, and said, “Dr. Jerry, I wish you’d communicate to the American people and the Christian public that we’re not warmongers. We’re just trying to save our little children from annihilation.” Falwell’s reply? “Mr. Prime Minister, I want to congratulate you for a mission that made us very proud that we manufacture those F-16s. In my opinion, you must’ve put it right down the smokestack.”
A “lackluster” program and rumors of light attendance sent delegates to the American Baptist Convention in Puerto Rico expecting more play than business. But enthusiastic local Baptists, the fastest-growing group in the denomination (membership up 50 percent in the last five years), filled the convention center to overflowing. Said ABC general secretary Robert C. Campbell, “I want to learn from those kinds of Baptists.”
Ministers in record numbers are being fired or leaving their jobs for other careers. According to a number of recent surveys, this trend is due to minister burnout, an emotional deterioriation that occurs in most high-pressure professions. The condition often results in loss of motivation and enthusiasm, and in doubts about the validity of the call to ministry—even uncertainty about personal faith.
