Posted on 11/29/2004 7:30:26 AM PST by NYer
Yum! Brands, the parent company of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, A&W and Long John Silver’s, has stopped advertising on the ABC Network show Desperate Housewives. The move comes after the company’s headquarters were flooded with e-mails and phone calls from concerned customers.
Jonathan Blum, senior vice president of public affairs for Yum! Brands, announced the decision in a letter dated November 17, 2004, to Bill Johnson, president of the American Decency Association (ADA). As posted on ADA’s Web site, the letter reads:
I wanted to inform you that Yum! Brands will not be advertising in Desperate Housewives going forward. We determined that the content of the program is inconsistent without Media Ethics Guidelines. As a result, we have notified ABC and have pulled advertising from the balance of year programming for Pizza Hut and KFC. Our Taco Bell brand had no plans to advertise on Desperate Housewives any time during the remainder of the year.
Johnson and colleagues with the American Family Association have been monitoring the show and informing their constituents of the companies supporting it through advertising. While he is pleased with this development, he still has concerns.
“This decision was a long time coming,” Johnson said, noting that the company went weeks without responding to any of the customer comments made on the matter.
Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America’s Culture & Family Institute, said this is good news.
“This is a perfect example of why concerned citizens should never give up, even when it seems their voice is not being heard,” Knight said. “Yum! Brands never responded to the tons of e-mail complaints they received, yet all the while the company was weighing the affect this show was having on the culture and its corporate reputation. They weighed the matter carefully and agreed with their customers.”
“We rejoice that Yum! Brands realizes the import of this decision,” Johnson added. “Desperate Housewives is nasty and destructive to the American family. Burger King made a similar decision weeks ago upon finding out the nature of the program,” he added.
While asking people to contact Yum! Brands and thank them for this move, Johnson also sounds a word of caution. “We now can only hope that Yum! Brands will also steer clear of Life As We Know It [also aired on ABC] and similar types of cultural-rotting programming,” he said.
He added that the ADA’s boycott of Yum! Brands would continue as long as the company continued advertising on Life As We Know It.
Other advertisers remain strong supporters of the new fall dramas. Target and K-Mart are the two most notable examples.
“Here are two companies … that are willing to recklessly place profits before principle. Dirtying the airwaves and sullying untold numbers of children doesn’t concern them much, but greed does,” said Johnson.
Take Action:
To contact Target and K-Mart:
Target Corporation
Mr. Robert Ulrich
1000 Nicollet Mall
Minneapolis, MN 55403
Phone: 612-304-6073 or 1-800-440-0680
Fax: 612-696-3731
To send an e-mail, click here.
Kmart Corporation
Aylwin Lewis
3100 W. Big Beaver Rd.
Troy, MI 48084
Phone: 248-463-1000
Fax: 248-463-5636
To send an e-mail, click here.
Please take a moment to send a note of thanks to Yum! Brands for dropping support of Desperate Housewives and encourage them to do the same with Life As We Know It. Correspondence should be directed to Jonathan Blum, senior vice president of public affairs, Yum! Brands Inc.
Not from the two episodes I have seen. Rather tame, in fact, little skin and lotta suggestion.
I love "24", too! As far as I know, the 3rd season is being released to DVD next Tuesday, 12/7.
You are, of course, free to endulge yourself in any kind of immoral depravity you wish. But some are taking a stand against it. And the advertisers are listening.
Boycotts and Catty Girls
by L. Brent Bozell III
October 22, 2004
Television advertisers not only sell their brand by advertising, they make television itself possible. Absent the pay-per-view formulation of the likes of HBO, or taxpayer-funded PBS, anything viewed on television, both broadcast and cable, requires corporate sponsorship. It follows then that these advertisers bear direct responsibility for the double-scoops of raunchy sex, obscene language and graphic violence that is flooding the airwaves, oftentimes aimed directly at children, children whose parents are then expected to purchase their wares at K-Mart.
Here and there one will find the more idealistic advertiser that is troubled by the polluted popular culture it is not just subsidizing, but promoting. It’s gratifying to learn that companies here and there will withdraw their sponsorship – sometimes quite publicly – when they see the awful content they are buying. Sad to say: When these responsible corporations do withdraw their support, often their money is immediately replaced, and the message of dissent nullified, by other businesses often eagerly take their place on the latest fashionable bandwagon of sludge.
It’s happening right now with the hottest new TV hit, ABC’s Sunday night soap opera “Desperate Housewives.” After a few over-the-top episodes, Lowe’s Home Improvement and Tyson Foods stepped off the sleazy-go-round. Tyson found the show was “not consistent with our core values,” and Lowe’s said their ad guidelines include avoiding “programming with gratuitous sex and violence.” Lowe’s even admitted apologetically the show “fell through the cracks in terms of being evaluated.”
Good for them. But what happened next? News reports revealed that thanks to boffo ratings, ABC doubled the ad rate it charges for 30 seconds from $156,000 to $300,000, and other advertisers are lining up to sponsor the program.
K-Mart, Maybelline, Carnival Cruises, Aquafresh toothpaste, and 1-800-Flowers.com are some of the corporations eager to underwrite this slimy program. “Desperate Housewives” really should have an even more obvious title, like “Cynical Suburban Sluts.” It’s just the latest in a long series of shows that aims to pulverize the cartoonish 1950s black-and-white stereotype of “Leave It to Beaver,” creating in its ancient wake a catty, snarky, amoral cesspool.
The program premiered with the desperate-housewife narrator shooting herself in the head. Soon, we flash back to see the narrator sitting around with the other leading housewife characters, cracking wise at the awful husbands they married. “It’s like my grandmother always said, ‘An erect penis doesn’t have a conscience.’” Another housewife replies: “Even the limp ones aren’t that ethical.” Bree, the scary Martha Stewart wannabe character, insists, “This is half the reason I joined the NRA,” so that when her husband went out of town for conferences, “I wanted it in the back of his mind that he had a loving wife at home with a loaded Smith & Wesson.”
There, within a few brief minutes, is the tone of the whole trashy enterprise. Love and marriage aren’t real, just Potemkin villages people hide behind. Children aren’t a source of joy and pride, just an aching sore of need. Men are thoughtless cads. How proud of this are you, Maybelline?
These wives and mothers hate their lives. “Ease up, you little vampire,” says one as she breast-feeds. Her older boys are so nasty they run over ladies with shopping carts. The divorced housewife tells her 12-year-old daughter, “Tell me again why I fought for custody of you?” The girl says, “You were using me to hurt Dad.” Mom kisses her on the forehead: “Oh, that’s right.”
Maybe the daughter should buy her some roses at 1-800 Flowers.com.
The things they do to their husbands are even worse. One is cheating on her husband with the 17-year-old gardener. Scary Bree accidentally gives onions to her onion-allergic husband Rex. He said, “I can’t believe you tried to kill me.” She casually replies, “Yes, well, I feel badly about that.” In another show, as the assembly of still-married neighbors is racily sharing laughs over their sexual adventures, Bree brings the party to a dead stop by saying: “Rex cries after he ejaculates.” Let no one say this show isn’t lewd and crude. It’s capturing both soap-loving women and men who like the nudity and sex scenes, and if this is what it takes to capture an audience, Carnival Cruises will pay for it.
The advertisers are happy – everyone from Pontiac and L’Oreal to, how appropriate, the anti-depression drug Wellbutrin – and so what if the culture rots. This show’s writers might think they’re not moralizers, but they are. The moral of this story is: Life’s too short and love’s too fake to behave with honor. The advertisers that fund this ought to be known by what they make possible. Color your hair with L’Oreal, buy yourself a Pontiac, so you can cheat on your husband with a teenaged boy in it. The advertisers approve.
http://www.mediaresearch.org/mainsearch/search.html
Their hate feeds on what Hollywood and the media presents as you and I.
I don't watch these soaps
myself, but this one stand out
because these two girls
are regulars there.
Melinda Clarke, upper left,
was the zombie girl
in the number 3
Return Of the Living Dead.
And Mischa Barton
top right, is the most
beautiful woman alive . . .
The show sounds dumb, though . . .
As to the show being discussed here - I could care less who watches it. I would think the title alone degrades women, but evidently vicariousness :o) lives.
That one sounds really familiar, but I can't remember which one it's from...
I'm assuming you remember Crow's taped deposition during Mike's trial ("Agent from H.A.R.M.") and Mikey The No-Mike-Sprite from "Squirm."
No Mike! :-)
I watch Desparate Housewives. I think OC is worse. Desparate Housewives if full of crazy people. The recent episode, I thought Lynette would kill herself, but it was Mrs. Hoover who got killed by a man.
That's from Ep# 606--THE CREEPING TERROR. There are several other sketches that I'd place near the top--the "My White Goddess" sketch, the "Orville Popcorn" sketch, the "Godzilla Geneaology Bop", Crow's screenplay on the life of Peter Graves, and his directing of the epic "Earth vs. Soup" (with Mike Nelson as Kevin Bacon!)
SEASON SIX (1995)
601-Girls Town
602-Invasion, USA (Short: A Date With Your Family)
603-The Dead Talk Back (Short: The Selling Wizard)
604-Zombie Nightmare
605-Colossus and the Headhunters
606-The Creeping Terror [?!]
607-Bloodlust (Short: Uncle Jim's Dairy Farm)
608-Code Name: Diamond Head (Short: A Day at the Fair)
609-The Skydivers (Short: Why Study Industrial Arts?)
610-The Violent Years (Short: Young Man's Fancy)
611-Last of the Wild Horses
612-The Starfighters
613-The Sinister Urge (Short: Keeping Clean and Neat)
614-San Francisco International
615-Kitten with a Whip
616-Racket Girls (Short: Are You Ready for Marriage?)
617-The Sword and the Dragon
618-High School Big Shot (Short: Out of this World)
619-Red Zone Cuba (Short: Platform Posture & Appearance)
620-Danger! Death Ray!
621-The Beast of Yucca Flats (Shorts: Money Talks & Progress Island)
622-Angels' Revenge
623-The Amazing Transparent Man (Short: The Days of Our Years)
624-Samson vs. the Vampire Women
If Yum brands pulls out, I respect their choice. It is the free market at work.
My aversion to Long John Silvers' company policy firing their own employees for defending themselves against being murdered by armed robbers overcame my addiction to their fish.
See http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/100604/upd_075-3585.shtml for more information.
a) the show has no value (unlike the rest of television, right?)
b) the show is funny and entertaining
c) the show is just a night-time soap like the ones of the past... eye candy for the husbands, relationship-based plot for the wives
it is very obvious where it is going though --
* heterosexuals will be represented as a really messed up group
* the currently-in-the-closet gay husband going through a divorce will come out and be made to look like the only sane one in the crowd
Letters and e-mails can make a difference.
Clancy, we're definitely simpatico on the ongoing purposed deformation a part of manufacturing the New Man.
An ape strutting about in a lion's skin. Much like these great Moralists still strutting after the "moral majority" election and lording it over the rest of the earth where their Holy War is concerned ... when they're not kicking back for a little primetime Strong Sexual Content.
Take heart ... you may feel like a voice in the wilderness but those of us who have ears can yet hear you.
Cheers.
=== One additional reason for my rage is the fact that they don't produce the quality anymore. I miss the good movies, the good TV.
P.S. I stop by the house of some friends, one failing, to visit each week en route home from the Legion. We watch CSI-Vegas (a show about flashlights in which sexually-mutilated corpses never seem to stink) and ER. I'd never seen either show before three weeks ago.
But I saw an episode of ER which was one of the best things I've seen on television in years: Ray Liotta learned he was dying and died in real time through the course of the hour-long program. Great theatre. His performance was outstanding.
It still exists, it's just not that worth it to try and find the good works.
That's why I gave away my TV and no longer will sit down to watch TV in mixed company. I made the mistake of sitting down to the Super Bowl the year I was tending my grandparents. Had treats made and supper timed to half-time. This was the year BEFORE Janice Jackson's costume failure and I didn't see halftime at all but the commercials and the strong sexual content of the promos were enough to have me cringing in embarassment on the couch next to my grandfather.
It gives me the chills when my eleven-year old nephew says things like: "the commercials are the best part of TV!"
Actually Bree deliberately fed her husband onions when he told her he wanted a divorce. Hey, isn't divorce a sin where you come from?
What you aren't understanding is that this show takes certain ideas that are batted about in "serious" dramas, and shoots them over the top. Ever see Boston Public? Now there is a show I thought was dangerous for my kids to see. It fostered an anti parental authority attitude. Beware of the seemingly benign programing. It is more insidious than a blatant parody of suburban life.
Let me guess. You don't have a tv. Good for you, but don't make judgements on hearsay commentary just because it fits your morally superior viewpoint.
Uh, dude, its TV. Any stench you notice is probably coming from your side.
What bravado? You can't make people like you. France has despised us for over 200 years. Imo, the only reason they lent a hand to us back in the Revolutionary War, was to stick it to the British.
As for radical Islam, their Quran was not written in response to Norman Lear or Aaron Spelling. They've been a problem for non Muslims forever. Do the Crusades ring a bell? Don't use these primates as an excuse for denouncing the crap that comes out of Hollywood.
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