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.
Desperate Housewives is Knots Landing with less clothes and a much older Nicolette Sheridan.
The show is dispicable!
I watched last night's episode in which a 16 year old kid ran over a woman with his parents car and was upset because he might get into trouble. He was further scripted to say that the woman, who was a grandmother type, had "lived her useful life" and so what that he ran her over.
The show is phsycopathic, sick and twisted! As are those who wrote it and those who aired it!
It's the best show on TV, why would you boycott it?
No. I like the show. It's not porn. You don't like it, change the channel. Call K-mart, etc. all you want. My Pepsi & YUM! brands stocks don't seem to be suffering very heavily, though.
Target supports Deparate (for ratings) Housewives?
I was in Target last night and they cannot tolerate the Salvation Army but the employees were bloasting rap music in the store in t he stero/TV department.
I plan on avoiding the store particularly when one of the heirs is Mark Dayton a Democart Senator.
Target is part of Dayton-Hudson.
And in my opinion, watching an episode of Desperate Housewives will not instantly turn the viewer into a pervert or a raging sex maniac. But the show's writing is obtuse and poorly rendered, it deals with subject matter best left to an "anything goes" cable channel like Showtime, and I just can't get past the cheesy title. I'm not a fan.
What do you expect? Veggie tales & Barney probably would not sell well at 9 pm on sunday night.
Not only is it a cool show, last night I stayed on ABC and discovered Boston Legal. Another really well written and funny show.
If I had ever watched this show I would quit watching it right now.
I really enjoy the show. It reminds me of the old soaps Dallas or Knots Landing.
I don't normally post photos like this . . . then I noticed your moniker and tagline. Hell, I'd go to Hollyweird and round them all up and have them meet you at the airport if I could. You and the others like you are why we're the greatest country the world has ever known.
Enjoy the photo, Mike. Be safe.
Ooops. My 22 yr old daughter and I enjoy watching it. Some folks might not get the dark humor or satire, though. Do people actually think this is a drama portraying a slice of normal American life?
=== Not only is the show gravely immoral, but looks quite cheesy as well...
"Cheesy"?
Well no wonder the consensus at FR thus far is that advertisers are "stoopid" not to make a few bucks on this vehicle.
Nothing like settling in for a little Scenery with wifey and her Stories once all the "Moral Issues are Paramount" Conservative Churchgoing Voter crap's out of the way.
Sunday night dreams -- one shares with the rest of the Boob Tube Nation -- just are sweeter that way.
Oh, and remember...
"Chile peppers...they, uh...burn my gut."
http://www.svamcentral.org/mst/quotes/
actually none of them 'have sex with the neighbor's husband(s)'
This FR witch hunt is humorous. The show is great. I've watched every week. It's a dark comedy about suburbia. The characters are funny, the plot combines mystery, relationships, growing up, and all kinds of issues that take place in real life...as well as a lot of ridiculous events that in no way resemble real life.
It's entertaining, which is what television is supposed to be. I have absolutely no problem with it.
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