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Public Television

Pre-school programs on PBS -- trusted by most parents -- made a big change when they started accepting "sponsorship" money, creating brief, introductory "feel good" ads associating the program with the product sponsor. During "Pledge Weeks" PBS still claims that they are "ad free," but this is a deceptive ploy, based on legal technicalities. They don't have "advertisers," they have "proud sponsors." These sponsors don't use a hard-sell approach, they use a soft-sell.

Their target audiences are pre-schoolers and their parents. Pre-schoolers can't read, but they can quickly recognize logos and packaging -- and associate good things together. And pre-schoolers have a lot of "pester power."

Long before they're able to read, pre-schoolers are able to recognize the sponsors' product logos and packaging in the grocery store as they ride in the shopping cart accompanying Mom and telling her what they want.

Check out pbskids.org online: at the bottom of the program pages (Arthur, Clifford, Dragon Tales, etc.) are the logo links to their "proud sponsors" (Juicy Juice, Chuck E.Cheese, McDonalds, Alpha-Bits, Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, etc.) where fun and games are also available on their commercial website. Furthermore, parents and kids are urged to join the PBS kids-clubs (thus, adding to the consumer data bases of the advertisers).

Today, 20 different pre-school TV programs rely on the income from licensing contracts for books, toys, games, and videos related to the programs. "Networks are not thinking about children as little beings to love and nurture," writes Professor James Steyer of Stanford, in his book The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media's Effect on Our Children. "They're thinking about them as little consumers to sell plush toys to."

Still more PBS ads coming?

In late October 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported that still more ads are on the way:

"Fast food and clothing tie-ins may sound like marketing tactics that would be anathema to noncommercial television. But at a time when public broadcasting is facing constant challenges to its federal funding, PBS producers are seeking to sweeten the deal for corporate underwriters, offering new ways to up the value of their sponsorships. The result is that commercial backers of public television — whose support used to be noted with just a discreet mention after a program — have a higher profile than ever.

Nowadays, the names of corporate underwriters are attached to every platform for a show, whether website, podcast or DVD. They are prominently featured at screenings and other events, and their brand is plastered on educational materials distributed to teachers and caregivers. Because federal broadcast regulations prohibit sponsors of public television from endorsing or promoting their products on the air, much of the new exposure is happening off the screen."

(The PBS Omsbudsman quoted seemed more interested in protecting the "trustworthy" image of PBS than in their delivering kids to sponsors.)

"Proud Sponsors" and Straight-Faced Mendacity

Time (June 28, 2004) magazines' article "Pitching it to Kids" surveys the issue of targeting young children as consumers, focusing on the online games (Neopets.com) and the ongoing controversy about the ethical issues. (See also New Marketing Techniques PDF.) In response: my "Letter to the Editor" about this Time article:

It’s not surprising to see the venues of commercial TV and websites “pitching
it to kids,” delivering pre-school audiences (grocery cart riders, able to
recognize logos and packaging on the shelves, finger-pointing pester-power) to
the advertisers. What is shocking, however, is the saturation of ads in the
previously non-commercial venues of many schools and PBS. Channel One, for
example, now delivers a daily dose of slick ads to a captive audience of over 8
million kids in their classrooms. Pre-schoolers, watching the PBS kids programs
at home, once were exempt from being a target audience. Now, every program has
a set of “proud sponsors” (e.g. McDonalds, Chuck E.Cheese’s, Frosted Flakes,
Juicy Juice) not only with “soft sell” feel-good ads, but also (at PBS.org)
web-based games and links to their “proud sponsors.” I marvel at the
straight-faced mendacity of PBS fund-raisers during Pledge Week when they brag
about presenting commercial-free programs. It’s hard to justify the
corporate-image ads (ADM,SBC,CIT) of the “proud sponsors” of the “Nightly News
Hour” for adults; but, targeting our very young children in their own homes is
beyond the pale. --- Hugh Rank

Sesame Street for Poopy Pants

"How young is too young to park a baby in front of the TV set?
The American Academy of Pediatrics's rule has been steadfast: No television under age 2....

Now the venerable educational organization that pioneered "Sesame Street" is lowering that age limit with a new DVD series, "Sesame Beginnings," which targets babies and toddlers from 6 months to 2 years."

For more about "Sesame Beginnings" (April, 2006): Experts Rip 'Sesame Aimed at Tiniest Tots'

From -- Hugh Rank, Language and Public Policy (NCTE, 1974):

"In the past, I have written that certain advertisers were "child molesters." Indeed, this is an attention-getting charge, but it is accurate.

Our moral sense is outraged by inequality. In sexual matters we already have a sophisticated vocabulary to describe situations of equality and inequality.

For example, we speak of seduction when there is not an equality, a mutuality of exchange, when the knowledgeable or crafty seducer takes advantage of the innocent or naive; we speak of rape when force or violence creates a situation of inequality; we speak of child molesting when age is concerned, when the young are abused.

Using this analogy, it is clear that in language situations today many of our advertisers are seducers and child molesters, taking advantage of the young, the innocent, the naive, the gullible."

Kids as Consumers
Aldous Huxley wrote: "Children, as might be expected, are highly susceptible to propaganda. They are ignorant of the world and its ways, and therefore completely unsuspecting. Their critical faculties are undeveloped. The youngest of them have not yet reached the age of reason and the older ones lack the experience on which their newfound rationality can effectively work."

Prior to the 1970s, toys (such as building blocks, games, dolls) were basically designed as ways of helping children grow up, "a socializing function." Then, as John Seabrook ( New Yorker, Dec. 15, 2003, p. 63) wrote:" an evolution in the design and marketing of toys marked the first time that children younger than twelve were explicitly targeted as consumers. The toy industry taught the makers of other kinds of consumer products that children were a potentially lucrative market, and that 'aspirational age marketing' (selling the charm of feeling older) could be used to sell not only Barbie dolls but clothes but clothes, fast foods, cosmetics, and electronics."

Elementary school students by the millions are easily reached by national network programs, primarily cartoons, in the after-school hours (3 - 5 p.m.) and on Saturday mornings; and several cable TV channels (including Disney, Cartoon Channel, Discovery) target kids constantly."Tweens - so named for their status between early childhood and the teenage years -- are not developed enough psychologically to know how to be skeptical about advertising," said Elizabeth Moore, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Notre Dame. "Children have television in their rooms, phones, computers," Moore said.

"From a marketer's point of view, the range of products these children are consuming is expanding. And there's a lot of evidence that they have a lot of influence over what their parents buy." The advertising directed at this age group encourages them to want to be like teenagers, with the emphasis on being cool." (Los Angeles Times, June 27, 2002)Tweens, teen-agers, and youths are the primary target audience for MTV and its imitators which serve up a steady diet of popular music videos interspersed with ads appealing to those audiences.

By 2006, most school districts in America had long-term exclusive contracts with national beverage companies (Coke, Pepsi) which requires the schools to act as their retail agents, to provide sugary drinks in vending machines and in lunchrooms to captive audiences. This situation is a growing conflict between health organizations and those educators looking for an easy way to finance school programs.

Even after an announcement in May, 2006, by a committee led by ex-President Clinton, was made of "reforms" in the industry, consumer critics (such as Gary Ruskin, Commercial Alert) were highly skeptical of any voluntary self-regulatory claims: "We are one step closer..." Ruskin writes, "but the deal is far from perfect. It still apparently permits these companies to advertise in schools, on scoreboards, vending machines and elsewhere. Nor does it stop them from advertising on Channel One, which compels more than 7 million children to watch ads in schools each day. It is wrong to use the public schools to deliver private propaganda to impressionable schoolchildren... Is there any enforcement mechanism for this agreement? If there is no real enforcement provision, it won’t be strong enough to bind the beverage companies to their word. In 2001, Coca-Cola received a huge tide of good press for promising to stop making exclusive marketing deals with schools. But Coca-Cola Enterprises continued to make exclusive contracts with schools. Will national or local bottlers undermine this deal too? Why is the time frame so extended for this agreement? The industry does not even promise to fully implement the new guidelines by the 2009-10 school year.... it’s long past time for USDA to enforce its current rules regarding the sale of food of minimal nutritional value in schools, and for Congress to strengthen them, so that candy and sweetened soft drinks are banned, and schools provide good nutrition to children, not junk food.”

A few days later, the Disney corporation -- which sees itself as family-friendly -- broke off its tie-in advertising contracts with McDonalds in which Disney characters were used to promote Happy Meals. Keep alert for new developments.

See also: nojunkfood.org and junkfoodnews.com -- and Eric Schlosser, author of the best-selling expose Fast Food Nation now has a variation on the same theme directed at younger readers: Chew on This

Most parents wouldn't tolerate strangers approaching their kids in person, either at their door or at the mall, and trying to sell them something.

Yet, in most homes, TV is the babysitter and parents allow some very sophisticated strangers to sell things to their kids.

Most parents -- like most kids -- have had no training in persuasion analysis and regard ads, like pesky mosquitos, as annoying but insignificant. 75-80% of adults respond to survey questions, answering "Advertising doesn't affect me."

Public Television

Long before they're able to read, pre-schoolers are able to recognize the sponsors' product logos and packaging in the grocery store as they ride in the shopping cart accompanying Mom and telling her what they want.

Still more PBS ads coming?

(The PBS Omsbudsman quoted seemed more interested in protecting the "trustworthy" image of PBS than in their delivering kids to sponsors.)