TV'S ANTI-DRUG PLAN BLAMED

WASHINGTON - Federal regulators say the TV networks should have named the
Office of National Drug Control Policy as a sponsor of "ER" and other
prime-time shows that included anti-drug messages paid for by the
government. The ruling by the Federal Communications Commission found "no
basis for enforcement action" and does not impose any fine. But it warned
the networks about running afoul of the nation's 73-year-old payola laws,
which require that any broadcast "for which money, service, or other
valuable consideration" is received "be announced as paid for" by a named
sponsor.

"Sponsorship identification is required and we caution the networks to do
so in the future," the FCC said.

In its ruling, the FCC said ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and the WB networks misled
viewers about a controversial government advertising scheme that gave the
networks more than $20 million during the last two years to include
anti-drug messages in the scripts of popular TV shows. In congressional
hearings earlier this year, lawmakers were told that the White House
reviewed the scripts of more than 100 shows to determine if program plots
contained anti-drug messages strong enough to warrant payment.

The money was not paid directly to the TV networks by the government.
Instead, the government agreed to give up commercial time it had previously
bought from the networks in exchange for getting the anti-drug messages
incorporated in prime-time slots. Besides ER, the shows included "The Drew
Carey Show," "Chicago Hope," "America's Most Wanted" and "7th Heaven."

"The TV networks must feel `damned if you do and damned if you don't,' "
said Robert Thompson, founder of the Center for the Study of Popular
Television at Syracuse University. "They are getting an awful lot of
pressure from the right and the left about cleaning up their act ... . To
an extent this is like a sting: the government is slapping the hands of the
networks for doing something that the government asked the networks to do
in the first place."

Clinton administration drug czar Barry McCaffrey launched the unorthodox
anti-drug advertising campaign in 1998 - one year after Congress approved a
five-year program to spend $1 billion on anti-drug advertising. Civil
liberties groups charged that the government was abridging the networks'
First Amendment rights.