TV DRAMA WITH A MESSAGE--PLACED BY THE WHITE HOUSE

The federal Office of Infotainment, in conjunction with the new
administration, Congress and the major networks, is pleased to
announce the fall season lineup of new shows. This office is proud of
the caliber of programming, and of the nation's leaders' interest in
what Americans watch.

"Sugar Street," 7 a.m. weekdays

A start-the-day-right children's show built around breakfasting
families. Emphasizes the dangers of drugs and the value of good
nutrition. Kids find anti-drug message prizes in boxes of such
high-energy cereals as Chocolate 'Nilla Bran.

"VD-TV," 4 p.m. weekdays

Music video show for young audiences features top performers singing
their hits and sharing frank talk about the health consequences of
sexual profligacy. VJs use graphic images and forthright discussion
about prevention.

"The X Commandments Files," 3 p.m. Mondays

Talk show features ex-sinners whose encounters with the Ten
Commandments--posted in the office, the locker room, at post offices
and brokerage houses--kept them from committing more lust, greed or
murder. Jerry Springer opens the pilot with confession of the time he
paid a prostitute by check when he was vice mayor of Cincinnati.

"Who Wants to Be a Pensioner?" 7 p.m. Tuesdays

Oldsters try to keep their retirement income through 15 questions.
Contestants must decide whether to put winnings in existing Social
Security funds or invest in the stock market. Contestants could get
rich, maintain a safe, modest income, or go broke and end up living in
a nephew's unheated garage.

"DC Law," 9 p.m. Wednesdays

Pilot is about a mild yet fearless independent counsel who gives up a
lucrative practice of defending honest American business against
greedy product-liability schemers, to expose the sinister conspiracies
of powerful enviro-feminists.

"First Dad," 8 p.m. Thursdays

Hilarious family-values series about a son of a lovable ex-president
who is elected president himself, then can't keep Dad out of the Oval
Office--he reads the mail, golfs with visiting heads of state, and
chats on the Red Phone!

"HMO MDs," 9 p.m. Fridays

Tense drama about caring, brilliant HMO doctors who consult, diagnose
and heal 10 patients per hour. Pilot episode: A gifted neurologist
performs a brain tumor surgery that has his patient home in time to
make dinner that night for her grateful husband and kids.

"Shopping With Uncle Sam," 1 a.m. nightly

Federal surplus goods on TV: grazing land, low-mileage Humvees, reams
of erasable bond typing paper. Can include gifts congressmen can't
legally accept, anything from buffalo-chip doorstops to WWF tickets.
Bring your credit card!

The administration has plugged the no-drugs messages in TV shows, as
the world recently heard, for two years now. Both networks and
government say it is nothing like "payola," the pay-for-play rock 'n'
roll radio scandal of the 1950s, but you decide:

To get anti-drug messages out of the insomniac hours of TV, the feds
bought prime-time ad space for public service announcements. By law
each network must donate PSA time amounting to half of what the feds
bought.

But to broaden its message, the White House let networks swap credits.
The finished show and even scripts were sent to the White House drug
policy office--evidently without the producers' knowledge. Based on
the show's anti-drug content, the office decided how much to credit
the network. One "ER" plot, reported Salon magazine, earned NBC a
million dollars in credits. By my calculation, that freed up PSA time
for real, profitable ads, like abdomen flatteners. Shaping behavior
via TV is no breakthrough. What raised hackles is the covert reward
system.

OK, being against drugs is generally good. But what may be next? What
if an administration decides to create incentives to promote home
schooling, or discourage homosexuality?

In the scandalous 1920s, Hollywood hired an ex-postmaster named Will
Hays to tidy up its morals and save its box office bacon. In short
order, the Hays Office was deciding what was "Americanism" and what
wasn't. It blue-lined such words as "virgin" from scripts and tried to
tell Clark Gable he couldn't say "damn" in "Gone With the Wind."

It took more than 40 years to pry Hays' by-then-dead fingers off movie
scripts. If Hollywood isn't worried about who it lets in the door,
then its memory is shorter than a lot of one-syllable words the Hays
Office would not permit.

Patt Morrison's e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com.