NETWORKS' BRONZE STAR IN WAR ON DRUGS

PASADENA, Calif., Jan. 14-Pity the poor broadcast networks. The very morning
a "scientific" study is released that--unlike all the other studies--says
that the networks are not single-handedly responsible for the corruption of
American youth, a report hits the media that they are involved in a deal
with the very group that funded the study--the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).

The White House confirmed on Thursday that six major broadcast networks were
given financial incentives to provide programming that conveyed an anti-drug
message. Under that pact, ad time is being given back to the networks for
shows that include negative portrayals of drug use. So far, the broadcasters
have received credit for 109 episodes of prime-time series, the ONDCP said,
resulting in ad time being given back to them--which they can then sell to
corporate advertisers.

Problem is, nobody seems to have told the producers and studio execs about
the practice. A number of them expressed understandable outrage after
reading about it in the newspapers. They used words like "appalling" and
"inconceivable" and "troubling" and "never in my career."

But when asked if they would agree to insert anti-drug messages in their
programs in exchange for millions of dollars from the federal government,
they had to think about it long and hard before finally deciding they
wouldn't, "even if they paid us."

According to the ONDCP study also made public today, illicit drugs are
almost never shown on prime-time broadcast TV. And, on the few occasions
they are, it's almost always with negative consequences.

"I believe the broadcast television industry is making progress in sending
our kids the right messages about drug abuse," ONDCP Director Barry
McCaffrey said today in a statement.

The study, "Substance Use in Popular Prime-Time Television," looked at the
prime-time broadcast TV programs that were most watched by white, Hispanic
and African American teens.

It found only 3 percent of the 168 episodes analyzed depicted illicit drugs.
In 20 percent, illegal drugs were mentioned, but in almost all incidents,
they were not glamorized.

One in five episodes included the use of tobacco, but never by a character
under the age of 18. But 71 percent of the episodes showed the use of
alcohol, including a large proportion of adult major characters. Only once,
however, was it used by someone under the legal drinking age.

One of the researchers, Donald Roberts of Stanford University, said that
many times pouring a drink was used simply as a means of moving a character
from position A on a set to position B. He added that, as a parent and
grandparent, he hoped producers in the future would instead have the
characters move from A to B by kicking the cat.

Which would then give PETA an opportunity to present a study about the ill
effects of prime-time TV to The Reporters Who Cover Television, who just
can't get enough of this stuff.

McCaffrey, who conveniently couldn't make his scheduled appearance here
because of a long flight from Switzerland back to Washington, instead sent
his deputy. Donald Vereen was besieged with questions about the news reports
on the ONDCP-network anti-drug deal.

According to Alan Levitt, director of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media
Campaign, which is part of the ONDCP, the networks' sales departments decide
which episodes of shows to submit to the ONDCP, via its New York-based ad
agency, Ogilvy & Mather. ONDCP then sends the episodes to its panel of
experts, which decides which ones qualify for the ad credits. Those episodes
are then sent back to Ogilvy, which gives the episode up to three points,
determining how much ad time the network gets back. Keep in mind that
30-second, prime-time ad spots sell for six figures, so there's a lot of
money at stake.

President Clinton came to McCaffrey's defense today in Washington, saying
that the drug czar concluded that putting anti-drug messages in prime-time
programs rather than little-watched late-night public service announcements
was a "good thing."

"It's my understanding that there's nothing mandatory about this," Clinton
said, "that there was no attempt to regulate content or tell people what
they had to put into it--of course, I wouldn't support that. But I think
he's done a very good job at increasing the sort of public interest
component of what young people hear on the media, and I think it's working;
we see drug use dropping."

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said at the daily briefing in Washington
today that "this particular program, I think, is the result of looking for
other ways to get the message out that allows networks in a robust
advertising environment to sell to other people where they can make more
money."

At the TV press tour, a reporter asked Peter Roth, the head of Warner Bros.
TV, if he found any similarity between inserting the feds' anti-drug message
in an episode of "Friends" and inserting subliminal Pottery Barn ads. In
last week's episode, Jennifer Aniston's character, Rachel, keeps buying
Pottery Barn household items on the sly to furnish the apartment she now
shares with Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow), who wants her digs furnished only with
recycled items. The ruse blows up when Kudrow walks by a Pottery Barn
store--on camera--and sees all her new furnishings in the window.

At which point, Studio USA's President David Kissinger--yes, Henry's
boy--jumped to Roth's defense, saying that last he'd checked, Pottery Barn
didn't represent as much a threat to our civil liberties as the federal
government.