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How The White House Secretly Hooked Network TV On Its Anti-Drug Message

Advertisements urging parents to love their kids and keep them off drugs
dot urban bus stops across America. Anti-drug commercials fill Channel One
in the nation's schools and the commercial breaks of network TV -- most
notably a comely, T-shirt-clad waif trashing her kitchen to demonstrate the
dangers of heroin. We've come a long way from Nancy Reagan's clenched-teeth
"Just Say No."

Few Americans, however, know of a hidden government effort to shoehorn
anti-drug messages into the most pervasive and powerful billboard of all --
network television programming.

Two years ago, the U.S. Congress inadvertently created an enormous
financial incentive for TV programmers to push anti-drug messages in their
plots -- as much as $25 million in the past year and a half, with the
promise of even more to come in the future. Under the sway of the office of
President Clinton's drug czar, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, some of America's
most popular shows -- including "ER," "Beverly Hills 90210," "Chicago
Hope," "The Drew Carey Show" and "7th Heaven" -- have filled their episodes
with anti-drug pitches to cash in on a complex government advertising subsidy.

Here's how helping the government got to be so lucrative.

In late 1997, Congress approved an immense, five-year, billion-dollar ad
buy for anti-drug advertising as long as the networks sold ad time to the
government at half price -- a two-for-one deal that provided over $2
billion worth of ads for a $1 billion allocation.

But the five participating networks weren't crazy about the deal from the
start. And when, soon after, they were deluged with the fruits of a booming
economy, most particularly an unexpected wave of dot-com ads, they liked it
even less.

So the drug czar's office, the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy (ONDCP), presented the networks with a compromise: The office would
give up some of that precious ad time it had bought -- in return for
getting anti-drug motifs incorporated within specific prime-time shows.
That created a new, more potent strain of the anti-drug social engineering
the government wanted. And it allowed the TV networks to resell the ad time
at the going rate to IBM, Microsoft or Yahoo.

Alan Levitt, the drug-policy official running the campaign, estimates that
the networks have benefited to the tune of nearly $25 million thus far.

With this deal in place, government officials and their contractors began
approving, and in some cases altering, the scripts of shows before they
were aired to conform with the government's anti-drug messages. "Script
changes would be discussed between ONDCP and the show -- negotiated," says
one participant.

Rick Mater, the WB network's senior vice president for broadcast standards,
acknowledges: "The White House did view scripts. They did sign off on them
- -- they read scripts, yes."

The arrangement, uncovered by a six-month Salon News investigation, is
known to only a few insiders in Hollywood, New York and Washington. Almost
none of the producers and writers crafting the anti-drug episodes knew of
the deal. And top officials from the five networks involved last season --
NBC, ABC, CBS, the WB and Fox -- for the most part refused to discuss it.
The sixth network, UPN, failed to attract the government's interest the
first year of the program; it joined the flock this current TV season.

The arrangement may violate payola laws that require networks to disclose,
during a show's broadcast, arrangements with any party providing financial
or other considerations, however direct or indirect. (We'll explore that
issue in a separate article tomorrow.)

Legal or not, the plan raises a host of questions. "It sounds to me like a
form of propaganda that is, in effect, for sale," says media watchdog Bill
Kovach, curator of the Nieman Foundation. Terming it a "venal practice" and
"a form of mind control," he adds, "It's breathtaking to me that any
[network's] sense of obligation to the viewing audience has a dollar sign
attached to it."

Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, a public
interest law firm, says, "This is the most craven thing I've heard of yet.
To turn over content control to the federal government for a modest price
is an outrageous abandonment of the First Amendment ... The broadcasters
scream about the First Amendment until McCaffrey opens his checkbook."

Former FCC chief counsel Robert Corn-Revere, now at the law firm Hogan &
Hartson, calls the campaign "pretty insidious. Government surreptitiously
planting anti-drug messages using the power of the purse raises red flags.
Why is there no disclosure to the American public?"

The ONDCP, the powerful executive-branch department from which the
anti-drug effort emanates, is more commonly known as the drug czar's
office. McCaffrey, a Vietnam War hero, directs it and sits on Clinton's
Cabinet.

The office oversees spending of nearly $18 billion annually for such
activities as fighting peasants growing coca in Latin America, helping
interdict drugs entering the United States, local law enforcement and
research and treatment. Though Bob Dole savaged non-inhaler Clinton as weak
on drugs during the 1996 presidential campaign, Clinton has quietly been
Washington's most aggressive anti-drug warrior. Says Dr. Thomas H. Haines,
City University of New York medical school professor and chair of the
Partnership for Responsible Drug Information, "Clinton spent more federal
money in the war on drugs in his first four years than was spent during
Reagan's and Bush's 12 years combined."

But in the fall of 1997, the most prominent public face of America's
anti-drug crusade belonged to the private Partnership for a Drug-Free
America. With major funding from a foundation fueled by the estate of the
founder of Johnson & Johnson, along with other corporate support, the
partnership bills itself as a "nonpartisan coalition of professionals from
the communications industry."

Founded in 1986, the partnership has garnered hundreds of millions of
dollars a year in donated media space and time, hitting its peak with over
$360 million annually in both 1990 and 1991. But by 1997, donated media had
declined to $222 million, the group was suffering a decrease in both the
quantity and quality of its donated space and time, and the targeted teens
had become inured to its oft-parodied "This is your brain on drugs" message.

The partnership's chairman, James E. Burke, began to lobby Congress to add
money for paid ads to the drug czar's budget. Though then-House Speaker
Newt Gingrich didn't need much convincing, other Republicans had to
overcome two objections to a new federal expenditure of this size: Some
wondered if the highly visible effort would just let the president and
other Democrats claim credit as crusading anti-drug warriors; others
worried about showering money on Clinton's perceived allies in Hollywood.
"Some on the Hill wanted to just cut a check to the Partnership for a
Drug-Free America," says one Capitol Hill insider.

Burke and the partnership eventually won the Republicans over. Rep. Jim
Kolbe, R-Ariz., chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee that
funds the media campaign, says, "We were persuaded by the Partnership for a
Drug-Free America to spend tax dollars" to get the message out in prime time.

So in October 1997, Congress approved an extravagant plan to buy a $1
billion worth of anti-drug advertising. The drug office got about $200
million annually for five years, beginning in fiscal year 1998, and was
charged with targeting both the nation's youth and "adult influencers." The
office billed the job in a 1998 press release as "the largest and most
complex social-marketing campaign ever undertaken."

Approximately two-thirds of the office's ad budget was targeted at TV; the
rest was sprinkled among everything from billboards to radio, newspaper,
magazine and Internet advertising.

But Congress, feeling that the networks should also contribute to the war
on drugs, drove a hard, two-for-one bargain: for every ad the government
bought, it demanded another of equal value for free.

"It was contingent on a private-sector match," says John Bridgeland, former
chief aide to Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who fought for the deal. "No member
of Congress was going to pass new money for this without a match" -- that
is, without that second ad slot.

Indeed, with only $1 billion budgeted to it by Congress, the office refers
to its "five-year, $2 billion ... campaign." McCaffrey himself called it
"our major prevention initiative, the $2 billion five-year Anti-Drug Media
Campaign."

The government's paid ads began running on five of the nation's networks,
all but lowly UPN, during the summer of 1998. One TV ad features a scruffy,
plain-spoken teen who boasts of a sterling academic record before
succumbing to marijuana and getting thrown out of the house. Then there's
the one mentioned above: the waif-like Gen-Xer taking a frying pan to her
kitchen, supposedly to demonstrate the terrors of heroin addiction. The
actress is budding young star Rachael Leigh Cook of "She's All That."

How did the networks' two-for-one ad deal evolve into a plan to insert
messages into programming content? Bridgeland says that wasn't the original
idea. "I don't think we thought of programming content as a match ... [It]
was not actively discussed," he says -- a point that Kolbe echoes.

The half-price deal got a mixed reception from the networks. NBC, the most
highly rated network in 1998, with the most valuable ad slots, initially
balked for some three months. The chief ad buyer for the drug czar's
office, Zenith Media Services Inc. CEO Richard Hamilton, oversaw
negotiations with the networks. NBC, he says, made a "business decision."

Then in the ratings doldrums, ABC had fewer qualms. Says Bart Catalane,
former CFO of ABC Broadcasting: "Given the way ad-spending had been going,
we needed every category, particularly a growing one like government
spending. We wanted to grab every share we could." Indeed, the first year
of the office's ad campaign, ABC grabbed nearly $30 million worth, half
again as much as Fox, its nearest rival at $20 million.

Even high-flying NBC eventually went along; participants say that the
network came around after hearing about its rivals' barrels of government
cash. Half a loaf was considered better than none, especially from a baker
with a projected five-year supply of flour. "This was before the market got
so tight," says one former contractor to the drug-policy office. "This was
before all the dot-com ads. When we started, the market was less bullish."

But selling time at half price never went down smoothly, and Hamilton
reported back that the networks weren't happy. Hence, in the spring of
1998, Alan Levitt, who runs the office's advertising campaign, and Zenith
boss Hamilton cooked up the novel idea of using programming -- that is, the
plots of sitcoms and dramas -- to redeem the second ad slot owed the
government.

"We did this to make it a little bit more obtainable to participants,"
Levitt says. "I know it's allowed us to make some deals we wouldn't
normally make before. There are some media outlets that have not been able
to -- are not financially able, or they don't have the structure where they
can give us print space or programming or time. And so we can make it more
flexible for them."

That spring of 1998, Hamilton and Levitt agreed that sitcoms and dramas
that met with the drug-policy office's approval could be used in lieu of
the ad slots still owed to the government. Formulas would be applied to
determine the cash value of these embedded messages, and the networks would
then be free to resell the commercials they otherwise would have given to
the government.

Ultimately, the ONDCP developed an accounting system to decide which shows
would be valued and for how much. And its officials began to vet television
shows in advance, sometimes suggesting alterations. Tapes of the show as
broadcast were sent to the office or its ad buyer to be assigned a final
monetary value, which would then be subtracted from the total the
particular network owed the office.

The drug office and its ad buyers received advance copies of the scripts
from most networks, often more than once as a particular episode developed
over time. In some cases, the networks and the office would wrangle over
the changes requested. Says an office contractor, "You'd see a lot of give
and take: 'Here's the script, what do you think?'" He adds, "I helped out
on a number of scripts. They ran the scripts past us, and we gave comments.
We'd say, 'It's great you're doing this, but inadvertently you're conveying
something'" off-message.

This contractor prevailed upon the producers of the WB's "Smart Guy" to
change the original script's portrayal of two substance-abusing kids at a
party. They were originally depicted as cool and popular; after the drug
office input, "We showed that they were losers and put them [hidden away to
indulge in shamed secrecy] in a utility room. That was not in the original
script," this contractor says.

The scheme worked like this: According to a set, numerical formula, the
drug-policy office assigned financial value to each show's anti-drug
message. If the office decided that a half-hour sufficiently pushed an
endorsed anti-drug theme, it got valued at three "units," with each unit
equaling the cost of one 30-second ad on that show. Hour shows presenting
an approved story line were valued at five units, equal to the cost of five
of that show's 30-second ads. (Ads on higher-rated shows -- shows that
deliver more eyeballs -- cost more. Therefore, shows with higher ratings,
which disseminated ONDCP's message more widely, achieved higher valuations.)

For example, the drug czar's office bought approximately $20 million of
advertising time from News Corp., the Rupert Murdoch-owned global media
conglomerate that owns Fox. Therefore, News Corp. owed the United States an
additional $20 million in matching ad slots from its inventory of ad time.

To partially meet its "match," and thus recoup some of the ad time owed the
government, Fox submitted a two-episode "Beverly Hills 90210" story arc
involving a character's downward spiral into addiction. Employing the
formula based on the price of an ad on "90210," the episodes were
eventually valued at between $500,000 and $750,000, says one executive
close to the deal. As Kayne Lanahan, senior VP at News Corp One, Fox's
media and marketing operation, describes it, "There were ongoing
discussions with Zenith. They looked at each episode and how prevalent the
story line was." Lanahan adds, "We occasionally show [them] scripts when
they're in development, and the final script, and then send a tape after it
airs."

This Salon reporter was able to identify some two dozen shows where
specific single or multiple episodes containing anti-drug themes were
assigned a monetary value by the drug czar's office and its two ad buyers:
Zenith and its eventual replacement, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide.

In return for, apparently, several episodes with anti-drug subplots, highly
rated "ER" redeemed $1.4 million worth of time for NBC to be able to sell
elsewhere. "The Practice" recouped $500,000 worth of time for ABC to sell
if it wished. And anti-drug messages woven into "90210" redeemed between
$500,000 and $750,000.

Other shows with episodes that redeemed ad time for the networks during the
1998-99 season include: "Home Improvement," valued at approximately
$525,000 for ABC; "Chicago Hope," valued at probably $500,000 or more
(CBS); "Sports Night," a valuation of around $450,000 (ABC); "7th Heaven,"
valued at around $200,000 (WB); and "The Wayans Bros." with its relatively
paltry ratings, kicking in only approximately $110,000 (WB).

In addition, the following shows also redeemed ad time last season, though
this reporter could not determine their monetary value: "Promised Land" and
"Cosby" on CBS; "Trinity," "Providence" and several episodes of the four
teen-oriented Saturday-morning live-action shows on NBC; and "The Drew
Carey Show," "Sabrina the Teenage Witch," "Boy Meets World" and "General
Hospital" on ABC.

The process unfolded over time, with some scripts reviewed more than once.
When a draft of the script was available, the network sales department
would alert the drug czar's ad buyer. And then the office's Alan Levitt, or
his colleague Jill Bartholomew, became involved. They'd get a copy of the
script -- though ABC maintains it was an exception to this step -- and then
provide "a quick turnaround" with their reactions, says one insider.

The drug-policy office typically verified the particular episode as being
on-message and appropriate for a match. "If a kid was offered a joint and
said, 'No thanks,' in a way that was on-strategy, it was that simple. It
was a judgment call by the network, the agency and the client," says this
source.

Other anti-drug, government-endorsed plots were as subtle as a brick
through a window. "Chicago Hope" is owned in part by News Corp. subsidiary
20th Century Fox Television. Though CBS was the potential beneficiary of
any ONDCP-approved "Chicago Hope" episode, an agreeable News Corp. exec,
Mark Stroman, phoned John Tinker, an executive producer on "Chicago Hope,"
to request an anti-drug episode. Facing cancellation and commanding scant
leverage with the show's owners, the "Chicago Hope" producers dusted off a
previously rejected script and decided it could stand another rewrite.

As broadcast, the graphically anti-drug story of the tragedies afflicting
young post-rave revelers featured drug-induced death, rape, psychosis, a
nasty two-car wreck, a broken nose and a doctor's threat to skip
life-saving surgery unless the patient agreed to an incriminating urine
test -- along with a canceled flight on the space shuttle.

Other drug office-approved shows featured: a career-devastating,
pot-induced freakout of angel-dust proportions ("The Wayans Bros.");
blanket drug tests at work ("The Drew Carey Show") and for a school
basketball team (NBC's Saturday morning "Hang Time"); death behind the
wheel due to alcohol and pot combined ("Sports Night"); kids caught with
marijuana or alcohol pressed to name their supplier ("Cosby" and "Smart
Guy"); and a young teen becoming an undercover police drug informant after
a minister, during formal counseling, tells his parents he should ("7th
Heaven").

At least one show, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," was rejected after it showed
itself to be immune to the drug office's worldview. "Drugs were an issue,
but it wasn't on-strategy. It was otherworldly nonsense, very abstract and
not like real-life kids taking drugs. Viewers wouldn't make the link to our
message," says someone in the drug-policy office camp who read and helped
reject it.

Levitt, the office's point man on the campaign, downplays the money's
influence on the networks' "voluntary" creative decisions. He likens the
process to the (non-monetary) Prism Awards for socially responsible
television. "The government is not dictating these kinds of changes," he
says. "We will provide an incentive, a financial incentive."

Levitt insists that his office is trying solely to achieve accurate
portrayals of drugs -- not any overall increase in the number of anti-drug
episodes broadcast. Be that as it may, by the office's own count, the
number of shows with anti-drug themes (whether financially boosted by the
office or not) has risen from 32 as of last March to 109 this winter.

Whatever the intent of the government program, it was deemed sensitive
enough to be kept under wraps. The TV producers typically knew nothing of
the money involved. Says Levitt, "In almost every instance that I'm aware
of, the [creative] people coming to us have no understanding at all of the
pro bono match. They have no idea." Asked if they should know of the
financial arrangement, Levitt says no: "We're not trying to intrude on
their creative freedom. If the perception is such that we are trying to
influence the [TV] program financially -- well, I won't go any further."

This reporter spoke with some 20 writers, producers and production
executives for major shows. With perhaps one exception, nobody knew of the
arrangement.

John Tinker, last season's "Chicago Hope" executive producer, took the News
Corp. call requesting an anti-drug episode. He recalls no mention of CBS
being able to recoup something like half a million dollars in ad time for
the one shrill episode he helped craft at the show owner's request. He says
the financial incentives are "complete news to me." He adds, "I'm so caught
off guard, so stunned. I like to think I'm well informed. I had not a clue
about any financial incentives." Asked if the scheme gave him cause for
concern, Tinker says, "Of course. It smells manipulative ... All of this is
disturbing."

Tinker's response would undoubtedly be shared by many in Hollywood's
creative community. One network sales executive who's worked with the
drug-policy office acknowledges that if producers were to learn that
scripts were being altered, that would "start a nightmare." This executive
adds, "I don't need it getting back to [a particular powerhouse producer].
I'm in a tough situation between the client and the shows."

Realizing how tough it might get, a lot of top brass shied from trumpeting
their enlistment in the drug war. In a brief conversation, Rosalyn Weinman,
NBC's executive vice president for content policy and East Coast
entertainment, said that the drug office did not exercise "script
approval," but conceded that there had been conversations about broad
issues or "specific concerns." Other NBC officials declined comment. Two
other NBC executives implicitly confirmed the deals, however.

Senior management and public relations officials at each of the other four
networks involved last season -- ABC, CBS, the WB and Fox -- were
contacted, but offered little in the way of substantive comment.

While no current Fox executive would comment on the network's cooperation
with the government, Rob Dwek, the network's former executive vice
president of comedy and drama series, maintained that the financial
incentives have "no impact on what we do creatively -- it would have no
effect on the direction of a show ... It's not noticeable, it doesn't hurt
the quality of our product, and it allows us to be responsible."

An ABC public relations exec, speaking anonymously, confirmed the network's
participation in the deal. "Halfway through the year ['98-'99 season],
ONDCP said we can meet the match ... if programming was appropriate. I
don't know the month. But it was after setting up the [matching ads] schedule."

CBS president Leslie Moonves had nothing to say. A CBS spokesman said
simply, "CBS is proud to be working with the government in regard to the
war on drugs."

Michael Mandelker, executive VP of network sales for UPN, sounded
enthusiastic about the program. Speaking this summer, he said he'd "already
started a dialog with programming. Somewhere there will be shows that qualify."

Mandelker said he urged UPN entertainment president Tom Nunan to drum up
support for anti-drug messages with producers, asking him: "Is there a way
to have these kinds of story lines as you talk to producers?" Mandelker
adds, "I imagine ONDCP will look at a couple of scripts in the first year
to make sure our interpretation is theirs." He stated further, referring to
UPN's strategy: "Tom approaches the producers. We [sales] can't do anything
for them. Tom can pick up a show."

Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin, vice chairman Ted Turner and the WB head
office all declined comment.

The drug office's campaign is only just approaching full flower.

The teen-friendly WB (home to "7th Heaven" and the since-cancelled "The
Wayans Bros.") has, for example, "significantly" expanded its anti-drug
messages, one insider notes, with the drug office more than doubling its WB
buy this season. The WB had initial plans for "at least five" programs with
anti-drug content counting as a match, the source adds.

"Last year was the program's first year," he points out, "and a lot of
companies didn't understand the match." He predicts the practice will only
increase as the networks come to understand it as an effective way to free
up valuable ad time otherwise sold at half-price.

[sidebar]

WASHINGTON SCRIPT DOCTORS

How The Government Rewrote An Episode Of The WB's "Smart Guy."

By Daniel Forbes

Jan. 13, 2000 | Like much of network television aimed at a youthful
audience, "Smart Guy," a WB network sitcom that went on the air in April
1997 and was cancelled this past spring, was full of lessons about growing
up. It told the story of T.J. Henderson, played by Tahj Mowry, a genius of
sorts who finds himself in high school at the age of 10, grappling with the
pressures that beset his older peers.

But in the case of one episode, the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy (ONDCP) thought "Smart Guy's" moral instruction could be
made even more explicit -- and, with the active cooperation of the show's
producers, the government proceeded to do just that.

The original script of the episode, which eventually aired May 19, 1999,
placed T.J. at a kids-only party, where he encounters two older boys he'd
known before he skipped several grades in school. As first conceived, the
two boys were the life of the party, their coolness evidenced among other
things by their precocious ability to score some beer.

They convince an impressed T.J. to indulge. He returns to the party
sloshed, makes a fool of himself and spills a soda all over a girl he's
trying to dazzle. Hung over the next day, he compounds his sins by lying to
his father about his condition. Later, his new friends drop by with some
peppermint schnapps. Dad walks in on their debaucheries, and all hell
breaks loose.

The episode was written primarily by freelance film and television writer
Steve Young. Young first pitched the alcohol-themed story in 1997. It was
rejected, he believes, at least in part because Disney (the show's partial
owner) recoiled from having its young character involved with booze. But
well over a year later, Young suddenly received a phone call from "Smart
Guy" executive producer Bob Young (no relation), who told him, "Remember
that show we said we're never going to do? We're doing it."

The booze-themed script was revived after WB senior VP for programming John
Litvack suggested a drinking or drugs episode to the "Smart Guy's"
producers. (While most of the shows that the drug-policy office influences
deal with drugs, the office permits about 10 percent of them to be
alcohol-related.)

Says "Smart Guy" creator Danny Kallis: "The WB came to us and asked if we'd
consider doing a drugs or drinking show." Tahj Mowry's mother would have
objected to a show concerning drugs. But fortunately, the producers had on
hand Steve Young's previously rejected script.

Once the script was resurrected, Kallis recalls that the WB "put us in
touch with the White House, with Alan Levitt [the drug-policy point man for
the media campaign]." "Smart Guy" producer Young says that show staffers
spoke to three or four outsiders on "the most effective way to reach
teens," including Levitt and other social-marketing experts whom Levitt
referred them to.

ONDCP and its consultants offered "a few dictates," Young says. No mention
of beer brand names. T.J. had to be "clearly inebriated" and the negative
consequences of drinking had to be emphasized, including -- worse even than
T.J.'s embarrassment with the girl -- his breach of trust with his father.
And father and son had to (eventually) have a heart-to-heart talk.

Writer Young recalls that the scenes in which T.J. is counseled by his
father were crafted with the government consultants' input. He says the
show's producers were "concerned that we didn't say anything that diverges
from" the consultants' paradigm.

Among the consultants Levitt steered Kallis, Young and their writers to was
George Carey, president of Just Kid Inc. of Stamford, Conn., an expert on
effective youth marketing. Carey says he consulted with ONDCP on "a couple
of shows." Around last February, a couple of months after the decision to
revive the beer episode, Carey participated in a conference call with the
producers of "Smart Guy." He says, "The holding company [the WB] was
looking for ways to fulfill the match" -- i.e. make the show palatable to
the drug czar's office.

In that phone conference, Carey delineated a few more specific themes dear
to the drug-policy office's heart: Parents need to take an active role, not
just assume kids can handle these issues on their own; "resistance skills,"
that is, saying no to drug or alcohol inducements in a face-saving way, are
crucial; and, as always, the overall negative consequences of drugs and
under-age alcohol use.

Producer Young recalls two or three other ONDCP contractors augmenting
Carey's ministrations to "Smart Guy." By the time everyone was done shaping
the script, it had changed significantly. The two older boys were turned
into goofy and unappealing clowns, one of whom T.J. remembers from the
"slow-reading class." Instead of trying to ingratiate himself with a couple
of winners, as the original script had it, T.J. finds himself dragged down
to their inferior level. A second drug-policy office contractor who worked
on the script says, "We showed that they were losers and put them in a
utility room [rather than out in the main party]. That was not in the
original script."

Asked whether it's proper to have government consultants shaping a TV
program's scripts, WB programming chief Litvack says, "Sure, absolutely.
It's a good idea if he knows more than we do."