Don’t Open Floodgates With Shoe-Character Cartoon, Groups Tell FCC
Don’t open the floodgates for more TV programmers to start airing shows based on cartoon characters that hawk goods, by allowing a Viacom cable channel to keep running a show based on characters sell kids’ sneakers, a dozen groups asked the FCC. Those groups and Free Press backed a request by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood that the commission find the Zevo-3 show that began running Oct. 11 on Nicktoons violates the Children’s Television Act. Opposing a petition for declaratory ruling was the cable programmer, Skechers -- the sneaker maker whose Z-Strap, Kewl Breeze and Elastika characters are on the show -- and several ad industry groups. How the FCC treats the petition may show how, under Chairman Julius Genachowski, it will tackle the issue of increased commercialism on kids media (CD Sept 23 p6).
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"If the Commission allows Zevo-3 to air, we expect that there will be a significant increase in the marketing of junk food to children via the use of commercial spokescharacters in program content,” said the Food Marketing Workgroup. Members include the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Children Now and the Robert Wood Johnson Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity. “Spokescharacters are essentially trademarks, and their presence in media should be treated as advertising these trademarks. The Commission should make clear that such programs violate commercial time limits; violate the Commission’s policies on host-selling; and are contrary to the public interest.”
"The entire Zevo-3 program is half hour program-length commercial in violation of the advertising limits set out in the Children’s Television Act” and under FCC rules, Free Press said. “It is patently unreasonable to expect children to distinguish between these character’s roles as advertising icons and their roles in Zevo-3.” All the comments were filed in docket 10-190.
Three ad-industry groups said the show adheres to the Act and doesn’t violate FCC limits on the amount of time shows targeted at kids can devote to ads. “At its core, the Petition wants Zevo-3 banned based not because of the show itself, but based on the circumstances of its creation, and because Skechers may get an `advertising boost’ from the mere existence of the show,” said the Association of National Advertisers, American Advertising Federation and American Association of Advertising Agencies. “Characters ranging from Peter Pan to the Smurfs have appeared in books, as toys, and in advertising for over a century. Subjects of children’s stories have been adopted as commercial icons, just as characters originating in advertisements have captured the imagination of program creators and their audience. Which incarnation comes first is beside the point."
The petitioner asks the commission to ignore “decades” of FCC precedent in which similar requests have been rejected, said Viacom’s MTV Networks, which runs the Nicktoons channel. “The program will not include any “commercials for any Skechers products and none of the characters featured in Zevo-3 will be used to sell any product or promote any service during a Zevo-3 episode or during any commercials aired within an episode,” MTV said. “The characters that appear in Zevo-3 are wholly divorced from their commercial manifestations in Skechers’ promotional materials."
The three primary cartoon characters have been popular with kids in other media, including in comic books, and in Zevo-3 they get their super powers not from Skechers but from the “Zevo compound,” Senior Vice President Kristen Van Cott of the sneaker maker said in a declaration accompanying the company’s filing. “Skechers’ goal was to produce a family show with good entertainment value and positive messages for children; the show is seen within the company as an entertainment property, not a marketing property,” she wrote. “Skechers’ goal from the start has been to feature these popular characters in a show that is both educational and entertaining. The plot of Zevo-3 will center on issues facing children and teenagers, such as school, jealousy, friendship, peer pressure, and family issues.”