I would so love to attend this FTC forum in D.C. that I am almost willing to snack on [fill in name of food industry sponsor]’s delicious products all day long. While standing in the front of the room. And passing out coupons.  

FTC Announces Agenda for December 15 Forum to Explore Food Marketing to Children
Will Address Developments in Self-Regulation; Report on Recommended Nutritional Standards

The Federal Trade Commission announced the agenda and speakers for its December 15, 2009 public forum titled “Sizing Up Food Marketing and Childhood Obesity.”

The forum participants will present new research on the impact of various food advertising techniques on children and discuss the statutory and constitutional issues surrounding governmental regulation of food marketing. Panelists also will address the food and entertainment industries’ self-regulatory efforts and implementation of the recommendations in the FTC’s 2008 report, Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation. In addition, the Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children – comprised of representatives from the FTC, Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and U.S. Department of Agriculture – will report on the status of recommended nutritional standards for foods marketed to children, followed by a Town Hall discussion.

An agenda for the forum is available. Updated information will be posted as it becomes available.

Read the rest of the press release.

Princess Culture Marches On at Gamine Expedition. The latest research and commentary by author Sara Grimes on princess culture and kids:

. . . the connections between princess-style narcissism and subjectivities of consumption is fascinating, by which I am referring to the bit about girls being taught that they are the “centre of the world” but also that their position as such is mediated through (or even dependent on) the consumption and display of commodity goods (clothes, accessories, etc.).

BPA Industry Manipulates Scientific Studies at MomsRising.org. It’s a sad truth: ” . . . anyone with an agenda can find research to support that agenda.” Sadder that industries fund “research” in order to continue meeting their profit margins at the expense of our health. Sound familiar, Minnesotans? Last year our Governor Pawlenty vetoed legislation to remove harmful chemicals from children’s toys based on his review of such research. Fortunately, then-President Bush signed federal legislation into law shortly after that.

New Legislation Regulates Tobacco Marketing. We’ll see how it is enforced. From The Center for Media and Child Health.

Are you on Facebook? So is Parents for Ethical Marketing! And did you know that you can start a discussion, post links, comments, and events and share your thoughts about marketing to kids on our Facebook page? Now, you can also read blog posts from Corporate Babysitter. It’s a great place to share with other members. Please join us!

You have some extra time to let the FCC know how you feel about embedded advertising in children’s television – the reply comment period has been extended until November 17.

A recent reply comment sums up the issue pretty well:

both as a parent (of a 6 year-old and a 1 week-old) and as a professional psychologist and neuroscientist, it’s obvious that commercial content is not separated from program content in the minds of young children. Please act to confirm, enforce and require the mandated separation of commercials from any programming whose audience is likely to include children under 8, as a minimum.

In other FCC news, Commissioner Adelstein has called for a ban on interactive advertising targeting children.

Image courtesy johnb2008

This is our last chance to speak up about embedded advertising is children’s television.

As part of the larger issue of new rules for embedded advertising (or product placement) in television programs, the FCC is considering what to do about children’s programming. (Background here and here.)

The FCC accepted inital public comments and is now accepting reply comments. Reply comments are due this Wednesday, October 22.

Here’s the deal: The Children’s Television Act of 1990 states that during children’s programming, there must a separation between the commercials and the program (important because, as we know, children “below the ages of 4–5 years do not consistently distinguish program from commercial content, even when program/commercial separation devices . . . are used.” And even then, “most children younger than 7–8 years of age do not recognize the persuasive intent of commercial appeals.”)

Therefore embedded advertising by its nature violates the Children’s Television Act.

So all the FCC needs to do is clarify that embedded advertising in children’s programming violates existing laws and then enforce those laws.

Ask the FCC to enforce the Children’s Television Act of 1990 by sending a Reply to Comments. Instructions are at the end of this post.

In the comments submitted by the Campaign for a Commerical-Free Childhood (full, summary), they also recommend:

that the FCC prohibit embedded advertising in primetime broadcast programming during those hours when children are likely to be in the audience.

We’re looking at you, American Idol.

I reviewed the comments — all 166 of them. More than eighty-five percent supported changes to current product placement disclosure rules (for adult programming). Most of those comments (ninety-four percent) came from individuals. Of the comments that supported leaving the rules alone, eight out of the ten came from groups, not individuals, including the American Advertising Federation, CBS, Fox Entertainment, the MPAA, NBC, Viacom, and of course, Disney.

Commenters that supported changes to the rules included the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Children’s Media Policy Coalition, the Writer’s Guild of America-West, the Screen Actors Guild, and N.E. Marsden.

I was especially interested in the comment from Korby Siamis:

. . . I was fortunate to have a career as a writer and producer for over 25 years. I am proud of the shows I worked on, shows that left a significant imprint on American culture. I was one of the original four writers on The Cosby Show. I was a writer and producer for Murphy Brown for eight years, ultimately serving as Executive Producer. . . .

During my career, there was a clear distinction between art and advertising. On occasions that we used a product name, we would receive notices from the network Standards and Practices department. If the reference were necessary for the joke, it would stay. Otherwise we would take it out.

. . . The concept that we would ever have been expected to include product names or usage in our writing would have been beyond ludicrous, and would have been strongly fought as the worst kind of assault on our creative process. There is no quicker way to strip writers of their integrity than to make them answer to the dollar instead of their muse.

Now my television experience is that of a mother, concerned with what her children watch. I can (and do) determine which series are appropriate for my children. But the use of product placement is a more insidious force that challenges my parenting. The distinction between entertainment and endorsement is lost on my children. Short of watching every show they watch and talking to them whenever the unexpected product placement occurs, my ability to monitor this unwanted input is undercut.

How did this change take place? Why is such devolution allowed to occur? I strongly urge the FCC to use its power to reverse this trend.

Hers was one of only a handful of comments that directly addressed the issue of children’s programming. Add your voice.

It’s easy to file a comment. It doesn’t have to be formal or lengthy or especially eloquent. Go to the FCC website, type in Proceeding number 08-90, and select Reply to Comments for number 12, Document Type.

Cross-posted from Tracee Sioux at Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me.

“Kids close your eyes!”

How many times do you find yourself trying to protect your children from harmful and destructive images while watching family television?

Two years ago, while watching television, I was assaulted with an image of a woman wearing a see-through nightgown, nipples protruding and visible, erotic soft lighting, floating in a bathtub. It was intentionally erotic, except that she had been violently and bloodily murdered and this erotic woman was, in fact, dead.

“What the heck is going on?” I thought. “Why are my children and I being subjected to this kind of sexually violent imagery in a commercial?”

So, I wrote the FCC. The Federal Communications Commission used to be the people who governed our airwaves. They used to control when and what was allowed to air during times when children were expected to be viewing television. Remember when they wouldn’t let radio stations play George Michael’s, I Want Your Sex?

Many months later they wrote back.

“Each network or television station has control over what it airs during commercials. You’ll have to write each network to complain about every commercial you feel is inappropriate,” they informed me.

“What? Who made that stupid rule?” I wanted to know.

And now that I’ve read So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids, by Diane Levin, Ph.D, and Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D, I know who made that stupid rule.

(more…)

Guest blogger Katie Rojas-Jahn is the program assistant for the Food and Health program at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and for the Healthy Legacy Coalition.

With so many products available to consumers today, how do we know that what we’re buying is safe? Most of us assume that products have been tested by someone, somewhere along the way, to make sure they won’t cause us harm.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case for many of the consumer products on the shelf today. 

The reason is that most chemicals used in consumer goods don’t have to be tested for their safety and the federal government is often unwilling or unable to take action to prevent harm before it happens.

The 2008 legislative session provided an important opportunity to address product safety at the Minnesota Legislature. More than two-thirds of the legislature supported a bill that would have made homes across the state a little bit safer.

But as it turns out, eliminating toxic chemicals from consumer products was not a high priority on the list for Governor Tim Pawlenty, who, despite strong bi-partisan support, vetoed the bill once it reached his desk.

The Public Health Omnibus bill (SF651) contained two provisions important to protecting children’s health. The bill would have phased out phthalates, a hormone-disrupting chemical contained in PVC plastic and countless other children’s products: rubber duckies, vinyl bibs, teething rings, and more. The second provision would have eliminated a toxic flame retardant, known as “deca,” from home electronics, mattresses, and textiles.

Both of these chemicals can be harmful to health, especially to children.

Phthalates are known hormone disrupters and have been linked to adverse health effects, including reproductive problems, the early onset of puberty in girls, and disruption to the male reproductive tract.

Deca is a developmental neurotoxin that is chemically similar to another group of harmful chemicals banned in the 1970s: PCBs. Exposure to deca in low doses has been linked to brain, liver and thyroid damage as well as hormone disruption.

Who would have thought that phasing out chemicals that can cause adverse effects would be such a challenge? Representatives from the American Chemistry Council, the Toy Industry Association, and the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum — all representing large chemical and manufacturing companies — were a continuous presence at hearings for the Minnesota bill to make sure that it was.

In fact, the opposition lobby was so strong that the bill’s phthalates phase-out originally included the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA), another hormone disruptor found in baby bottles and sippy cups.  Despite overwhelming public support, BPA was later stricken from the bill in hopes of making it more palatable for the Governor Pawlenty.

The chemical industry took on the same tactics as the tobacco companies did in the 1990s: they created a sense of “manufactured uncertainty” around the science. In other words, they made their own science, didn’t have it reviewed by other scientists, and guess what? Their science shows no health effects from exposure to these chemicals.

(more…)

From MomsRising.org:

Right now, a House/Senate Conference Committee is meeting to finalize the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act (CPSC) Act which will strengthen our nation’s protections against toxic toys.  We have a critical window in the next two weeks to add the Feinstein Amendment to the CPSC, restricting the use of six toxic phthalates in children’s toys. . . . 

Our concerns are justified: Hundreds of independent, peer-reviewed scientific studies that have been generated since the 1970s link phthalate exposure to serious health effects including reduced testosterone levels, lowered sperm counts, early puberty in girls, and genital defects in baby boys. . . .  

The Feinstein Senate amendment would prohibit the manufacture, sale and distribution of children’s products that contain phthalates and protect laws enacted by the states to more strictly regulate phthalates in toys and other product categories.  The European Union and 14 other countries have already passed similar phthalate bans as have California, Washington and Vermont. . . .

The opposition to the phthalate ban is manufacturing doubt – just like the tobacco industry did 30 years ago — around science that has been firmly established by independent scientists who don’t have a financial stake in the outcome of their studies.  What’s more, it’s not the toy industry or retailers that are lobbying the hardest against this important children’s health measure:  It’s Exxon Mobil – one of the world’s largest producers of DINP – the primary plasticizer used to make soft plastic kids toys. And it’s trade association – the American Chemistry Council.  Exxon made $40 billion in profits last year – more than any other U.S. company. 

You’d think that Exxon would step up and do what is right, but again, they do need to improve on their recent $40 billion profit. Every single voice helps. Please take a moment today to express your support for the Feinstein Amendment.

Sick and tired of the product placements seeping into everything your child watches on television?

So is the Campaign for a Commerical-Free Childhood, who got together other concerned organizations — children’s media watchdogs, public health advocates, consumer groups, and child advocacy groups, including Parents for Ethical Marketing — and wrote to the FCC asking the commission to adopt a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) regarding product placement and integrated marketing on television.

“The diversity and breadth of this coalition reflects the growing concern that marketers are hijacking television content and foisting branded propaganda on an unsuspecting public,” said [CCFC Director] Dr. [Susan] Linn.  “The rise of embedded advertising deprives parents of the ability to protect their children from unwanted marketing influences, threatens public health, and undermines democracy.” – Press release

Some facts from the letter:

– 69 percent of parents are concerned that their children were exposed to too many ads in TV programming;

– TV product placement revenue grew 33.7 percent to $2.9 billion and product placement occurrences rose 13 percent in 2007, with 25,950 placements in the top ten shows;

– Cable programming is even more saturated, with 163,737 occurrences in the top ten shows;

– On American Idol alone, there were 4,151 product placements in the first 38 episodes this year, and branded content jumped 19 percent to a total of 545 minutes, or 14 minutes per episode. 

By adopting the NPRM, parents, caregivers, and advocates will have the opportunity to let the FCC know what they think of integrated marketing; the FCC is required to take those comments into account when they consider new regulations.

Of course, some people think that, while it’s okay to look into the problem, nothing should really be done about it. They would like to see the FCC issue a Notice of Inquiry, which would only require an investigation. Nothing else. Let’s see, who would want to continue turning television shows into infomercials? I guess that would be the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), the American Advertising Federation (AAF) and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).

But not to worry. Remember, one of the FCC commissioners just stated publicly that the FCC should issue the NPRM.

And when the FCC adopts the NPRM and it becomes open for public comment, I’ll let you know.

See also: Timeline: FCC and Integrated Marketing

UPDATE: FCC Is Urged To Clamp Down On Product Placement at Marketing Daily

Photo courtesy AndrewEich