Gee, I hate to kick Disney when its down, but they’re just asking for it when they start putting the licensed-character gang on my eggs:

Bonus Disney links:

Disney’s contributions toward the sexualization of girls are okay, up to a point: That’s Enough, Disney Girls looks at the inherent problems of being a young female Disney star.

And for even more Disney fun, review the 9 Most Racist Disney Characters (h/t Sociological Images).

The economic pinch couldn’t come at a worse time for those of us with children expecting a normal gift-laden holiday. Tomorrow, Friday, I’ll be interviewed on how to handle the onslaught of holiday advertising by Minneapolis Community and Technical College librarian Ginny Heinrich. MCTC’s BlogTalkRadio show, Our View from the Park, begins at 11:00 a.m. Central time. It’s a call-in show, so if you have questions or just want to say hi, call (646) 200-4753.

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.

The FTC released the results of its research on food marketing to kids, Marketing Food To Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation: A Federal Trade Commission Report To Congress (pdf).

The report recommends more of the same food industry self-regulation; critics maintain that self-regulation just doesn’t work.

Michele Simon writes:

Most importantly, the FTC should be calling on the food industry to stop marketing to children, period. If a child under the age of 8 does not have the cognitive capacity to understand that she is being targeted commercially, then how can any marketing to young children be ethical? Even older kids, while they can understand “persuasive intent,” are still unable to resist the power of marketing. It’s entirely possible that the FTC recommendations, if followed, could result in more, not less food marketing to kids. The agency is essentially encouraging the nation’s most aggressive food marketers to keep it up, as long as it’s for the “right” foods, however that gets defined.

Kids should not be taught to eat carrots and oranges because SpongeBob or even Elmo says so. Rather, they should eat when they are hungry, just as adults should. We cannot depend on marketers to make kids eat right. If the food industry just stopped targeting kids with billions of dollars worth of sophisticated unhealthy food messages, parents’ jobs would get a whole lot easier.

I recommend reading Michele Simon’s entire diary entry at Daily Kos.

CCFC co-founder Diane Levin and Jean Kilbourne (of Killing Us Softly fame) talked about their new book, So Sexy So Soon, on the Today Show:

I had the pleasure of seeing both women (as well as Michele Simon) at the last CCFC Summit. I was even able to tell Jean Kilbourne (while she was trapped in line with me waiting for the bathroom) how her book Can’t Buy My Love was instrumental in motivating me to finally quit smoking.

And on that note, the House voted to allow the FDA to regulate tobacco. And by “regulate,” we mean crack down on tobacco marketing and sales to kids. The Senate has not yet voted; President Bush may veto:

The reasoning is positively Orwellian. “FDA regulates drugs and devices by approving products after weighing the benefits against the risks of a product,” the White House policy statement on the bill says. “In contrast, there is no such thing as a cigarette in which the benefits outweigh the risks. The use of tobacco products is inherently unsafe.”

Taken to its logical conclusion, this would mean that the government should ban cigarettes, not stop at merely regulating them. The only other translation possible is that the White House has concluded cigarettes are so dangerous the government should do nothing about them.

Which reminds me: I’ve got tickets to the Daily Show when it’s in town for the RNC. Can’t wait. 

Read also: Big Tobacco’s Guinea Pigs: How an Unregulated Industry Experiments on America’s Kids and Consumers

Target, and Lauredhel’s Toy-Catalogue Annex of the Bechdel Test:

I finally got around to reading the bumper Target Toy Sale catalogue.

And it’s just as pinkly sickening as you’d expect.

Taking a Stand on Ronald McDonald at Preschool:

Dear Director,

My son will not be attending school next Monday because of the scheduled visit of Ronald McDonald. 

Which?:  Food companies ‘bamboozle’ children with marketing for junk food:

We’re not against treats and we’re not against marketing, but we are against irresponsible company practices and hollow company commitments.

Next week: watch for an appearance by Parents for Ethical Marketing on a podcast produced by The Guardian.

And no, I didn’t do it. As much as I love culture jamming, I won’t participate until the kids are grown and out of the house.

Joseph Jaffe of Jaffe Juice uses the “snow-angel” ad and Target’s response to blogger Amy Jussel as an example of a major social media mistake.

Watch Social Media Mistakes of Five Big Marketers. Target is featured beginning around 4:30.

Jaffe also acknowledges the colossal mistakes of Sprint, Sony, T-Mobile, and Starbucks.

From AdAge:

Nothing aggravates blogger Joseph Jaffe more than marketers that employ fakery, manipulation and heavy-handed lawyers in their social-media interactions with consumers. Author of the books “Life After the 30-Second Spot” and “Join the Conversation,” Jaffe is the head of the marketing consulting company Crayon. He also runs the blog JaffeJuice, which is No. 26 on Ad Age’s Power 150 ranking of the top media and marketing blogs. This video contains eight minutes of his remarks at the recent Association of National Advertisers’ Integrated Marketing Conference.