PROBLEMS WITH SELF REGULATION

Lisa Flythe

As far as I am aware no cable channel had written commercial clearance guidelines for children’s television until Nickelodeon issued guidelines last year. Without guidelines, the self-regulation of commercials is a problematic exercise at best. Advertisers and cable channels can refer to
the guidelines issued by the Children’s Advertising Review Board of the Better Business Bureau. However an advertiser can understandably refuse to submit their commercial for a review to a network that has no formal written guidelines. Or an advertiser can exploit the situation by submitting a deceptive commercial a day or two prior to air leaving the
channel with little recourse other than losing revenue.

Nor do advertisers seek out clearance review from channels that do not have a review process. I was recently told by a former agency rep that a major children’s advertiser berated their agency’s clearance person for submitting child-directed commercials for clearance to a new children’s outlet because the channel had not stated that they had a review process.
The agency was put on notice that they would be liable for all costs if the channel refused to run the commercials.

If few cable channels have children’s commercial guidelines, and even fewer have a commercial clearance process, then advertisers run what they want. Commercials that do not stay within the guidelines are more likely to be exploitative or misleading. The problem is compounded because
broadcasters with written guidelines will run these spots. They are virtually forced to waive their guidelines, without formal review or assessment, or lose revenue because advertisers are unwilling or unable to craft guideline-friendly spots.

Even with written guidelines, the self-regulatory model flounders because there are no consequences to violations of the guidelines and the guidelines are out of sync. Non-compliant spots can take many forms--over-glamorize product, depict dangerous and imitable actions, or
in some manner violate industry guidelines. Given the intense competition for advertising dollars, these spots run--to the detriment of the audience.

The Children’s Advertising Review Unit of the Better Business Bureau takes action against violations of their guidelines. While they are a great and dedicated team, they have to review enormous numbers of advertisements and now also websites. By the time they take action, the
commercial has usual finished running as scheduled and been viewed by millions of children. It is also worth noting that CARU has merged their academic advisory board with their business advisory board, into a single
advisory board, and out of 22 members, only 4 are academicians--the remaining members are advertisers and their advertising agencies.
 

The Children’s Television Act of 1990 states the number of maximum minutes of commercials allowed in children’s television. It defines what constitutes a commercial. To remain in compliance, a channel cannot run a
commercial for a character or product in or adjacent to a program in which the character product appears. Given the deluge of multiple product and brand spots, it is a intense and time consuming proposition to remain
compliant as the FCC considers even a brief glimpse a violation.
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As for the existing industry-wide children’s commercial guidelines, here are a couple of the noteworthy inconsistencies:

A toy commercial has to be composed of 2/3 product demonstration and only 1/3 fantasy. But video games and systems do not have to meet this requirement. For Nickelodeon I made up a rule requiring at least 5
seconds of gameplay footage to ameliorate the unfair advantage given to this product category.

There is only one specific guideline for the advertisement of food products. In an advertisement for a breakfast product, there has to be a :03 second‘ balanced breakfast’ shot. This balanced breakfast, which was devised in the early 70s, consists of the breakfast product, a glass of
juice, a serving of milk, a piece of bread and a piece of fruit.

The vast majority of child-directed commercials for food products like sodas, sports drinks, candy, fast food, are presented without a nutritional context.

Fast food ads show food because guidelines prohibit the advertisement of premiums only.

The rise of cable television has exposed the inadequacies of the self-regulation model of commercial clearances particularly on children‘s television. Better enforcement of existing guidelines would help minimize
the exploitation of children. But broadcasters also need to call upon the academic community for support in reviewing and assessing these guidelines for real progress to be made. Most importantly this must be an
opaque process that parents, educators and officials can understand and assess.

A final cautionary note: there are no industry guidelines for the latest advertising venues like videocassettes, video/computer games or advertising techniques like product placements and viral marketing.

Lisa Flythe(actionlisa@juno.com) worked for MTV Networks for 13 years; her last position with them was as Director of Commercial Clearances. Her department was charged with screening all commercials for Nickelodeon and designated categories of commercials for MTV, MTV2, VH1, Nick-at-Nite, TVLand, CMT, and TNN. Additionally she developed written commercial guidelines for Nickelodeon.