CAN 'TV IMPROVE Us?

Article 8 CAN 'TV IMPROVE Us? B Y J ANE ROSENZWEIG I t’s eight o’clock Wednesday evening and a Or might he glean from prime-time dramas rumor is circulating at a small-town high and sitcoms the behavior and attitudes that school in Massachusetts that a student named he would do welI to adopt if he intended to Jack is gay Jack’s friends-one of whom is a go native in America? E-year-old girl who has been sexually active This is not an idle question-not because since she was 13, and another of whom has a aliens might be watching American television, mother who has recently committed adul- but because people are, particularly irnpres- tery-assure him it would be okay with them sionable children and teenagers. In a time if he were, but admit their relief when he says when 98 percent of U.S. households own at he isn’t. An hour later, in San Francisco, a least one television set-a set which is turned woman named Julia is being beaten by her on for an average of nearly seven hours a boyfriend. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, a day-the degree to which people learn from young stripper who has given birth out of and emulate the behavior of the characters wedlock learns that her own mother locked they see on TV is an academic cottage indus- her in a basement when she was three years try Some evidence does support the wide- old, an experience that she thinks may explain spread belief that children and teenagers are her inability to love her own child. affected by violence and other antisocial be- A typical evening in America? If a visitor havior in the media. When Dan Quayle made from another planet had turned on the televi- his infamous comments in 1992 about Mur- sion (specifically the WB and Fox networks) phy Brown having a baby out of wedlock, he on the evening of Wednesday, February 10, was merely doing what numerous concerned 1999 with the aim of parents, ethnic groups, religious organiza- learning about our soci- tions, gun-control advocates, and others were ety he would likely already doing-blaming television for encour- have concluded that it aging certain types of behavior. is made up pretty ex- clusively of photogenic But if television contributes to poor behav- young people with ior, might it also be a vehicle for encouraging disintegrating nuclear good behavior? In 1988, Jay Wmsten, a pro- families and liberal atti- fessor at the Harvard School of Public Health tudes about sex. It’s ob- and the director of the school’s Center for viously not an accurate Health Communication, conceived a plan to picture, but what might use television to introduce a new social con- our visitor have learned cept-the “designated driver”-to North from the programs he America. Shows were already dealing with watched? Would all the the topic of drinking, Wmsten reasoned, so sex, violence, and pa- why not add a line of dialogue here and there thology he saw teach about not driving drunk? With the assistance him antisocial behavior? of then-NBC chairman Grant ‘linker, Winsten Reprinted with permission from The American Prospezf, Issue 45, July/August 1999, pp. 58-63. 0 1999, The Am&n Prapect, 5 Broad St. Boston, h4A 02109. All rights reserved. 8. Can TV Improve Us? met with more than 250 writers, producers, Traffic and Safety Administration have stated and executives over six months, trying to sell that the only way to explain the size of the them on his designated driver idea. decline in drinking-related traffic fatalities is Winsten’s idea worked; the “designated the designated driver campaign. driver” is now common parlance across all Following the success of the Harvard Alco- segments of American society and in 1991 hol Project’s campaign, various other advo- won entry into a Webster’s dictionary for the cacy groups-the majority of them with first time. An evaluation of the campaign in progressive leanings-have begun to work 1994 revealed that the designated driver within the existing structures of the television “message” had aired on 160 prime-time industry in a similar fashion, attempting to in- shows in four seasons and had been the main fluence programming in a positive direction. topic of twenty-five 30-minute or 60-minute In truth, there are limits to the effect any pub- episodes. More important, these airings ap- lic interest group can have on what gets pear to have generated tangible results. In broadcast. Commercial television’s ultimate 1989, the year after the “designated driver” concerns are Nielsen ratings and advertisers. was invented, a Gallup poll found that 67 per- Thus there will always be a hefty quantity of cent of adults had noted its appearance on sex and violence on network television. As Al- network television. What’s more, the cam- fred Schneider, the former vice president of paign seems to have influenced adult behav- policy and standards for ABC, asserts in his ior: polls conducted by the Roper contribution to the forthcoming anthology Organization in 1989 and 1991 found sign& Advocacy Groups and the Television Industry, cantly increasing awareness and use of desig- While [television] can raise the consciousness nated drivers. By 1991, 37 percent of all U.S. of the nation, it should not be considered as adults claimed to have refrained from drink- the major vehicle for social relief or altering ing at least once in order to serve.as a desig- behavior.” But why not? MAUDEY~ ABORTION Throughout the first decades of television, advocacy groups generally tried to work against television rather than with it. Their strategies for changing “offensive” television content consisted of boycotts, letter-writing campaigns, nated driver, up from 29 percent in 1989. In and protests to the networks Standards and 1991, 52 percent of adults younger than 30 Practices departments. When issue-oriented had served as designated drivers, suggesting comedies and dramas began to proliferate that the campaign was having greatest success during the 1960s and 197Os, groups dedicated with its target audience. specifically to lobbying television began to In 1988 there were 23,626 drunk driving fa- form. In 1973, for example, pressure from Jew- talities. By 1997 the number was 16,189. While ish groups led Bridget Loves Bernie, a CBS the Harvard Alcohol Project acknowledges show that portrayed an interfaith marriage, to that some of this decline is due to new laws, be canceled after a single season. That same stricter anti-drunk driving enforcement, and year a group called the Gay Activist Alliance other factors, it claims that many of the 50,000 staged a sit-in at ABC to complain about por- Lives saved by the end of 1998 were saved be- trayals of gay characters on Marcus We@, cause of the designated driver campaign. (The M.D. In some instances, protesters came from television campaign was only a part of the both sides of the political spectrum. A recur- overall campaign; there were strong commu- ring gay character portrayed by Billy Crystal nity-level and public service components as on ABC’s Soap beginning in the late 1970s was well.) As evidence, the project cites statistics the object of protests by both gay advocacy showing the rapid decline in traffic fatalities groups and the religious right, a situation re- per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in the a prised recently by Ellen on the same network. years during and immediately following the But traditional protest tactics have rarely most intensive period of the designated driver met with more than modest success and have campaign. Officials at the National Highway had little, if any, long-term impact on what 43 1 +Z* LIVING WITH MEDIA we see on television. (There are some key ex- remains the model for advocacy and public ceptions: lobbying by Action for Children’s health groups seeking to inject their ideas and Television, for example, a grassroots organi- values into the public consciousness. Winsten zation founded in 1968, was integral to the estimates that there are now at least 150 passage of the Children’s Television Act of groups vying for Hollywood’s attention in 1990, which paved the way for more educa- some form or another. Because there are so tional television.) Robert Pekumy a former many groups competing for influence, it’s writer for Ham Days who is now a professor hard to imagine any one concept having the of communication at Florida State University influence the designated driver did. For ex- has done research showing that boycotts and ample, the Environmental Media Association, protests of television have had little effect. He founded in 1989 to mobilize Hollywood points out that the current boycott of Disney around environmental issues, has not met by Southern Baptists has had negligible im- with the same success, despite backing from pact, and he cites an instance where a boycott industry leaders like Lear and Tom Cruise. It’s of the Fox network’s Married With Children ac- easy to build a show around drunk driving; tually led to an increase in the show’s ratings. itls harder to build a compelling half-hour drama around a hole in the ozone layer, or the importance of recycling. w orking with television, instead of pro- testing against it, has been more effective. After attending meetings of the Washington-based FELICITYS VIRGINITY Population Institute in 1971 and 1972, the pro- ducer Norman Lear was inspired to address But other groups remain optimistic, emulat- population issues.

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