The row over vodka commercials on NBC only serves to illustrate the contradictions
when it comes to America, alcohol and TV
By SIMON HOUPT
Globe and Mail (Toronto) Monday, January 28, 2002 - Print
Edition, Page R1
NEW YORK -- Sometimes television is so bad it can drive you to drink.
Now, there is something else on TV pushing viewers to the bottle: For the
first time in more than 50 years, hard-liquor advertising is airing on
a U.S. broadcast network.
Last month, NBC began accepting ads for Smirnoff vodka, marking the
first time such ads are appearing on broadcast networks since the programmers
adopted a voluntary ban on the products shortly after the Second World
War. Almost immediately after NBC's announcement, an avalanche of attacks
came crashing down onto NBC's peacock tail, sending the billion-dollar
network into a fetal position.
On Jan. 17, after the drinking-and-driving deaths the previous weekend
of three teenagers in Portland, Me., the state's two NBC affiliates said
they wouldn't air hard-liquor ads carried by the network. The stations'
rebellious stand -- and the complaints it was already receiving -- suggests
there may be more trouble brewing in NBC's relationships with affiliates
across the country.
The trouble doesn't end there. The American Medical Association attacked
NBC's move, calling it "shockingly irresponsible" and "greedy." The Center
for Science in the Public Interest accused desperate NBC executives of
putting profits above the well-being of young children. Naturally, politicians
jumped aboard. Last week, when the U.S. Congress reconvened after a winter
break, West Virginia Representative Frank Wolf was set to urge the House
and Senate to hold hearings on the subject. "All the networks have been
responsible corporate citizens up to this point," Elyse Bauer, the Congressman's
deputy press secretary said. "Should they not see the error of their ways,
Mr. Wolf is certainly committed to pursuing different options."
CBS pledged it would not yet follow NBC's lead. "At this point in time,
we don't think it's the right thing to do," beamed CBS president Leslie
Moonves, without noting that it might be advantageous to let NBC take the
political heat before having CBS follow in its slipstream. That heat might
include legislation banning all television advertising, including beer
and wine spots that have been permitted for decades. Such a law likely
wouldn't withstand a constitutional challenge, but the resulting bad press
could send distillers scurrying away for years and harm whichever networks
fought for the right to air the ads. It hardly seems worth the risk, especially
if wine and beer advertisers, who spend about $700-million each year on
TV advertising, get spooked by all the unwanted attention. Only $5-million
(U.S.) was spent by the spirits industry on television buys last year.
Some forecasters predict that could now rise to $200-million. It's a significant
chunk of cash, to be sure, but hardly a new gold rush for the four major
television networks -- just over 1 per cent of their combined annual revenues
of $17-billion. Still, NBC's sales are slipping. Last week it disclosed
that revenues in 2001 were down 15 per cent from the previous year. The
issue might be difficult to grasp in Canada, where ads for hard liquor
air on a network owned by the country's taxpayers, and where the national
religion of hockey is sponsored every Saturday night by a major brewer.
But the United States has always had an ambivalent and often pathological
relationship with the demon drink.
(Is it necessary to point out the appropriateness of hard-liquor ads
reaching the airwaves during the White House residency of a man arrested
for drunk driving, and whose vice-president was convicted twice of driving
while intoxicated?)
There's another wrinkle unique to the United States. The country's policymakers
retain an outdated distinction between cable and broadcast networks, stemming
from the era when ABC, CBS and NBC drew more than 90 per cent of the average
nightly TV audience. Laws and attitudes are different toward broadcast
and cable networks. Yet today, the combined pull of the four major networks
(Fox launched in 1987) is less than 50 per cent of the viewing audience;
the rest are watching cable channels, where liquor ads have been seen freely
for years.
Some background: The industry's voluntary ban on hard-alcohol advertising
originated in 1948, when commercial television was far from the dominant
medium it is today.
Prohibition had been repealed only 15 years earlier, and alcohol was
naturally a sensitive aspect of the country's social life. Besides, only
172,000 TV sets were sold that year (22 million are now sold annually),
and the distillers felt they could score political points by walking away
from an advertising outlet they didn't need anyway. Brewers never adopted
such a ban.
In the 1990s, losing market share to the deep pockets of brewers, distillers
turned back to television. In the summer of 1996, one year after celebrating
the removal of a law banning liquor advertising on Canadian television,
Seagram began testing the waters in the United States. Despite the tiny
size of the media buys -- ads for Crown Royal aired on a small local cable
network and a few local stations -- consumer and health groups declared
war on the company. Politicians urged hearings into the matter and proposed
legislation to ban the ads. President Bill Clinton asked the Federal Communications
Commission to try to remove the ads. But by the end of 1996, spots for
Bailey's Irish Cream and Jaegermeister were spreading across U.S. cable
networks and local stations.
The interest groups never gave up the fight. Now, emboldened by last
month's public outcry, they see NBC's announcement as the perfect opportunity
to take another shot at making the ads illegal. "We're deeply disturbed
by the development and absolutely opposed to these ads airing on broadcast
networks," said Jim Mosher, director of alcohol policy for the San Francisco-area
non-profit Trauma Foundation. "This is going in exactly the wrong direction."
Mosher's main concern is that the ads target audiences under 21, the
legal drinking age in most of the United States. "We've been working hard
to stop the beer and wine industry from using images and strategies that
attract young kids," he said. "If people don't start drinking when they're
young, they're not going to drink that much later in life. It's just like
the tobacco industry, which has to hook kids when they're young."
Is advertising effective in hooking young people on alcohol? "We know
how powerful this medium is, but it's very difficult to study causal connections,"
Mosher admits. A 1995 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics suggested
that American children view an average of nearly 2,000 beer and wine commercials
each year. Of course, they also see an estimated 16,000 murders depicted
on television before they reach age 18, and the majority of the population
doesn't grow up to become murderers.
In announcing its decision to accept liquor commercials, NBC outlined
a list of 19 guidelines it pledged to observe, including not airing ads
before 9 p.m. and ensuring the ads appear on programs where more than 85
per cent of the audience is of legal drinking age. As it turns out, all
of NBC's post-9 p.m. prime-time shows qualify, except the Saturday Night
Movie, but the restrictions are still far more stringent than those currently
observed by brewers.
The Beer Institute, which wrote the U.S. industry's guidelines, says
simply that a majority of viewers for a program carrying beer ads must
be of legal drinking age.
As for the content of wine ads, the Wine Institute of California code
of advertising stipulates that, "association of wine use in conjunction
with feats of daring or activities requiring unusual skill is specifically
prohibited." That kind of restriction gives nightmares to brewers' ad agencies.
Especially given the reality of this television landscape, distillers
say it's absurd to allow beer and wine makers free reign while restricting
liquor, which is just as legal. "We applaud NBC's decision," said Jack
Shea, spokesman for Allied Domecq Spirits USA, which distributes a large
stable of brands including Kahlua, Stolichnaya vodka, Canadian Club and
Beefeater gin.
"It's a recognition of the fact that alcohol is alcohol is alcohol,"
Shea said.
Allied Domecq has not yet signed to advertise on NBC, but is considering
doing so for a few of its brands.
In the midst of this, it's vital to remember that television is a fundamentally
conservative medium. The ad landscape merely reflects the slanted picture
of American life presented in the shows. One Hollywood writer last week
noted that he couldn't have a character on a sitcom crack open a can of
beer if children were in the room. Perhaps this shouldn't be a surprise
on a medium in which smoking is seen as a shorthand for a rebellious personality
(see, if you must, the Ted Danson sitcom Becker). Twenty-four per cent
of Americans are regular smokers, but like African-Americans, they're all
but missing in action on network TV.
The rose-coloured view of the world extends to alcohol, which is almost
never simply incorporated into a show, as it is in life, without being
used to make a moral point. The made-for-pay-TV show Sex and the City is
celebrated for its frankness about sex, but its straightforward attitude
toward alcohol has been overlooked. When Carrie and the girls order another
round of cosmopolitans, it's because that's what real New York women in
their position would drink, not because the show's writers are practising
knee-jerk moralism common on American TV.
If a character drinks in a sitcom, it's usually to make them a subject
of ridicule: Will and Grace's alcoholic Karen Walker; Frasier Crane and
his brother Niles, whose love of sherry tags them as preciously effeminate.
In the Comedy Network's sadly popular The Man Show, the two hosts chug
beer as a buffoonish illustration of their manhood, a.k.a. their innate
idiocy.
On dramas, characters drink because they're dissolute types and in pain.
Lobby groups encourage that sort of edifying portrayal: The West Wing recently
received the R. Brinkley Smithers Award for its treatment of alcoholism
through its character Leo McGarry, a recovering alcoholic (played by real-life
recovering alcoholic John Spencer).
Even shows set in bars have disappeared. After Archie Bunker's Place,
Cheers and Northern Exposure left the air, producers appeared to become
skittish about placing characters near a regular source of alcohol, as
if the temptation would be too much.
Allowing hard liquor onto television advertisements could force producers
to rethink the way the shows themselves portray booze. The day may yet
come with characters regularly drinking a quiet Scotch or a martini, the
way people do in real life. Adult audiences might be treated like adults.
Shall we raise a glass in hope?