Prime-time Propaganda:
How the White House Secretly Hooked Network TV on its Anti-Drug
Message
By Daniel Forbes
Advertisements urging parents to love their kids and keep them
off drugs dot urban bus stops across America. Anti-drug commercials fill Channel One in
the nation's schools and the commercial breaks of network TV -- most notably a comely,
T-shirt-clad waif trashing her kitchen to demonstrate the dangers of heroin. We've come a
long way from Nancy Reagan's clenched-teeth "Just Say No."
Few Americans, however, know of a hidden government effort to
shoehorn anti-drug messages into the most pervasive and powerful billboard of all --
network television programming.
Two years ago, Congress inadvertently created an enormous
financial incentive for TV programmers to push anti-drug messages in their plots -- as
much as $25 million in the past year and a half, with the promise of even more to come in
the future. Under the sway of the office of President Clinton's drug czar, Gen. Barry R.
McCaffrey, some of America's most popular shows -- including ER,
Beverly Hills 90210, Chicago Hope, The
Drew Carey Show and 7th Heaven -- have filled
their episodes with anti-drug pitches to cash in on a complex government advertising
subsidy.
The Money...
Here's how helping the government got to be so lucrative.
In late 1997, Congress approved an immense, five-year, $1 billion ad buy for anti-drug
advertising as long as the networks sold ad time to the government at half price -- a
two-for-one deal that provided over $2 billion worth of ads for a $1 billion allocation.
But the five participating networks weren't crazy about the deal
from the start. And when, soon after, they were deluged with the fruits of a booming
economy, most particularly an unexpected wave of dot-com ads, they liked it even less.
So the drug czar's office, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP),
presented the networks with a compromise: The office would give up some of that precious
ad time it had bought -- in return for getting anti-drug motifs incorporated within
specific prime-time shows. That created a new, more potent strain of the anti-drug social
engineering the government wanted. And it allowed the TV networks to resell the ad time at
the going rate to IBM, Microsoft or Yahoo.
Alan Levitt, the drug-policy official running the campaign, estimates that the networks
have benefited to the tune of nearly $25 million thus far.
With this deal in place, government officials and their
contractors began approving, and in some cases altering, the scripts of shows before they
were aired to conform with the government's anti-drug messages. "Script changes would
be discussed between ONDCP and the show -- negotiated," says one participant.
Rick Mater, the WB network's senior vice president for broadcast standards, acknowledges:
"The White House did view scripts. They did sign off on them -- they read scripts,
yes."
The arrangement, uncovered by a six-month news investigation, is known to only a few
insiders in Hollywood, New York and Washington. Almost none of the producers and writers
crafting the anti-drug episodes knew of the deal. And top officials from the five networks
involved last season -- NBC, ABC, CBS, the WB and Fox --for the most part refused to
discuss it. The sixth network, UPN, failed to attract the government's interest the first
year of the program; it joined the flock this current TV season.
The arrangement may violate payola laws that require networks to disclose, during a show's
broadcast, arrangements with any party providing financial or other considerations,
however direct or indirect.
Legal or not, the plan raises a host of questions. "It
sounds to me like a form of propaganda that is, in effect, for sale," says media
watchdog Bill Kovach, curator of the Nieman Foundation. Terming it a "venal
practice" and "a form of mind control," he adds, "It's breathtaking to
me that any [network's] sense of obligation to the viewing audience has a dollar sign
attached to it."
Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, a
public interest law firm, says, "This is the most craven thing I've heard of yet. To
turn over content control to the federal government for a modest price is an outrageous
abandonment of the First Amendment ... The broadcasters scream about the First Amendment
until McCaffrey opens his checkbook."
Former FCC chief counsel, Robert Corn-Revere, now at the
law firm Hogan & Hartson, calls the campaign "pretty insidious. Government
surreptitiously planting anti-drug messages using the power of the purse raises red flags.
Why is there no disclosure to the American public?"
The ONDCP, the powerful executive-branch department from which
the anti-drug effort emanates, is more commonly known as the drug czar's office.
McCaffrey, a Vietnam War hero, directs it and sits on Clinton's Cabinet.
The office oversees spending of nearly $18 billion annually for
such activities as fighting peasants growing coca in Latin America, helping interdict
drugs entering the United States, local law enforcement and research and treatment.
Though Bob Dole savaged non-inhaler Clinton as weak on drugs
during the 1996 presidential campaign, Clinton has quietly been Washington's most
aggressive anti-drug warrior. Says Dr. Thomas H. Haines, City University of New York
Medical School professor and chair of the Partnership for Responsible Drug Information,
"Clinton spent more federal money in the war on drugs in his first four years than
was spent during Reagan's and Bush's 12 years combined."
But in the fall of 1997, the most prominent public face of
America's anti-drug crusade belonged to the private Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
With major funding from a foundation fueled by the estate of the founder of Johnson &
Johnson, along with other corporate support, the partnership bills itself as a
"nonpartisan coalition of professionals from the communications industry."
Founded in 1986, the partnership has garnered hundreds of
millions of dollars a year in donated media space and time, hitting its peak with over
$360 million annually in both 1990 and 1991. But by 1997, donated media had declined to
$222 million, the group was suffering a decrease in both the quantity and quality of its
donated space and time, and the targeted teens had become inured to its oft-parodied
"This is your brain on drugs" message.
The partnership's chairman, James E. Burke, began to lobby Congress to add money for paid
ads to the drug czar's budget. Though then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich didn't need much
convincing, other Republicans had to overcome two objections to a new federal expenditure
of this size: Some wondered if the highly visible effort would just let the president and
other Democrats claim credit as crusading anti-drug warriors; others worried about
showering money on Clinton's perceived allies in Hollywood. "Some on the Hill wanted
to just cut a check to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America," says one Capitol
Hill insider.
Burke and the partnership eventually won the Republicans over.
Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee that funds the
media campaign, says, "We were persuaded by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America
to spend tax dollars" to get the message out in prime time.
So, in October 1997, Congress approved an extravagant plan to buy
$1 billion worth of anti-drug advertising. The drug office got about $200 million annually
for five years, beginning in fiscal year 1998, and was charged with targeting both the
nation's youth and "adult influencers."
The office billed the job in a 1998 press release as "the
largest and most complex social-marketing campaign ever undertaken."
Approximately two-thirds of the office's ad budget was targeted at TV; the rest was
sprinkled among everything from billboards to radio, newspaper, magazine and Internet
advertising.
But Congress, feeling that the networks should also contribute to
the war on drugs, drove a hard, two-for-one bargain: for every ad the government bought,
it demanded another of equal value for free.
"It was contingent on a private-sector match," says John Bridgeland, former
chief aide to Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who fought for the deal. "No member of
Congress was going to pass new money for this without a match" -- that is, without
that second ad slot.
Indeed, with only $1 billion budgeted to it by Congress, the
office refers to its "five-year, $2 billion ...campaign." McCaffrey himself
called it "our major prevention initiative, the $2 billion five-year Anti-Drug Media
Campaign."
The government's paid ads began running on five of the nation's
networks, all but lowly UPN, during the summer of 1998. One TV ad features a scruffy,
plain-spoken teen who boasts of a sterling academic record before succumbing to marijuana
and getting thrown out of the house.
Then there's the one mentioned above: the waif-like Gen-Xer
taking a frying pan to her kitchen, supposedly to demonstrate the terrors of heroin
addiction. The actress is budding young star Rachael Leigh Cook of She's All
That.
How did the networks' two-for-one ad deal evolve into a plan to insert messages into
programming content? Bridgeland says that wasn't the original idea. "I don't think we
thought of programming content as a match ... [It] was not actively discussed," he
says -- a point that Kolbe echoes.
The half-price deal got a mixed reception from the networks. NBC, the most highly rated
network in 1998, with the most valuable ad slots, initially balked for some three months.
The chief ad buyer for the drug czar's office, Zenith Media Services Inc. CEO Richard
Hamilton, oversaw negotiations with the networks. NBC, he says, made a "business
decision."
Then in the ratings doldrums, ABC had fewer qualms. Says Bart
Catalane, former CFO of ABC Broadcasting: "Given the way ad-spending had been going,
we needed every category, particularly a growing one like government spending. We wanted
to grab every share we could." Indeed, the first year of the ad campaign, ABC grabbed
nearly $30 million worth, half again as much as Fox, its nearest rival at $20 million.
Even high-flying NBC eventually went along; participants say that
the network came around after hearing about its rivals' barrels of government cash. Half a
loaf was considered better than none, especially from a baker with a projected five-year
supply of flour. "This was before the market got so tight," says one former
contractor to the drug-policy office. "This was before all the dot-com ads. When we
started, the market was less bullish."
But selling time at half price never went down smoothly, and
Hamilton reported back that the networks weren't happy. Hence, in the spring of 1998, Alan
Levitt, who runs the office's advertising campaign, and Zenith boss Hamilton cooked up the
novel idea of using programming -- that is, the plots of sitcoms and dramas -- to redeem
the second ad slot owed the government.
"We did this to make it a little bit more obtainable to participants," Levitt
says. "I know it's allowed us to make some deals we wouldn't normally make before.
There are some media outlets that have not been able to -- are not financially able, or
they don't have the structure where they can give us print space or programming or time.
And so we can make it more flexible for them."
That spring of 1998, Hamilton and Levitt agreed that sitcoms and dramas that met with the
drug-policy office's approval could be used in lieu of the ad slots still owed to the
government. Formulas would be applied to determine the cash value of these embedded
messages, and the networks would then be free to resell the commercials they otherwise
would have given to the government.
Ultimately, the ONDCP developed an accounting system to decide which shows would be valued
and for how much. And its officials began to vet television shows in advance, sometimes
suggesting alterations. Tapes of the show as broadcast were sent to the office or its ad
buyer to be assigned a final monetary value, which would then be subtracted from the total
the particular network owed the office.
The drug office and its ad buyers received advance copies of the
scripts from most networks, often more than once as a particular episode developed over
time. In some cases, the networks and the office would wrangle over the changes requested.
Says an office contractor, "You'd see a lot of give and take: 'Here's the script,
what do you think?'" He adds, "I helped out on a number of scripts. They ran the
scripts past us, and we gave comments. We'd say, 'It's great you're doing this, but
inadvertently you're conveying something'" off-message.
This contractor prevailed upon the producers of the WB's Smart
Guy to change the original script's portrayal of two substance-abusing kids
at a party. They were originally depicted as cool and popular; after the drug office
input, "We showed that they were losers and put them [hidden away to indulge in
shamed secrecy] in a utility room. That was not in the original script," this
contractor says.
How They Did It
The scheme worked like this: According to a set, numerical
formula, the drug-policy office assigned financial value to each show's anti-drug message.
If the office decided that a half-hour sufficiently pushed an endorsed anti-drug theme, it
got valued at three "units," with each unit equaling the cost of one 30-second
ad on that show.
Hour shows presenting an approved story line were valued at five
units, equal to the cost of five of that show's 30-second ads. (Ads on higher-rated shows
-- shows that deliver more eyeballs -- cost more. Therefore, shows with higher ratings,
which disseminated ONDCP's message more widely, achieved higher valuations.)
For example, the drug czar's office bought approximately $20 million of advertising time
from News Corp., the Rupert Murdoch-owned global media conglomerate that owns Fox.
Therefore, News Corp. owed the United States an additional $20 million in matching ad
slots from its inventory of ad time.
To partially meet its "match," and thus recoup some of
the ad time owed the government, Fox submitted a two-episode Beverly Hills
90210 story arc involving a character's downward spiral into addiction.
Employing the formula based on the price of an ad on "90210," the episodes were
eventually valued at between $500,000 and $750,000, says one executive close to the deal.
As Kayne Lanahan, senior VP at News Corp One, Fox's media and marketing operation,
describes it, "There were ongoing discussions with Zenith.
They looked at each episode and how prevalent the story line
was." Lanahan adds, "We occasionally show [them] scripts when they're in
development, and the final script, and then send a tape after it airs."
I was was able to identify some two dozen shows where specific single or multiple episodes
containing anti-drug themes were assigned a monetary value by the drug czar's office and
its two ad buyers: Zenith and its eventual agency replacement, Ogilvy & Mather
Worldwide.
In return for, apparently, several episodes with anti-drug
subplots, highly rated ER redeemed $1.4 million worth of time
for NBC to be able to sell elsewhere. The Practice recouped
$500,000 worth of time for ABC to sell if it wished. And anti-drug messages woven into
"90210" redeemed between $500,000 and $750,000.
Other shows with episodes that redeemed ad time for the networks during the 1998-99 season
include: Home Improvement, valued at approximately $525,000 for
ABC; Chicago Hope, valued at probably $500,000 or more (CBS); Sports
Night, a valuation of around $450,000 (ABC); 7th Heaven,
valued at around $200,000 (WB); and The Wayans Bros. with its
relatively paltry ratings, kicking in only approximately $110,000 (WB).
In addition, the following shows also redeemed ad time last season, though this reporter
could not determine their monetary value: Promised Land and Cosby
on CBS; Trinity, Providence and
several episodes of the four teen-oriented Saturday-morning live-action shows on NBC; and The
Drew Carey Show, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Boy
Meets World and General Hospital on ABC.
The process unfolded over time, with some scripts reviewed more than once. When a draft of
the script was available, the network sales department would alert the drug czar's ad
buyer. And then the office's Alan Levitt, or his colleague Jill Bartholomew, became
involved. They'd get a copy of the script -- though ABC maintains it was an exception to
this step -- and then provide "a quick turnaround" with their reactions, says
one insider.
The drug-policy office typically verified the particular episode
as being on-message and appropriate for a match. "If a kid was offered a joint and
said, 'No thanks,' in a way that was on-strategy, it was that simple. It was a judgment
call by the network, the agency and the client," says this source.
Other anti-drug, government-endorsed plots were as subtle as a brick through a window. Chicago
Hope is owned in part by News Corp. subsidiary 20th Century Fox Television.
Though CBS was the potential beneficiary of any ONDCP-approved Chicago Hope
episode, an agreeable News Corp. exec, Mark Stroman, phoned John Tinker, an executive
producer on Chicago Hope, to request an anti-drug episode.
Facing cancellation and commanding scant leverage with the show's owners, the Chicago
Hope producers dusted off a previously rejected script and decided it could
stand
another rewrite.
As broadcast, the graphically anti-drug story of the tragedies
afflicting young post-rave revelers featured drug-induced death, rape, psychosis, a nasty
two-car wreck, a broken nose and a doctor's threat to skip life-saving surgery unless the
patient agreed to an incriminating urine test -- along with a canceled flight on the space
shuttle.
Other drug office-approved shows featured: a career-devastating,
pot-induced freakout of angel-dust proportions (The Wayans Bros.);
blanket drug tests at work (The Drew Carey Show) and for a
school basketball team (NBC's Saturday morning Hang Time); death
behind the wheel due to alcohol and pot combined (Sports Night);
kids caught with marijuana or alcohol pressed to name their supplier (Cosby
and Smart Guy); and a young teen becoming an undercover police
drug informant after a minister, during formal counseling, tells his parents he should (7th
Heaven).
At least one show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was rejected after
it showed itself to be immune to the drug office's worldview. "Drugs were an issue,
but it wasn't on-strategy. It was other-worldly nonsense, very abstract and not like
real-life kids taking drugs. Viewers wouldn't make the link to our message," says
someone in the drug-policy office camp who read and helped reject it.
Levitt, the office's point man on the campaign, downplays the
money's influence on the networks' "voluntary" creative decisions. He likens the
process to the (non-monetary) Prism Awards for socially responsible television. "The
government is not dictating these kinds of changes," he says. "We will provide
an incentive, a financial incentive."
Levitt insists that his office is trying solely to achieve
accurate portrayals of drugs -- not any overall increase in the number of anti-drug
episodes broadcast. Be that as it may, by the office's own count, the number of shows with
anti-drug themes (whether financially boosted by the office or not) has risen from 32 as
of last March to 109 this winter.
Whatever the intent of the government program, it was deemed sensitive enough to be kept
under wraps. The TV producers typically knew nothing of the money involved. Says Levitt,
"In almost every instance that I'm aware of, the [creative] people coming to us have
no understanding at all of the pro bono match. They have no idea." Asked if they
should know of the financial arrangement, Levitt says no: "We're not trying to
intrude on their creative freedom. If the perception is such that we are trying to
influence the [TV] program financially -- well, I won't go any further."
I spoke with some 20 writers, producers and production executives for major shows. With
perhaps one exception, nobody knew of the arrangement.
John Tinker, last season's "Chicago Hope" executive
producer, took the News Corp. call requesting an anti drug episode. He recalls no mention
of CBS being able to recoup something like half a million dollars in ad time for the one
shrill episode he helped craft at the show owner's request. He says the financial
incentives are "complete news to me." He adds, "I'm so caught off guard, so
stunned. I like to think I'm well informed. I had not a clue about any financial
incentives." Asked if the scheme gave him cause for concern, Tinker says, "Of
course. It smells manipulative ... All of this is disturbing."
Tinker's response would undoubtedly be shared by many in
Hollywood's creative community. One network sales executive who's worked with the
drug-policy office acknowledges that if producers were to learn that scripts were being
altered, that would "start a nightmare." This executive adds, "I don't need
it getting back to [a particular powerhouse producer]. I'm in a tough situation between
the client and the shows."
Realizing how tough it might get, a lot of top brass shied from
trumpeting their enlistment in the drug war. In a brief conversation, Rosalyn Weinman,
NBC's executive vice president for content policy and East Coast entertainment, said that
the drug office did not exercise "script approval," but conceded that
there had been conversations about broad issues or "specific concerns." Other
NBC officials declined comment. Two other NBC executives implicitly confirmed the deals,
however.
While no current Fox executive would comment on the network's
cooperation with the government, Rob Dwek, the network's former executive vice president
of comedy and drama series, maintained that the financial incentives have "no impact
on what we do creatively -- it would have no effect on the direction of a show ... It's
not noticeable, it doesn't hurt the quality of our product, and it allows us to be
responsible."
An ABC public relations exec, speaking anonymously, confirmed the network's participation
in the deal. "Halfway through the year ['98-'99 season], ONDCP said we can meet the
match ... if programming was appropriate. I don't know the month. But it was after setting
up the [matching ads] schedule."
CBS president Leslie Moonves had nothing to say. One CBS
spokesman said simply, "CBS is proud to be working with the government in regard to
the war on drugs."
Michael Mandelker, executive VP of network sales for UPN, sounded
enthusiastic about the program. Speaking this summer, he said he'd "already started a
dialog with programming. Somewhere there will be shows that qualify."
Mandelker said he urged UPN entertainment president Tom Nunan to
drum up support for anti-drug messages with producers, asking him: "Is there a way to
have these kinds of story lines as you talk to producers?" Mandelker adds, "I
imagine ONDCP will look at a couple of scripts in the first year to make sure our
interpretation is theirs." He stated further, referring to UPN's strategy: "Tom
approaches the producers. We [sales] can't do anything for them. Tom can pick up a
show."
The drug office's campaign is only just approaching full flower.
The teen-friendly WB (home to 7th Heaven and the since-cancelled
The Wayans Bros.) has, for example, "significantly"
expanded its anti-drug messages, one insider notes, with the drug office more than
doubling its WB buy this season. The WB had initial plans for "at least five"
programs with anti-drug content counting as a match,
the source adds.
"Last year was the program's first year," he points
out, "and a lot of companies didn't understand the match." He predicts the
practice will only increase as the networks come to understand it as an effective way to
free up valuable ad time otherwise sold at half-price.
© 2000 salon.com
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About the writer
Daniel Forbes is a New York freelancer who writes on social policy and the media.
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