Sponsor (July-Sept 1959)

Record Details:

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RUNAWAY SALES SUCCESS ALL ACROSS U.S.A.! N E W S ORTH Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Ft. Wayne! AST Boston, New Haven, Albany, Portland! EST Los Angeles, Denver, Seattle, Salt Lake City! OUTH Atlanta, New Orleans, Miami, Richmond! Have your local ITC representative give you the news of how BRAVE STALLION can increase audiences in your market. INDEPENDENT TELEVISION CORPORATION 488 Madison Ave. -N.Y. 22 -PLaza 5-2100 22 by John E. McMillin Commercial commentary More teeth for the tv code The recent news that 13 additional tv stations have had their TV Code Seals revoked for carrying Preparation H commercials may have been a bomb in the broadcasting business. But I doubt if it created more than a limpid ripple among admen and the general public. This. I think, is too bad. In turning thumbs down on advertising for Whitehall Pharmacal's hemorrhoid remedy, the members of NAB's TV Code Committee acted with a courage and steadfastness all too rare among industry trade practice groups. They deserve applause, and I hope they get it. But the sad fact remains that few people have ever seen the Tv Code Seal on their home screens and fewer still understand what it is or means. Furthermore. I'll lay you ten to one that not more than a handful of agency or advertising men have ever bothered to read through the provisions of the TV Code. Actually it is a remarkable document. I don't envy anyone who is handed the job of drafting a code of fair practices for anything, especially any phase of the advertising business. It is almost an open invitation to be prissy, pompous and sanctimonious, or absurdly two-faced and weasling. And the NAB's TV Code doesn't wholly escape these common faults. There are places where it sounds a little like a lavender-scented spinster of perennially unchallenged virginity reading a bifocal lecture to a smutty-faced, teen-aged boy. I strenuously object, for instance, to the anodyne statement that "religious programs should place emphasis on broad religious truths, excluding the presentation of controversial or partisan views not directly or necessarily related to religion or morality." I seriously question whether the cause of religion, or of the Republic, is best served by such a safe, emasculated approach. Definite and positive provisions If, however, you can overlook these occasional lapses in taste and virility (they're almost an occupational disease among all code-drafting lawyers) you will find in the NAB's TV Code a wealth of positive, definite, practical and courageously idealistic provisions. The Code is at its best, I feel, in defining those types of advertising which are not acceptable to Code subscribers (the three tv networks and more than half of all tv stations I. I believe these provisions should be read and studied by every ad manager, account executive and media man who deals in tv. You will get some surprises, I think. Undoubtedly you realize that the advertising of hard liquor is verboten on tv. But did you know that 270 tv stations subscribing to the Code have voluntarily agreed not to carry a wide variety of other types of copy? SPONSOR 4 july 1959