FCC Dissatisfied with Media’s Reluctance to Fight Childhood Obesity

WASHINGTON D.C., September
24: In an address to the U.S. Senate yesterday, Federal Communications
Commission chairman Kevin Martin expressed deep concern that not enough media
companies are limiting food and beverage ads targeted at children.

Although he mentioned the
voluntary measures taken by The Walt Disney Company, the ION Television
Network, Sesame Workshop, Discovery Kids and Cartoon Network, Martin did leave
open the possibility that the FCC may have to impose restrictions if the rest
of the media industry doesn’t take action.

He pointed to Ofcom, the
U.K. media regulatory body, and the ban it placed on junk food ads in programming
directed at children. “In recent weeks, there has been some question as to
whether children are still being exposed to these ads under the existing
restrictions,” said Martin. “Ofcom is reviewing the rules and will be
releasing a report on how they might improve regulations to better accomplish
their goals of reducing unhealthy advertising towards children.”

Martin cited very
troubling trends among American children. The Institute of Medicine found that
one-third of American children are either obese or at risk for obesity.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, by the time children enter the first
grade, they will have spent the equivalent of three school years in front of
the TV.

While praising the work
accomplished by Joint Task Force on Media and Childhood Obesity, which sought
to bring together government officials, media companies, advertisers and the
food and beverage industry to work on behalf of America’s children, Martin was
very concerned and disappointed that more media organizations had, “refused to
agree to any kind of limit on advertising targeted toward our children.

“While
the Task Force succeeded in producing some significant voluntary commitments
aimed at reducing the negative impact of the media on children’s eating habits
and increasing its positive influence on their behavior,” continued Martin,
“ultimately it did not reach an agreement on two key issues: 1) a uniform
standard of what constitutes healthy versus unhealthy foods; and 2) the
willingness of most media companies to place any limit on the advertising of
unhealthy foods on children’s programs.”

The
FCC Chairman did point to companies that had made significant voluntarily
commitments. “Fifteen of the nation’s largest food and beverage manufacturers
including Kraft Foods and Kellogg agreed to curtail advertising of “unhealthy
food” to children under age 12 and others are reformulating current products.”

On
the media side, Martin continued, “Disney and Ion have made the most aggressive
commitments. The Disney company’s Healthy Kids Initiative set new standards for
the food served in Disney’s parks, disallowed the licensing of Disney
characters to foods that did not meet strict nutritional standards and
disallowed the promotion of foods on the Disney Channel that do not meet those
same standards.

“ION
media’s Qubo was referred to as the “gold standard” by children’s advocates for
their leadership. ION has committed to only licensing their characters for use
with healthy foods and they agreed to no longer accept advertising for
unhealthy food targeted at children.

And
Martin singled out several companies that took significant steps to limit the
licensing of their characters for use to promote unhealthy foods. Discovery
Kids, Cartoon Network and Sesame Workshop announced commitments to license
characters only to promote food and beverages that meet specific nutritional
standards.

While
Martin applauds these developments, he clearly stated they are not enough.
“While it was—and always is—my hope that we will not have to resort
to actual requirements, and I strongly encouraged the media companies to
propose some voluntary limitations on advertising targeting our children, in
the end no widespread voluntary commitment on behalf of the media industry was
forthcoming. On the voluntary side, I am left to conclude that, sadly, no limit
was even close to being presented.”

—By Anna Carugati