[House Hearing, 106 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
TREASURY, POSTAL SERVICE, AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS FOR
FISCAL YEAR 2000
_______________________________________________________________________
HEARINGS
BEFORE A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE TREASURY, POSTAL SERVICE, AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT
APPROPRIATIONS
JIM KOLBE, Arizona, Chairman
FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia STENY H. HOYER, Maryland
ANNE M. NORTHUP, Kentucky CARRIE P. MEEK, Florida
JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California
JOHN E. PETERSON, Pennsylvania
NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Young, as Chairman of the Full
Committee, and Mr. Obey, as Ranking Minority Member of the Full
Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.
Michelle Mrdeza, Bob Schmidt, Jeff Ashford, and Tammy Hughes,
Staff Assistants
________
PART 6
OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY
YOUTH ANTI-DRUG MEDIA CAMPAIGN
________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
61-357 O WASHINGTON : 2000
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida, Chairman
RALPH REGULA, Ohio DAVID R. OBEY, Wisconsin
JERRY LEWIS, California JOHN P. MURTHA, Pennsylvania
JOHN EDWARD PORTER, Illinois NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington
HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky MARTIN OLAV SABO, Minnesota
JOE SKEEN, New Mexico JULIAN C. DIXON, California
FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia STENY H. HOYER, Maryland
TOM DeLAY, Texas ALAN B. MOLLOHAN, West Virginia
JIM KOLBE, Arizona MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
RON PACKARD, California NANCY PELOSI, California
SONNY CALLAHAN, Alabama PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana
JAMES T. WALSH, New York NITA M. LOWEY, New York
CHARLES H. TAYLOR, North Carolina JOSE E. SERRANO, New York
DAVID L. HOBSON, Ohio ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
ERNEST J. ISTOOK, Jr., Oklahoma JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia
HENRY BONILLA, Texas JOHN W. OLVER, Massachusetts
JOE KNOLLENBERG, Michigan ED PASTOR, Arizona
DAN MILLER, Florida CARRIE P. MEEK, Florida
JAY DICKEY, Arkansas DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
JACK KINGSTON, Georgia MICHAEL P. FORBES, New York
RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey CHET EDWARDS, Texas
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi ROBERT E. ``BUD'' CRAMER, Jr.,
GEORGE R. NETHERCUTT, Jr., Alabama
Washington MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York
RANDY ``DUKE'' CUNNINGHAM, LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California
California SAM FARR, California
TODD TIAHRT, Kansas JESSE L. JACKSON, Jr., Illinois
ZACH WAMP, Tennessee CAROLYN C. KILPATRICK, Michigan
TOM LATHAM, Iowa ALLEN BOYD, Florida
ANNE M. NORTHUP, Kentucky
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama
JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire
KAY GRANGER, Texas
JOHN E. PETERSON, Pennsylvania
ROY BLUNT, Missouri
James W. Dyer, Clerk and Staff Director
(ii)
TREASURY, POSTAL SERVICE, AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS FOR
2000
----------
Thursday, October 21, 1999.
OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY
WITNESS
GENERAL BARRY McCAFFREY, DIRECTOR
Mr. Kolbe. Good morning. This hearing of the Subcommittee
on Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government will come
to order.
We are very pleased this morning to welcome as our first
witness General Barry McCaffrey, the director of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy. He is a frequent visitor before
this subcommittee, so he is not exactly new to us. But during
our regular hearings, budget hearings, earlier this year, we
indicated that we wanted to have some more in-depth discussion
of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, and in
particular, as we have had an opportunity to learn more about
this and hear more about this, to examine the role of
programming content in the media campaign.
Following General McCaffrey's presentation, we will be
hearing from Susan David of the National Institute of Drug
Abuse, NIDA.
The goal I would like to accomplish this morning is really
just to understand better the nuts and bolts of how the media
campaign that this subcommittee funds is working and how it
seeks to influence entertainment media content and how that, in
turn, seeks to influence behavior on the part of those who we
seek to influence.
As far as the influence within the entertainment media,
that has taken several forms. One is the active engagement by
ONDCP and outreach to the industry to achieve accurate and
supportive messages in the entertainment media, and the other
is acceptance by ONDCP of entertainment content as a pro-bono
match for campaign purchases of advertising time or space.
I think when you testified in the budget hearings, General,
last March, you said that the overall match for the campaign is
about 102 percent and 109 percent for the broadcasting sector.
And we understand from your statements and what we have been
told by your office, that about 85 percent of that is what you
call a hard match; that is, an equivalent amount of time given
in public service announcements, time and space.
Some, however, is a soft match. And by a soft match--we do
sound like we are talking about campaign finance reform, don't
we, here--between hard dollars and soft dollars here.
[Laughter.]
Soft match is, as I understand the definition, where a
network wishes to get a match credit for conveying the ONDCP
message in the context of entertainment programming, such as an
episode on a program like ``Dawson's Creek'' or ``The Cosby
Show.''
You have also testified that thanks to this effort, the
campaign's strategic messages have been greatly expanded and
supported in more than 50 TV scripts and incorporated science-
based anti-drug story lines and that at least 32 of these were
on the shows that young people watch most frequently and using
the stars, the TV stars that most of them know about.
So what I hope we can, today, learn is more about how this
match program works when it comes to just the nuts and bolts of
how it works, but specifically, of course, about the
programming content and about the entertainment industry
outreach element of the campaign. I know you also have a very
extensive program of meeting with them and discussing these
issues.
So we hope to come away today with an understanding of the
practices that are being followed: How the campaign values
programming and other media content for the purpose of matches
and how ONDCP and its contractors assess the impact these
efforts have on the success of the campaign.
I think these are appropriate questions because our role is
to fund this campaign and we, indeed, have a responsibility--
and it is a large amount of money, and the public feels that we
have a responsibility, I believe, for us to look at the issue
of how well this program is doing and specifically how we are
going to measure how well it is doing.
But it certainly does also raise I think some other broader
questions. And while I have no answers to these, and I am not
here today on any kind of a mission, I just want these
questions to be out there on the table for us to consider, and
those have to do with the appropriate form of engagement
between a government agency, such as ONDCP and the
entertainment media industry. In particular, I hope we can get
some understanding of whether financial incentives of leverage
that is offered by the advertising campaign results in some
kind of pressure on writers or producers to alter story lines
to fit a particular message, even if the intentions are very
positive or even benign.
Certainly, our concern, as a subcommittee, is to see that
the campaign is effective in reducing the use of drugs by our
young people, and we want to do that with whatever means that
we can. But we also want to do it within the context of a free
media, free press, free society, and I know that you certainly
share those goals.
So I hope that with this we can clarify some concerns that
may have been raised about how we achieve these desirable ends
that we all seek. I think it is going to be an informative
hearing for us.
And before I ask General McCaffrey for his statement, let
me turn to my good friend and ranking member, for whom I want
to say once again publicly, thank you for your assistance in
getting our appropriation bill passed. And it is nice that ours
is enacted into law, so that we can have this hearing and not
be worrying about getting that done.
Mr. Hoyer.
Mr. Hoyer. We agree on that. Thank you. And I thank the
chairman for his leadership in getting us to a point where the
bill could pass and the President could sign it. It was a good
effort.
I want to welcome General McCaffrey, and Susan David and
others of you as well to this hearing. I think this is an
important hearing. General McCaffrey has been a visionary in
the fight against drugs, and the National Youth Anti-Drug Media
Campaign is a major component of this strategy.
I have a prepared statement, Mr. Chairman, that I would
like included in the record at this time. But let me make a
comment. I think this is a very important oversight hearing,
and I thank the chairman for scheduling it. And like the
chairman, I not only vote for, but believe strongly that one of
the hallmarks of America is the First Amendment, and we have
the freedom of speech to say things we do not agree with and
things that ought to be said.
On the other hand, I think that does not mean the rest of
us do not have the right to freely criticize in a free market,
the expressions that we think are harmful. I think that is what
a free market is all about. And there is clearly concern that
we may be spending $195 million or $185 million annually on
this program. But if there are billions of dollars being spent
to deliver contrary messages which undermine that message, that
is not helpful. And there needs to be, I think, some discussion
about the concerted effort.
Now, I want to make it clear that I do not believe the
entertainment industry is spending billions of dollars to send
a contrary message, for those of you that represent the
private-sector media or entertainment outlets. I know we have
ABC, CBS, Warner Brothers, NBC, and others represented here.
But it is to say that we, as a country, need to think together
as to how we can send a positive message to our young people as
to how they can most positively act in their own lives to
enrich their lives and to enrich our community. We know that
there are a lot of negative messages out there.
And, fortunately, our young people are very connected
today, more connected than they have ever been before in the
history of the world. They get more information now than any
previous generation has ever gotten, they get it quicker, and
they get it in a freer market than we have ever had before, the
Internet. They are all a mouse click away from getting whatever
information they want. And that is of concern.
And we, as I say, as a community need to think about this.
And my perception is the entertainment industry, as we are, are
concerned about the welfare of our children, and our families
and our country. And so it is in that context I think we need
to work and think about this together, and I am very interested
to hear how we are doing that cooperatively, not through
coercion, but through cooperation. And I think that is the key.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The information follows:]
Statement of Congressman Steny H. Hoyer, Treasury, Postal Service, and
General Government Subcommittee
office of national drug control policy--oversight youth anti-drug media
campaign
I'm very pleased to welcome General Barry McCaffrey, Director of
the Office of National Drug Control Policy, to testify before the
subcommittee on the use of programming content from the entertainment
media as a component of the ONDCP National Youth Anti-Drug Media
Campaign.
I am also pleased to see Susan David from the National Institute of
Drug Abuse who will testify later this morning.
General McCaffrey has been a visionary in the fight against drugs
and the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign is a major component of
his strategy.
When you last testified, we learned of the positive outcomes from
the first phase of the campaign. Your goal of reaching 90 percent of
the overall target audience with four anti-drug messages was exceeded
in each case.
Over the summer we received the results from phase II of the
campaign which showed that the anti-drug campaign's message has begun
to influence attitudes. The final report on phase II showed that the
percentage of youth who thought the ads ``Made Them Stay Away From
Drugs'' increased from 61 percent to 69 percent.
The percentage reporting that they ``Learned About The Dangers of
Drugs'' from TV commercials also increased from 44 to 52 percent.
Phase III is now under way which entails a more integrated
communications approach at the national level including partnerships
with various media outlets such as TV, radio, movies and retail. These
outlets are powerful vehicles that can be used to convey the anti-drug
message to our young people.
Our children have more information available to them than anytime
in our history. They are accustomed to a world of information through
television and the Internet which is just a remote control away. So
what children are watching on TV and reading on the Net is very
important.
General McCaffrey has done an excellent job in making the
entertainment industry a partner in creating a solution to drug use
among the youth of this country. I am happy to be here today to learn
more about it.
Mr. Kolbe. Thank you.
General McCaffrey, please proceed. Obviously, we will be
happy to place your whole statement in the record, if you wish
to summarize it or however you want to proceed.
Thank you.
General McCaffrey. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, to both you and
your committee members, and Congressman Hoyer, in particular,
for the opportunity to come down and lay out some of our own
thinking. And I would like to put that written statement in the
record.
These hearings give us a tremendous incentive to be blunt,
to write down and document where we think we are on these
issues. The minute this hearing is over, we put these
statements on the Internet allowing the press and the academic
community, to watch this issue very closely. So it is really a
good chance for us to organize or reorganize our own thinking
and make sure we know exactly what we can say in an ethically
sound way about how the campaign is evolving.
You have some very important people in the room today, some
of them testifying, but all of them will be available to your
committee's staff today or in the following days. Rich
Hamilton, Zenith Media, is here. We owe Zenith a big debt of
gratitude. Bates and Zenith got this thing off the ground when
Alan Levitt and I and a handful of people, including
Partnership for a Drug Free America, Sean Clark and Jim Burke,
were trying to sort out where to go.
The reason Rich Hamilton, CEO of Zenith, is important, is
because he did the first network negotiations and developed
this notion of the pro-bono match. I think we learned a lot
from Zenith during that period, and we are very grateful.
Dr. Tony Bigland, Oregon Research Institute, is here. You
know he sits on our Behavioral Science Change Panel. He is an
expert in the area of youth development. He has become a major
factor in trying to help educate the most creative community on
the face of the Earth, the producers, the writers, the
directors who create this programming content.
Ogilvy & Mather and Fleishman Hillard are represented here.
Shona Siefert, the senior partner, who really works our
account, is a brilliant, creative person. We have been very
proud of the way the firm has managed their responsibilities.
Bev Schwartz, vice president of Fleishman Hillard is here. They
have done superb work with a very small pot of money. They have
about $10 million, essentially. But I think a few years from
now we may find that their impact was disproportionate to the
amount of resources we put into it.
You are going to have Marcy Kelly testify from Mediascope.
They have also done some important work. We should not talk
about these issues in an anecdotal fashion only. We need some
data. There are substantial resources you have given us. And if
I may, let me underscore our admiration for the way this
committee got their work done and shaped a bill that was signed
into law.
So we are starting our third year of responsibly dealing
with a matter of enormous import. Marcy Kelly and her people
have quantified what we are talking about when we look at the
impact of the media on shaping youth attitudes. In January,
they are going to put out another very important document when
they analyze the impact of broadcast television. We very much
appreciated her creative work.
Most of this media campaign is focussed on primarily
shaping youth attitudes and the attitudes of their adult
mentors. But it also connects the problem of drug abuse to
community organizations in America. Sue Thau is here
representing Major General Art Dean, Chairman and CEO of
Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America. An enormous amount
of this program content now has a telephone number or a Web
page. And that connects us, as citizens, not to a national
agency, but back to a regional partner. When you call in 1-800,
whether you are worried about your 16-year-old daughter's
compulsive drug use or you are looking to get engaged, we
vector you back to Community Coalitions.
Clarke Moorehouse is here from Channel One Network. As you
know, they deliver satellite coverage to over a third of the
Nation's teens daily in classrooms. When we talk about program
content, they have done some of the best work we have seen.
They developed a show that tried to capture the notion of
children of addicted parents. The children are all sitting in a
classroom. If you tried to get at that audience through
broadcast television, it would be very hard to justify the
approach. We think this is a kind of pro bono work, matching
creative content programming has a big impact. The Channel One
Network has also done one on women involved in drug-related
crime in prisons. This work has a tremendous impact through
refinement of programming content.
Robbie London is here from DIC Entertainment. As you know,
they are owned by Disney. They helped us develop a website for
children.
Rogers and Associates are here represented by Sarah Ingram.
They have been working with our entertainment and celebrity
outreach. And I believe you have some questions along those
lines.
Steve Salem from Boys & Girls Clubs is here along with
Kathleen Sheehan from NASADAD, and the National Drug Prevention
League, represented by their chairman, Kathleen Wingfield. We
thank all of the partners who either you invited here or come
because they have been so fundamentally involved in this
effort.
Let me, if I may, run through some charts, Mr. Chairman,
and talk to some of the issues. First chart.
Again, to remind all of us, everything we do in this
program, which is less than 1 percent of the $17.8 billion that
the Congress provided in the fiscal year 1999 act relates to a
national drug strategy, that I have to have approved by the
administration, signed off on by OMB, and I bring down to
Congress for consultation.
So we are back on Goal Number 1: How do we educate and
enable America's young people to reject illegal drugs, as well
as alcohol and tobacco? That is the heart and soul of the
campaign. It is beginning to work. Donna Shalala and I did
release last year's household survey demonstrating about a 13-
percent drop in adolescent drug use in the 12- to 17-year-old
population. We still have a million kids using drugs. We have a
huge problem. Drug use has gone up dramatically in the last
year. Despite this increase we think we are moving in the right
direction. And, clearly, the program that we are discussing
this morning is going to be a huge part of that.
Next chart. Again, what is the basis of this? A lot of this
is not just academic data, it is historical data
fromPartnership for a Drug Free America. By shaping youth attitudes,
youth behavior you can affect. Now, when you ask children, ``Do you
personally disapprove of drugs, yes or no? Do you personally fear drug
use threatens your development, yes or no?'' those numbers are
indicative of the kind of trailing behavior that you can expect.
And as we look back through history, we see that when we
get energized, when we get outraged and we communicate with
youth through a variety of means, drug use goes down. In fact,
it is going down again. I would argue, Mr. Chairman, our real
challenge lies in the hearings five years from now, when we
have had a major impact on youth drug use rates. At that time
how will we maintain the energy to focus on each new generation
of children as they leave the sixth grade and start being
exposed to gateway drug-using behavior in American life? And
that is where drug use is happening, in middle schools in
America.
Next chart. This chart basically says the slope of the
curve is going down, however not fast enough for any of us. But
I must admit we are somewhat surprised. I thought there would
be more like a two-year-plus lag time between multiple programs
and impact. Instead we are seeing a change in the direction of
that slope.
Next chart. This chart represents what you told us to do,
and this is really my charter from you, the board of directors,
on what we are going to do with the money you give us each
year. More importantly, we are going to see the negotiated
matching aspect of those funds as being as much a part of our
efforts as are the appropriated dollars.
You told us to not only go out there and deliver a message
on target, but to make sure I can come back here and explain,
with scientifically based studies, why we think we are doing
the right thing, where we see the program going awry, and how
we can give steering instructions and modify it.
Susan David from the National Institute of Drug Abuse will
testify next. NIDA has a $7 million a year program to evaluate
what we are doing. It is brilliant in conception. This is
really break-through scientific work on how to understand
social change. And it is not only taking a baseline sample. I
know Dr. David will talk to this issue, looking at the better
part of 8,000 respondents, and then every six months for four
years going back out to measure it. But they are also going to
go into 3,000 families and four different media markets and try
to do longitudinal analysis of how that family is affected by
this media campaign and all of its components. I do think we
are going to try and deliver rational feedback to Congress on
how we are doing with your resources.
We have also taken very seriously the other components of
this: the entertainment industry collaboration. I will talk
more about this; interactive media; public information
corporate sponsorship, which we really have not gotten off the
ground adequately; and partnership and alliances with
organizations which are doing pretty well.
Next. Hopefully, I will not say much to this chart. It is
sort of mind-boggling, but it is meant to underscore the fact
that this is not the 1980s, where people develop some TV
material, 30-second, 15-second spot ads, throw them out there
and hope they are played in some market at some time. The chart
clearly states that we took congressional guidance very
seriously. That this is an integrated communications campaign,
that is a 360-degree approach to surrounding the target
audience and their adult mentors with a scientifically based
message that we will evaluate as a process and change the
message to keep it on target.
Next. Here is the problem, and Marcy Kelly can talk to it
in greater detail than I can. But just as snapshot, we do have
a problem in popular media. And I am not getting at the whole
notion of the multi-billion dollar advertising effort, which is
clearly affecting youth attitudes relating to alcohol
consumption and cigarettes, I am referring to the notion if you
are watching movies or listening to music, how you see the
consequences.
I think there has been one sort of false charge. I do not
believe the media glamorized drug use. I think what you and I
need to be concerned about is to what extent drug abuse among
youngsters is normalized, to what extent do they think they are
the only ones not engaged in this behavior and that it is
acceptable and low risk.
So the stat in there that I am most concerned about is only
12 percent of the portrayals of drug use showed long-term
consequences. As I will respond to during the questions phase,
I think that is what we are worried about. We have gone out to
this creative industry and said, we are not arguing for a
message, we are arguing for the message to look like what drug
abuse really is. We want you to show the kids and families who
get involved in compulsive poly drug use behavior. If the
message is accurate, it will make the argument that we support.
You might note also that music tends to be a bigger
problem. I would, just as a broad generalization, suggest to
you, Mr. Chairman, that the TV industry is a pretty responsible
group, they are listening very intently, and they want accuracy
in the way they depict this problem.
Entertainment outreach goals. This chart portrays, in bar
graph form, both in songs and movies--I think I will leave this
to Ms. Kelly to talk to later--entertainment outreach goals.
Here are the four goals we have outlined for ourselves.
Next, let me talk very briefly about some of the
entertainment outreach results. We have mentioned the whole
notion of 50 TV scripts incorporating anti-drug messages.
Probably a better number is that there are 350 million contacts
with a person and a message. That is what the impression means
up here. We have seen all of the TV networks get involved. All
seven TV networks have produced PSAs, and have been enormously
effective.
We are, I might add, in the matching component,
representing 37 different organizations. One hundred ninety-one
thousand pro-bono match PSAs have been aired. So we have, in
fact, been conducting the largest underage anti-alcohol abuse
campaign in history. And it is pretty well put together. As you
know, we can talk about the Ad Council's enormous contribution.
The American Advertising Federation, every three months has
been developing a reel, getting it out here to the media; TV
stations, radio, and print. They are playing this material, and
they are not putting it on at 2 o'clock in the morning. They
are not getting credit for it if they do it. But I would, if I
can, underscore their cooperation and the energy they have
brought to bear on this process.
Finally, let me just say campaign message delivery rates
have been spectacular. As you know, we did a pretty decent
Phase I evaluation. We did a 12-city test across America. We
had 12 control cities. We did get data. We were after
awareness. We found surprising impact on actual youth
attitudes. We did a national one. We went national, andused
largely existing Partnership for a Drug Free America material. We got a
huge impact on the target audience. Rather than four times a week, 90-
percent market penetration, we got up to the rates you see on the
national test Phase II.
As of 6 September in the print market and 20 September in
the TV-radio market, we have gone nationwide. Directed by
Ogilvy & Mather, and Fleishman Hillard, ours is an integrated
campaign using 11 languages, and 102 different media markets,
and we are starting to bite into the problem. We are getting a
tremendous exposure rate. We are going to evaluate this and
talk to you on an interim basis as we see these results being
developed.
Mr. Chairman, with your permission, let me show you a 2-
minute video out-take of seven different programming content.
We diced it up to save time. But it will give you an insight
into some of the things that are going on right now on
television, in particular.
Go ahead and show it.
[Video played.]
General McCaffrey. We can go into some detail, Mr.
Chairman, how we go about dealing with the industry on these
programmatic decisions. There is an industry standard on how
you credit content. It is a pretty conservative one. It
certainly gives us enormous leverage for our dollars. A
generalization is, if we had an hour-long show that was
completely on-platform, on-message, we would give them credit
for five 30-second ads. If it was a 30-minute show that was
entirely on-message, it would be three 30-second ads. By and
large, programming credit is one 30-second ad where we get one
of a scientifically accurate message in the correct platform
into the show. And in some cases, if there is also a PSA at the
end of the show, they will get another 15 seconds credit. That
is just a general description of the mechanical way that these
are added up in terms of media-matched dollars, a pretty
conservative way of going about it.
And on that note, Mr. Chairman, let me, if I may, end these
opening remarks and respond to your own interest.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Kolbe. Thank you very much, General McCaffrey, and I
think some of what you said is very helpful here.
If I could, I would just like to go back first to a
couple--I have several specific questions I wanted to get to,
but a couple things on the charts that you showed there. I
think it was really the first one dealing with the graph
showing drug use. Yes, that one there. Two things that strike
me about that is the almost precise and direct correlation
between the actual--the drug use, the red line, and the other
two, as the other two is the perception of the risk and the
disapproval--as the perception goes up and the disapproval goes
up, the drug use begins to come down.
The second point I would make is that by 1997, when you are
at use, at levels of 90 percent, there really was not much
place else for it to go at that point, but down. I mean, you
could not really get up much higher than where we were, could
we? It was really pretty staggered.
General McCaffrey. Remember, we have changed the scales so
you can see the slope and the change more easily, but even
though drug use among eighth-graders tripled between 1992 and
1995, and overall population use doubled, it never got worse
than half as bad as it was in the early 1980s. So we could have
gotten worse by far.
Mr. Kolbe. It is the right-hand level there.
General McCaffrey. Right.
Mr. Kolbe. But there does seem to be a direct correlation.
I guess the other point I would make there is that while we are
seeing certainly some improvement here, it would, would you not
agree, that it is awfully early to make any kind of definitive
judgments about our success at this point?
General McCaffrey. No question. No question.
Mr. Kolbe. That goes to the other one about whether or not
we can really tie it directly to the program that we have.
General McCaffrey. I think we do know the answer to that
one. We cannot, because that 13 percent reduction last year was
only influenced--six months of that data was even possibly
influenced by the national----
Mr. Kolbe. So there are other factors at work at this
point.
General McCaffrey. Right.
Mr. Kolbe. You referred also to alcohol and tobacco. We
have had some discussion. You know, that has been a major issue
in this Subcommittee, as to whether or not this ought to
include alcohol and tobacco. We have a massive campaign now--
funded thanks to tobacco settlements in states--a massive
campaign going on on tobacco use among young people. In my
state certainly it is a huge campaign, far bigger than any drug
campaign is. I have some concerns about whether or not we are
diluting what I think is a very important message on drugs by
trying--I know it is gateway, I know the gateway issue--but
since we have little enough funds here to spend on this
campaign, how do you make a decision about whether or not we
focus on the alcohol, tobacco, as opposed to the hard drugs?
General McCaffrey. Well, of course, Mr. Chairman, our
viewpoint has been that by law we should not spend appropriated
dollars on anti-alcohol and tobacco underage ads, and we are
not. It is part of the matching component. And it has been
significant. As an example, in the last year it was about a $13
million impact, more than 11,000 PSAs were devoted to underage
alcohol use.
The challenges, as we discussed before--and I am enormously
sympathetic not only to the gateway notion about underage
alcohol abuse, but the flat statement that the biggest problem
right now an adolescent will probably encounter is underage
drinking, in terms of vulnerability to drunk driving, sexually
being exploited, and being involved in youth crime. It is a
huge problem in and of itself.
The challenge to us would be if we try it--first of all, if
we took the existing $195 million and tried to counter underage
drinking, we do not yet have a research base upon which tomove
forward. In addition, we would be running directly into a multi-billion
dollar advertising campaign that correctly portrays adult use of
alcohol as being legally and socially acceptable behavior. This is a
behavior with which most of us do not have a problem, and do not
encounter behavioral and legal and social problems. So if we are going
to do that in coming years, and I would not argue against it, I think
many of us feel it would be better to situate that approach in an
agency like the CDC or SAMHSA, and to have a campaign based on
research: how do we talk to young people about a behavior that is legal
and acceptable for their mom and dad to engage in? It has got to be a
different approach.
Mr. Kolbe. Well, that leads me right into the specific
questions that I wanted to ask.
So that in terms of your soft matching, than alcohol/
tobacco messages are included and get the same rating, same
credit, the same degree of credit?
General McCaffrey. Absolutely, sure. And also, messages
that are helpful to creating a no-drug-use environment for
children, and parent-effectiveness ads. Some of the messages
that are validating--I think there are 37 organizations if I
remember correctly, including 100 Black Men, YMCA, et cetera,
where you have got somebody communicating with young people or
with their adult mentors. The message persuaded by the
evidence, helps create a no-drug-use environment.
Mr. Kolbe. And I have a series of other questions I will
come back to in my second round. I think before we break for
what I believe is just a general vote, and I think we will have
quite some time after that before we have any other votes, so
we will be able to complete the rest of this hearing. Let me
call on Mr. Hoyer for some questions.
Mr. Hoyer. Mr. Chairman, at this point in time I am going
to pass. I do not know whether any of my colleagues have--I am
coming back. I do not know whether they will be able to come
back.
Mr. Kolbe. Okay. Let us see. The next one here is Mr.
Price.
Mr. Price. Well, let me just quickly ask a question, and
then we will try to come back. I need some clarification as to
the complementary campaigns that you were describing, and the
extent to which the message of those campaigns is actively
coordinated through your office or elsewhere, to what extent is
there an attempt to achieve some kind of consistent
complementary message. I understand that the ancillary
campaigns do involve questions of alcohol use, for example, and
you do not do that with the appropriated funds. But to what
extent is this a coordinated complementary message? And are
those ancillary campaigns included in your message delivery
rates, the figures you gave us in your initial presentation, in
terms of figuring out what the exposure is and the extent of
these ads being seen by young people? Are those figures
inclusive of the ancillary campaigns?
General McCaffrey. Well, I think part of the last question
is the easiest one to respond to. I think we got excellent
data, tracking what is played by who, when, and what market. So
whether it is an appropriated dollar or a non-appropriated
dollar, there are corporations out there that electronically
track this sort of thing. Stations do have to turn in
affidavits, for example, on appropriated funds, or for that
matter, for the matching credit. They cannot get away with
playing it at 2 o'clock in the morning, and saying, ``Well,
that is your match for prime-time TV.'' So we do have pretty
good data, and we do include that.
For the target audience, it does not matter whether you
heard something from the YMCA youth program with materials
included in their youth outreach, or you heard it on a paid
national TV Ad.
Mr. Price. But the message delivery rates that you gave us
for Phase II----
General McCaffrey. We pull them apart. We disaggregate
them, and then--but we will show you the total impact on target
includes both aspects, but we can show----
Mr. Price. The figures you gave in your presentation, the
National Test Phase II figures, are just the ads from the
appropriated funds; is that right?
General McCaffrey. Well, I think that chart had both of
them, if I remember. It has both the----
Mr. Price. That is my question. Is it a combined figure or
is it----
General McCaffrey. I think we show both of them separately,
do we not? No, we wrap them up. That is both the appropriated
and matching component ads. But we can disaggregate it, and
then disaggregate that data and try and show you the
contributions of each component.
The place you get into difficulty is when you go to a
``Cosby'' program content ad, you can say who watched it, but
now it gets a little more difficult. We give him credit, let us
say, on that one, probably for one 30-second ad at the market
rate for that show. But had we actually made that ad, he might
have charged us a million dollars for his personal involvement
in it. So I would suspect this is a very conservative
accounting method by which to determine how much impact on your
audience are you getting.
Mr. Price. Right. I see in your longer statement you do
have a more explicit breakdown.
General McCaffrey. Yes.
Mr. Price. I am sure your accounting method is conservative
and responsible. What I am trying to get at here is the impact
and the extent to which these messages really are reinforcing
each other.
General McCaffrey. Absolutely. And there is a coordination
system. In the paid component, of course, it is easiest, in the
sense that Ogilvy-Mather, working through Partnership for a
Drug Free America, there is a creative review committee. There
is a Behavioral Science Expert Panel. There is a focus group
for ads before they go final. They are tracked in their impact.
They are modified or pulled, as we see their effect on the
target audience. Pretty decent following of how the creative
process works.
But again, for the matching component, the American
Advertising Federation, in all of our 102 different media
markets, has to pull together a committee. So if you submit a
PSA as 100 Black Men or YMCA or Boys & Girls Clubs, a message,
and produce one then submit it, it has to pass scrutiny for
being on-target in the strategy. You have to be able to explain
the issue you are addressing, and they have to be
scientifically valid messages.
Mr. Hoyer. Will you yield a minute?
Mr. Price. Yes.
Mr. Hoyer. Following up on that, in your statement on page
12, you have ``Paid in Anti-Drug Match'' and then ``Paid All
Match.'' Does ``All Match'' include alcohol and other
substances? Is that what you are talking about?
General McCaffrey. Yes.
Mr. Hoyer. Okay. Excuse me. This is a former statement,
your October 14th, 1999 statement. That is last week's
statement before the Mica Subcommittee. I am not disaggregating
your statements quickly enough. [Laughter.]
But I presume last week's statement is still valid.
General McCaffrey. They had better match up.
Mr. Price. I know we need to go vote, Mr. Chairman. Thank
you very much.
General McCaffrey. Let me also offer, Mr. Congressman, I
will give you a copy of ``Procedural Guidelines for Broadcast
and Cable Network Branded PSAs,'' and there are ten criteria.
You have to say you are targeting one of the ten eligible
messages. There is a review process, and we will track when and
how their message is played.
Mr. Kolbe. Thank you, General. We are going to recess
briefly for this one vote, and we will come back immediately
afterwards, and we will begin with Ms. Northup.
[Recess.]
Mr. Kolbe. We will resume the hearing, and we will begin
with questions by Ms. Northup.
Ms. Northup. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome, General
McCaffrey.
As the mother who has a sixth child, who has six more
months till he graduates from high school, then I will be over
that hump. I think having teenagers, I can tell you, I thought
until now was a great thrill, especially around the age of 13--
it was like being the pied piper. They wanted my approval. They
followed behind me. It was fabulous. But from that point on,
the fear of what was going on with their peers, the messages
they were getting, the music they were listening to, the
arguments over whether we were going to have this tape in our
house or not, it just wears you out.
And I have to say that drugs are a huge concern. But
everything you see on these charts is exactly my experience. I
remember when my freshman and sophomore boys, number three and
four boys, came home from my college after their freshman and
sophomore year, and said, ``What is going on? The drugs in this
city, you cannot go to a party, you cannot go any place. My
friends that I was sure never, ever, ever would touch it,
are,'' and it was heart wrenching. And we had so many
conversations at the dinner table. And the youngest child then
was going into his eighth grade, and I will never forget, he
spoke up one night and said, ``And you will never guess what
happened at the church picnic Saturday night. So-and-so was
arrested for marijuana.'' This is a kid going into eighth
grade. And it was like the whole world was crumbling.
Now, he says drugs are not so prevalent. It is not so cool.
All of my kids are telling me the same thing, that there is
just not the general acceptance, and I think we are making
progress. I realize it is just a slight blurb on there, but it
does sort of reflect my experience.
But drinking is another huge, enormous problem, and I guess
my question is: how do we fashion the messages here? Because at
least my kids were hearing from everybody but their peers,
drugs are always bad. It is wrong, it is bad at any age, at any
time, at any place. It is not something you can do next year,
in two years. Drinking is something that they expect they will
do. And even though, knock on wood, I think this high schooler
is really a good kid, he has gone now to three college
weekends, being recruited for a team, and at every one he was
taken to parties where everybody there, by his estimation, had
a drink in their hand. I have always fought with my high
schoolers, because we do not give any drinks to our kids, nor
do we ever let anybody in our house that has a drink. I say,
``That is the end of the party if that ever happens.'' But they
routinely have parents that say, ``Oh, we know your friends are
going to drink, so when you come over, they can have some beer,
but we are going to take their keys, and they have to spend the
night.''
You see MADD, who sends home the contracts, sign a contract
with your high schooler, saying, ``If you ever cannot drive
home from a party, you can call us. We will come get you. No
questions asked, no repercussions.'' You know, and I say to my
kids, ``I am sorry. There will be repercussions. There will be
questions asked, and you are going to stand here and talk to me
every night when you come in, and kiss me goodnight, and I am
going to do the best I can to enforce a no-drinking policy.''
So how do you fashion a drinking message? Have we done the
research? What works? Will anything work when it is on
television? When every single person in this room knows that
19-year-olds that are at college have it going on every minute
all around them, and nobody intervenes? I mean, if parents are
saying, ``Oh, it is Christmas, have a glass of wine,'' is
anything we put on TV, is that going to be effective?
General McCaffrey. Well, your general line of discussion,
Madam Congresswoman, really warms my heart, because at the end
of the day, it seems to me it is what mom, the homeroom
teacher, pediatricians and a minister says that counts much
more than any other influence on youth attitude. So if you are
hearing consistently ``in our family'', ``in our school'', ``we
do not drive drunk, we do not use drugs'', I think it shapes
attitudes more so than anything we put in the media.
Having said that, at the end of the day, alcohol abuse by
underage drinkers is a huge problem. You listen to Secretary
Shalala, who is temporarily serving as a Government official,
she is essentially a teacher, a college president, and she will
argue, hands down, the principal problem she faced as an
educator throughout her career, was the abuse of beer and in
combination with marijuana, and that that is the dominant
reason why kids do not learn, drop out of school, do not play
sports, end up pregnant, end up vulnerable to physical assault.
It is a huge problem.
If there is one group of people in America that I have
enormous angst about, it is university leadership, who allow
kids to go to school in an environment, where if we acted like
that in the armed forces, they would relieve us from command.
They have abdicated their responsibility to create safe,
responsible environments for young people under their charge.
And I think it is starting to change, but that is a target that
many of us have----
Ms. Northup. But how do we advertise when two of my kids
have gone to school, Miami of Ohio in Ohio and the state law
is, if you are out for dinner with your parents, you can
legally have a drink when you are 18.
General McCaffrey. Well, we do need a better research base.
You make a good point. We have to have the market, do the
studies to understand better what arguments will affect
attitudes. You cannot use the same argument as the one devised
against methamphetamines. Meth is an easy target.Pot for a 12-
year-old is a tough target. And we are more worried about inhalant
abuse and marijuana and beer among middle-school kids than we are
methamphetamines among 35-year-olds. We do need better research, and
then we need to make sure we are talking to kids in terms they can
understand. You cannot equate dad having a six-pack and watching
football with smoking marijuana. You can tell a youngster, ``You will
look stupid if you consume alcohol under age.'' You can suggest to
parents that the environment is, ``If you are going to drink, you are
not driving our car.'' So you need to find a message that is relevant
to young people, and certainly it would not be on categorically saying
that alcohol is bad, because we know it is legal and it is acceptable,
and most people do not encounter a problem.
But I guess I would sign up for research along the lines of
what are the most effective ways of crafting messages to young
people about not drinking?
Mr. Kolbe. Thank you. Mr. Peterson.
Mr. Peterson. To just sort of follow along here, I come
from a very rural setting, and I think in rural areas we have
sort of peaked. I mean, I think there is no community now in
rural America that does not have complete drug availability, no
matter what it is, and that was not true a few years ago. The
pipeline has reached everywhere. Part of our problem is, I
think the feeling out there is that all the narc units that are
very successful, do not work out there. They work in the
suburban areas. I think the sellers realize they are a little
bit enforcement-free out there, and so it is a safer place to
sell drugs. And so, in my view, it has intensified the
availability of drugs.
I had 200 young people together two weeks ago, and I had a
panel of experts, DEA people, drug and alcohol rehab people,
who spoke to them, and we have been doing this for a number of
years. They literally attacked them about legalization, selling
legally. I mean, it was contrived. These kids had organized,
but it was an aggressive debate about drugs should be legal,
and of course, that is an assumption that they are not harmful.
And so I think one of the messages we have got to really
hone in on is the harmfulness. You know, people assume that
marijuana is not harmful, that it is really no different than
smoking a cigarette. And, of course, that is very harmful too.
I mean, more people die of tobacco than anything.
But I guess I would be interested in your comments on that,
but I have found that in a couple settings now, where young
people are arguing for legalization because drugs really are
not harmful.
General McCaffrey. Well, it is very disturbing. I talk to
young people all the time, and there is a very active minority
who have that feeling. I would argue a greater problem, and one
that we are addressing in this media campaign, is that many
young people, more than half, in my view, strongly believe that
although they are not using drugs, most other youngsters are.
So I think the whole notion of normalization of drug use is the
heart and soul of one of our concerns.
Part of countering that is to make the argument that these
drugs are harmful. I agree. We have not adequately done that,
particularly with marijuana, which is widely argued by some to
be a benign substance, when in fact--and you should ask our
NIDA panelist--Dr. Alan Leshner, Secretary Shalala can document
that we think marijuana is a harmful drug. We do not agree. We
think it causes cancer, that it is harmful to the brain, that
it causes all sorts of social problems, learning problems. We
are vehemently opposed to it. We think particularly when it is
done more so by adolescents, that we see enormous statistical
correlation between expansive use of marijuana in early years
of development and later on compulsory drug use problems. We
can make those arguments on scientifically sound bases, and
provide them to adult mentors to use in shaping youth
attitudes. That is a big contribution of this media campaign.
But to give the message, not in a moralistic lecturing
tone, but to make sure it comes across the Internet, or in this
wonderful classroom television environment, and to get to them,
not in the twelfth grade year, but in the ninth grade year. So
I think a couple years down the line, you are going to see some
major impact out of this campaign.
Mr. Peterson. Another area I guess I am interested in, I
think sports figures are still the idol of our young men. And I
guess the one I will pick on the most, and I am an avid
football fan, I think the National Football League has been a
disgrace. Every year prominent players have drug altercations
and continue to play football. In fact, the Steelers had one
suspended last year who took an over-the-counter drug that was
illegal, and he got suspended for four months. There was a
player for another team, who had actually been in a drug issue,
and because he had not been convicted yet, continued to play
all year. Has there been any effort to get the sports world to
make a strategy of putting up with much less? It seems to me
you can have two, three, four incidents, and you can still play
football and other sports. And I think that is a terrible
message to young people, that you can be a professional and
excel, and be a drug addict.
General McCaffrey. Well, I certainly could not agree with
your view more strongly. The enforcement piece of it, the
sanctions, if you have sanctions and drug testing in the hands
of the same people who are running the league, it will not
work. I mean, I do not know why we are surprised at that. It is
counter-intuitive to think that somebody who benefits
economically from the players can possibly sanction them. And
so we are arguing very strongly, and I think with increasing
effectiveness, you have got to have an independent drug-testing
agency, and that we need to apply drug free workplace laws to
professional sports. And we are making progress. In the NBA, as
you remember, we got into the contract ``no marijuana use.''
Surprisingly, and I almost hate to tell you this, the NFL
is doing pretty well compared to many. They do have a decent
code. They do test. I still think your point is a good one.
When you have public figures who are clearly compulsively using
drugs and not sanctioned, that is a huge problem.
We have gotten a great feedback. We conducted a National
Coach-a-thon last year. We have gone after kids who deal--are
in organized sports, soccer, swimming, baseball. We have
provided material to their coaches. We are very heavily engaged
in professional leagues--and they are being very supportive--to
include Major League Baseball. Major League Soccer has been
incredibly responsive to the issue. We are now working with
trying to affect the international olympic movement. We are at
the point now where if you are a national competitor or an
international competitor, it iswidely believed that you cannot
win unless you are using performance-enhancing drugs. That is the deal.
And I just testified at Senator McCain's committee
yesterday, that in the space of five years we ended up with 3
percent of the youth population using steroids. We have more
girls than boys using steroids today. You can get on the
Internet and order this stuff, and it comes through the mail to
your house. We have a huge problem in the athletic setting, and
yet, that is also a solution to us. I think we are moving in
the right direction. We are getting tremendous help out of U.S.
Olympic Committee, NCAA and others.
Mr. Peterson. Do you have any printed material on the
hazards of marijuana use that is available, readily available?
General McCaffrey. Absolutely. And we have got it out all
over America, particularly in the school systems. Secretary
Dick Reilly has some good material, and Donna Shalala has also
produced, through SAMHSA and NIDA, some more material, which we
get out through the great civic associations. If you are in the
YMCA youth program now, you are seeing our youth anti-drug
media campaign in your activities, as are the Boys & Girls
Clubs, scouting movement. We are now working with the Girl
Scouts.
Mr. Kolbe. Thank you very much, Mr. Peterson.
General, I want to bring us back to the focus of this
hearing, which is the media, the entertainment industry, the
media campaign, the use of the match and how we define that,
measure that, and measure its effectiveness. I have a number of
questions here on the nuts and bolts of that.
The law provides for the money to be either the cash or in-
kind contributions. So I take it that is the way in which this
whole concept of the media match or the soft match and the
content match evolved. But could you perhaps tell us just a bit
more about how this concept evolved of using this match?
General McCaffrey. The history of it is interesting. When
we actually started it, we did not have the match in there. We
knew we wanted to leverage the investment. We were very
concerned. There were things we were worried about. We did not
want to dry up PSAs, not only that existed through Partnership
for Drug Free America, but also for other related issues. We
did not want to dry up teen pregnancy, anti-AIDS ads, et
cetera. So we got into it with working with the Ad Council and
the American Advertising Federation, how do we make sure we
protect public service in the media?
But the first law did not have match in there. Zenith did
some very creative work, got in there and said, ``Let us do
just that. Let us negotiate some kind of a match.''
Mr. Kolbe. Let me clarify that. Are you telling me the word
``match'' was added into the legislation? And when was that?
General McCaffrey. Yeah. I think the second year we got the
match mandated by law and we----
Mr. Kolbe. In our appropriation?
General McCaffrey. right.
Mr. Kolbe. Not the underlying authorization of this
program. Okay. When match came about then, that is what you
were thinking about, not match of time, but you were thinking
of match through content?
General McCaffrey. Well, I think what we were thinking
about, we wanted to, first of all, not just think in terms of
television, we wanted to see this as the full spectrum of
communicating with young people, and we wanted to leverage the
investment. And it turned out there were industry standards on
how you do that. It turned out there was a body of knowledge
out there already on how to do that.
Mr. Kolbe. And I want to come to that. The idea of using
program content match, does the idea for it initiate with your
agency, with the program, with Ogilvy & Mather? Who initiates
this?
General McCaffrey. Well, of course, the concept was out
there already.
Mr. Kolbe. No. I mean specific. Now I am talking about a
specific program, a specific message that is going to be there.
General McCaffrey. Well, the process, first of all, is run
by Ogilvy-Mather, not me. I have got a dozen lawyers and
creative people quarterbacked by Alan Levitt, Ogilvy-Mather for
media buying and Fleishman Hillard, when it comes to
interactive and other areas. But Ogilvy-Mather media buying,
that is where this is getting run. So they are looking out 18
months. They are buying well out in front. If I remember the
figures, we dropped sort of dollar per output function by
almost 30 percent the second year because we were out in front
of the marketplace. And when they go for the media buy, they
are also negotiating the match. And part of that is, we have
got to tell them about the match program, that you cannot just
ring up a message and play; it has to be on one of these 10
message themes, it has to get vetted to get credit, and here
are the ways you can----
Mr. Kolbe. You said 18 months in advance, but most of these
programs are not written and filmed 18 months in advance.
General McCaffrey. Well, TV, you are right. You have a much
shorter time. But we are buying access time that far out.
Mr. Kolbe. So if I understand it then, it is a joint thing
where Ogilvy & Mather goes to the producer and says, ``This is
what is available to you. Do you want to use this?''
General McCaffrey. The people that are putting the material
on the air, that is who they are buying access with. They are
saying, ``If you have got a television station or radio
station, if you are a firm that rents billboards, we are going
to spend X hundred thousand dollars with you. You have got to
develop at least 100 percent match.'' Now, where the material
come from? It can be our nationally produced Partnership for
Drug Free America material, or it could be 100 Black Men, YMCA,
a corporate sponsor. And if you do other material, here is how
you get it cleared for use through the American Advertising
Federation locally. So it could be standing up for the Boys &
Girls Club in Detroit, an anti-drug message, ``Get involved in
their programs and your kids will use less drugs.'' True. So
that message then has to get checked off as being adequate by a
local council, American Advertising Federation.
Mr. Kolbe. But I am talking about the messages that we saw,
or some of the messages that we saw. Some we saw here were
explicit kinds of ad or messages. I am talking about the
messages that are embedded into the program itself.
General McCaffrey. Right. So Warner Brothers or CBS or Fox
would say--first of all, most of it is paid access. I mean,
most of it is matching television or radio ads, 85 percent.
Mr. Kolbe. 85 percent, I understand.
General McCaffrey. But go to the 13 percent that is, quote,
``soft match'', we----
Mr. Kolbe. That is what I am really trying to focus on
here.
General McCaffrey. That 13 percent, there are some 50 odd
shows. That was the creative content of the people writing and
producing those shows.
Now, they will get an idea. We have done seminars, part of
this media research, so they have been educated scientifically
about drug abuse. They will write in a content, voluntarily
send a script in, and we will look at it for them, and say,
``No, that is right. It is on-message. It is scientifically
accurate.''
Mr. Kolbe. Okay. Now, that gets to my next question, and I
do not want to take up too much of my time here. They send the
script in, so it is ONDCP then that says, ``This meets our
test. It is eligible for the soft match?''
General McCaffrey. Well, I almost hate to say ONDCP. Since
I am accountable, I will, but basically it is a behavioral
science expert panel. It is a NIDA-based review.
Mr. Kolbe. It is a panel that you have that is----
General McCaffrey. Ogilvy-Mather provide categories of what
is acceptable, and the scripts, essentially, scripts or other
content will be vetted, depending on where it started. If it is
locally, it will be vetted by a local board.
Mr. Kolbe. Okay. I am just trying to understand the
process. Who then finally does sign off, and says, ``Yes, this
meets the''----
General McCaffrey. Well, if it is one of the 102 media
markets, it is a local ad on a local radio station----
Mr. Kolbe. No, one of these national, like ``Cosby Show'',
when something has been vetted into the----
General McCaffrey. Well, one of the seven major networks
producing their own PSAs or program content, it would probably
end up coming to us and----
Mr. Kolbe. And you are going to say it is eligible for the
credit?
General McCaffrey. Based on----
Mr. Kolbe. Your agency.
General McCaffrey. Based on a NIDA behavioral science,
review.
Mr. Kolbe. Okay. So this NIDA behavioral review says, ``We
think it is eligible.'' You have the final sign-off. Is that a
fair----
General McCaffrey. Paid or non-paid? Presumably at the end
of the day, I am accountable for all of it.
Mr. Kolbe. I understand. I am just trying to get an
understanding of how this process works. Have there been times
when somebody has--and I have really gone beyond my time, but I
just want to follow this through here. Have there been times
when a script was submitted, and you said, ``Well, it is close,
but it is not on target, but if you make some changes here, it
will work for the soft match?''
General McCaffrey. Well, I think there is clearly feedback,
but interestingly enough, the creative person, the writer-
producer who works with us, has no concept of media match. They
do not know anything about this. They do not know about the
accounting techniques. Their purpose is to get good quality----
Mr. Kolbe. Entertainment.
General McCaffrey. Entertainment----
Mr. Kolbe. Assuming it is communicated to----
General McCaffrey. What?
Mr. Kolbe. Somebody has to communicate to that writer.
General McCaffrey. Yes. And many of them will come up on
the net and talk to us. There are web pages now they can go to,
and they are using them. We have conducted seminars for all
these groups, all the TV writers and producers, movie people.
So there is an interaction back and forth. But there is
feedback, and for example, if something was scientifically
inaccurate, we would point that out. If humor, if being drunk
was made to appear amusing, we might note that there was no
consequence to drug using behavior.
Mr. Kolbe. One last question. This whole idea you have
described in your opening statement of counting an hour-long
program that is entirely on-message, I think you said counts
for three----
General McCaffrey. Would be five.
Mr. Kolbe. Five 30-second spots. Is this unique or is this
done elsewhere? Is there any other----
General McCaffrey. Well, I think there is an industry
standard to do this kind of thing. The only thing I would
suggest is that we are not paying anything but production costs
for the appropriated side. We pay nothing for the matching side
at all. So when you get credit for a ``Cosby'' ad, you may have
gotten it at a fraction of the cost, that if I was trying to
get Subaru Autos into that ``Cosby'' section, I might have had
to pay a lot more to do it.
Mr. Kolbe. Well, that was my question. Is it comparable to
the product placement?
General McCaffrey. It is absolutely a fraction of the cost,
because we are not paying Actors Guild fees. I am trying to
think. Everyone involved in this process has waived their fees,
which is a tremendous gift to us, and that is not the case for
other public health campaigns necessarily.
Mr. Kolbe. Okay. Mr. Hoyer.
Mr. Hoyer. I want to hear our next witness. So I am not
going to ask questions, other than to observe that it would be,
I think, very useful for our members to know and for the Nation
to know the value of the contribution. In other words, not only
are we investing from the public sector, but we are also not
only getting the match, and the contribution of the services to
which you just referred.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General McCaffrey. Mr. Hoyer, you know I am just looking at
January 1998 and October 1999, $199 million pro-bono match. And
that is quality access to these audiences, a huge amount of
access.
Mr. Hoyer. So more than a one-to-one match.
General McCaffrey. Oh, absolutely.
Mr. Kolbe. Mr. Peterson.
Mr. Peterson. Yes, could you elaborate further on the
entertainment industry and particular time slots you are
targeting.
General McCaffrey. Well, the last time it was explained to
me semi-adequately, it took Shona Siefert from Ogilvy and her
people, they came in around 4 o'clock, and they got out of
there at close to midnight.
Mr. Kolbe. No, that will not work. [Laughter.]
General McCaffrey. But it is worth your staffer getting an
hour briefing on this. It is wonderful to see how they do this.
But on the other hand, they have got a lot ofexperience selling
products using the media. And so we have given them requirements. I
mean, this is not do as good as you can. You have got to communicate to
certain age groups and their adult mentors. You have got to get to the
ethnic minority population. You have to talk to African-American kids,
Hispanic kids, et cetera, and their parents. So to get to those
audiences, you have got to know where they are in the marketplace. If
you want to talk to Native Americans on a reservation, you have to go
to radio. You cannot go to the New York Times.
Some of it is obvious, some of it is not. Chinese language
radio stations in San Francisco. So when they have done that,
and we give them sort of output function guidelines, they
devise a strategy and come back and explain it to me. And then
we have got to evaluate it and see is it working, are you
getting to the market you are after. And if you get to them,
are your ads credible or is the communication credible? Do they
see it happen, hear it, are they influenced by it? And all of
that, of course, is being evaluated by NIDA and Westat
Corporation.
Mr. Peterson. You are targeting the times when those young
people are watching television.
General McCaffrey. Absolutely. Or were not, or were on the
Internet. And we have got eight Web pages now that are linked
to 21 other Web pages. So if you come up on the Net and type in
``drugs,'' you may end up on freevibe.com, which was done for
free, I might add, by Disney-ABC. I think Disney has got a
representative here, and here is color, interactive,
scientifically accurate, exciting information about drugs. And
by the way, while you are using freevibe.com, you may have a
chat with Steve Young of the San Francisco 49ers, three million
kids in an interview last week or you are talking to World Cup
soccer champion players, the Women's World Cup or the Williams
Sisters or Andy MacDowell or Tara Lipinski or whoever. We are
trying to attract you in to listen to the message.
Mr. Peterson. Thank you.
Mr. Kolbe. General, thank you very, very much. I know there
are still questions that we could have, but I think they will
hopefully get resolved as we hear next from Susan David, who is
the research coordinator at the National Institute of Drug
Abuse. And we thank you very much, General McCaffrey, for your
participation today. And the members here and in the audience
this afternoon will also be hearing from the media industry
itself.
Thank you very much, General.
General McCaffrey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thursday, October 21, 1999.
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF DRUG ABUSE [NIDA]
WITNESS
SUSAN DAVID, RESEARCH COORDINATOR, DIVISION OF EPIDEMIOLOGY, SERVICES,
AND PREVENTION RESEARCH
Mr. Kolbe. Thank you very much, Ms. David. We welcome you
to the table here. And as I have already noted, you are the
research coordinator in the Division of Epidemiology and
Prevention Research at NIDA. And you have the responsibility
for evaluating the impact of our anti-drug youth media
campaign.
We have a statement from you which, of course, as is
normal, we will place the full statement in the record. If you
would like to make some opening remarks, we will then go to
questions afterwards.
Welcome.
Ms. David. Thank you.
Mr. Kolbe. Thank you very much.
Ms. David. I will take the opportunity to make some opening
remarks, with your permission.
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I am pleased to
be here on behalf of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and
Dr. Alan Leshner, of course, who is our director, who testified
here about six months ago about the campaign. I am accompanied
today by my deputy project officer, Mr. Arthur Hughes, who is a
mathematical statistician and knows a lot about surveys and
other intricacies of this project.
Also present in the audience, I would like to introduce Dr.
David Maklan, who is a vice president of Westat, which is our
evaluation contractor, and Dr. Robert Hornik, who is from the
Annenberg School for Communication at the University of
Pennsylvania. These gentlemen are obviously heavily involved in
helping us do this evaluation project.
As you know, NIDA was asked by ONDCP to conduct an
independent and scientifically based evaluation on the outcomes
and impact of the campaign on parents and their children.
Briefly, the evaluation includes two surveys: the National
Survey of Parents and Youth, which will provide a national
picture every six months, and the Community Longitudinal Survey
of Parents and Youth, which will provide insight into the
effects of the campaign on family and the community.
I would like to directly address your interest about issues
involved in evaluating the effectiveness of the use of
television programming in the campaign. Let me first describe
our general evaluation approach. Our science-based strategy for
the evaluation focuses on two primary facets of the campaign:
the paid advertising, which ensures a certain level of media
exposure and frequency for each target audience--that was just
discussed. Director McCaffrey just talked about that--and the
general message content that evolved from the most effective
prevention research.
The evaluation design captures effects that are cumulative
over multiple exposure to messages from manysources on
representative samples of youth and their parents. Specifically,
approximately 8,000 youth and parents are interviewed in each six-month
wave from our national survey. The measures are designed to assess
changes in knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors brought about by
messages in the campaign ads.
Despite the primary focus on the paid advertising portion
of the campaign, the evaluation tries to capture, in a general
way, whether audiences are aware of anti-drug messages in
television programming. We have the following set of questions
that will appear in both parent and teen questionnaires: We ask
people, ``In recent months, how often have you noticed stories
that dealt with drug use among young people in--'' primarily
the concept we are looking at here is TV movies, sitcoms or
dramas. So we ask specifically those variety of opportunities
that we saw that Director McCaffrey showed this morning. ``What
kinds of programs might you have seen?''
Then we also ask about TV news or radio news, about TV talk
shows, movies watched in movie theaters and on rental videos.
And we ask is it not at all, one to three times a month or more
than three times a month. So we are asking people about the
frequency. ``Did you see these things?'' And then ``How often
did you see them?''
We would expect that if the campaign efforts are
successful, they will produce a large number of placements of
anti-drug messages in normal television programming, and many
respondents will recall these recent exposures. As Director
McCaffrey described this morning, the campaign has already
succeeded in placing anti-drug messages in entertainment
programs and expects to expand these efforts later on in the
campaign.
Thus, the evaluation will provide some picture of the
extent to which audiences are aware of anti-drug messages and
whether this level of awareness changes over time. We would
also be able to examine the association between recall of
exposure to such stories and relevant beliefs, attitudes and
behaviors.
The evaluation, however, is not designed to be able to
measure the effect of a single episode of a television program.
There are several reasons for this. Number one, the evaluation
is designed to capture the cumulative and multiple exposure to
campaign messages, as I described before.
The second thing is it is likely that only a minority of
the people interviewed in our survey will have actually seen
the episode. Even in very popular programs on a particular
night, less than 25 percent of viewers are seeing a specific
program. So in our survey it is unlikely that enough people in
our sample will see it.
And third, the short-term impact of a single exposure means
that most people are unlikely to recall the episode three to
four weeks later after the program has aired. Consequently, we
expect that only a small portion of our six-month sample, those
8,000 people we are interviewing, would have viewed the
program, remembered it and experienced the potential effects of
that single exposure. This small portion is likely to be too
small to produce statistically reliable outcomes. Despite the
fact that we are unable to capture the effects of a single
program, we expect that if the campaign succeeds at placing
messages in many programs over time, our broad measure will
provide some evidence that such repeated and cumulative
exposure will contribute to the overall effects of the
campaign.
As to the status of the evaluation, NIDA and Westat are in
the final preparation stages. We are conducting interviewer
training next week and will initiate the first interviews the
following week. Our first semi-annual report, which will serve
as a baseline for the study, will be released in June of 2000.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning, and
I would be happy to answer questions.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Kolbe. I think your testimony really comes to the heart
of what we are trying to get at here this morning, and that is
how we measure the effectiveness of what we are doing. I have
been harping on this all along on this media program, that it
needs to make sure that we have a good evaluation component to
it, and you have certainly outlined I think the elements of
that.
Let me ask just a few questions to clarify some of this.
Are you aware of any other studies that have been done either
by agencies such as yours or independently in the entertainment
industry or the advertising industry that measures the
effectiveness of media campaigns? And I am thinking more
specifically of products, where it seems to me that in the end
you have got the bottom line of how many of the products are
bought. But I am thinking more in terms of behavioral changes.
Are there any other peer-reviewed studies that you know of that
deal with this?
Ms. David. Well, to clarify, there are important studies
that look at behavior change and have done this in
communitywide studies that have looked at campaigns and their
impact. But if you are saying to compare it to a PSA compared
to television programming, that is another matter. I think one
of the unique things that we see here is a major campaign with
paid advertising; the idea of being able to control the
placement of socially responsible awareness ads and be able to
put them in the right place at the right time to reach the
right audiences and with a very heavy focus on exposure, to
have that and then to have a combination.
We feel very privileged to have been able to design a
science-based study that is based on the Commit Project, which
is a study of smoking and heart disease and other studies. So
that we have used a model like that, but our primary focus is
looking at the ads themselves because the ads contain messages
that are designed carefully and are focused for a particular
audience, and they will be repeated. And it is that cumulation
of that.
Mr. Kolbe. We can go all of the way back to 1965 or 1963,
when the first anti-smoking message was put on cigarettes, and
so we have a long history--we can get longitudinal data--a long
history of this in that area alone. But it is hard, is it not?
And more recently you have had the massive advertising
campaigns funded by the tobacco settlements that have appeared
on television. But it is a little hard to isolate, and we have
seen the decline in smoking through the years, at least up
until recently, it is a little hard to isolate what is
responsible for what in all of this, is it not?
Ms. David. Yes, it is difficult. One of the things we have
done in our study, Dr. Hornik, who is the realdesigner of the
approach we have taken, is that we try to identify as many sources of
influence as we can. So in the case of this particular question about
television, ``Have you noticed any stories in television programming?''
We ask about television programs specifically, we ask about news
accounts, we ask about the media, different media, we ask about movies.
So we try to discern, if we can, the influences. We also ask people,
``Have you participated in a drug education program recently either
sponsored by schools or sponsored by your religious organization?''
We ask about other involvements that help us discern those
influences. But pulling them apart will be very difficult, even
with sophisticated analytical approaches. On the other hand,
let us face it, the most successful programs have been those
that have been communitywide, wraparound, any message that is
positive and consistent in producing a social message and that
reinforces each other, that is all to the good from our point
of view.
Mr. Kolbe. Thank you. I am going to allow time for
questions from our other two members that are here.
Mr. Hoyer.
Mr. Hoyer. Thank you.
Ms. David, in General McCaffrey's presentation, we note
that in 1991, apparently, for some reason, there was a spike-up
in terms of use and perception of the harmfulness or,
conversely, a spike-down in not harmful, a spike-up in use.
If we knew why that has spiked up, we can deal with it and
try to spike it down. Why did that happen in that time frame,
do we know?
Ms. David. Well, some of the scientists, Dr. Lloyd Johnston
and others, have conceptualized that suddenly there was a
tremendous absence of anti-drug messages in the media that
occurred. And I, myself, was the Public Affairs director for
NIDA at the time, and it was difficult to get newspapers and
others interested in talking about marijuana and to get a
message out there. So many of us thought that there was an
absence of messages, and with that absence grew a, I guess, a
strength of the opposite of an anti-drug absence message. And
so that is what people have talked about, but to say we do not
have definitive research that says absolutely.
One of the keys that we have built into the evaluation is
that we have used those basic, those same kind of measures that
Dr. Johnston uses, but we also ask lots more questions about
attitudes, beliefs and behaviors so we can learn more about
what is underneath those things, and maybe we will be in a
position to explain more the next time.
Mr. Hoyer. Let me ask you something about tobacco. The
chairman observed that it was down. I used the statement, and
it was correct at some point in time, and I wonder if it is
still correct. I have three daughters, neither their mother,
nor their father, ever smoked, but they all three smoked at one
time. Luckily, my oldest daughter, who now has had a child,
quit at that time. The two younger daughters still smoke,
notwithstanding their father's serving on the Labor and Health
Subcommittee and bringing them home a lot of information all of
the time. It is very disconcerting to me, and I talk to them
about it regularly. They say it is very hard to stop.
At some period of time, the only group in America that was
smoking more were young women between the ages of 18 and 35. Is
that still the case?
Ms. David. Mr. Hoyer, I have to plead, I am not guilty on
this, I am not an expert on it. But I will go back to the
Institute and do that for the record.
Mr. Hoyer. The reason I say that is my presumption was that
the reason that was the case is because smoking was an
indication of equality and status. ``You've come a long way,
baby.'' A direct appeal to have women smoke. So that if they
had a Virginia Slim in their hand, they would look really cool.
Ms. David. Yes.
Mr. Hoyer. It is insidious. And that is our concern with
the public media. Twenty-six percent or twenty-two percent
displaying normal drug use.
Ms. David. Sure.
Mr. Hoyer. As General McCaffrey saying, you want to
``unnormalize'' the use of drugs.
Ms. David. That is right. Right. Yes.
Mr. Hoyer. It seems to me that if there is a correlation
between that sort of incentive, it is obviously from a market
standpoint. The other way you impact it is the way we have been
talking about and General McCaffrey has been talking about. But
it seems to me it is critical to have young people think it is
not cool.
Ms. David. That is true.
Mr. Hoyer. And if the 1991-1992 spikeup was an absence of
information that it is not cool, the general premise is that
they were not getting that repeated message, therefore, it
spiked up.
Ms. David. Well, one of the things we are very excited
about at NIDA is that we have just, in fact, it just got
announced, that the NCI, the National Cancer Institute, and
NIDA are co-funding seven new centers to look at tobacco
issues. And one center that I am associated with is looking at
marketing and other issues in regard to youth. And so that just
got funded I guess two days ago it got announced. And so we are
really hopeful that they will have some significant, that these
are large-scale grants, they are interdisciplinary, and they
will be looking at lots of issues and, hopefully, we will be in
a better position to answer that more directly.
Mr. Hoyer. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Kolbe. Mr. Peterson.
Mr. Peterson. Is one of the major deterrents, fear that it
is harmful to your health, that you are going to have some
negative health concepts from using a drug? Is that part of the
message that should be out there?
Ms. David. I think it always needs to be part of the
message. There is no question that there needs to be an
environment in which drugs are viewed as harmful, because they
are. But the issue has to do with recognizing the social
environment that young people are in. And the social
environment does not always lead to their operating on that
kind of information.
So what you need to look at are, in fact, as I understand
it, the campaign and our model, our evaluation model, are
looking at social consequences, problems. Some young people
might think that their peers will not like them if they do not
do drugs. I think the focus of the campaign is to change that
norm and say it is a positive thing not to do drugs. There are
good things to do and so on.
So I think there always has to be a backdrop of the harmful
effects of these drugs, and then within that, thethings that
matter more to young people when they make decisions about drugs.
Mr. Peterson. We have the legalization debate, we have the
medical discussion that marijuana is a good medical--we should
be using it medically, which really deters from it being a
harmful product. I think marijuana is the one that has kind of
slipped right by us. I think marijuana, and I have family
members who got heavily into marijuana when they were young, I
think it is going to impact them the rest of their life. I just
do not think they are the person they would have been if they
had not got involved in marijuana.
I do not think that message is out there. I mean, they tell
me it is less impacting than alcohol, you know, it is better,
you do not have a hangover. And I want to tell you they are
down into our middle schools starting them on marijuana, giving
it to them first. It is pretty cheap today. And I guess I think
the one that is the gateway to most drug use is marijuana, and
of course alcohol is another one. But marijuana is the one that
I think has just gotten right by us on the radar screen.
Young people are not afraid of marijuana. They are just not
frightened by it. They do not think there is anything harmful.
It is less harmful than their parents taking a glass of wine. I
mean, that is what they tell me. And they are fighting for
legalization, and that is an ongoing discussion publicly. And
so when you are legalizing something, you are saying it is
okay.
Would you like to comment on that?
Ms. David. Well, I think that the one terrific thing about
this campaign, which is just kicking off in its full bloom, if
you will, is that it has a comprehensive message. Bottom line,
looking at consequences and trying to present to young people
consequences that matter to them in a context of other kinds of
messages, better ways to be, things that can interfere with
your hopes and dreams, those Williams sisters, those kind of
neat-looking young people, very young people, who can succeed
and be role models and say, ``Drugs do not mean anything to me.
I do not need them.''
So from that point of view, I think the campaign, which was
designed with a science-based strategy, is working on the right
messages and the appropriate things. Now, as an evaluator, I am
not supposed to say that, of course. I am supposed to be
totally independent. But basically our model is based on the
same model that the campaign is trying to accomplish. It is a
model of trying to deal with things that matter to young
people, matter to their parents, ``How can I talk to my kids?
What are the messages I should use?'' and putting that into a
model. And we are evaluating it using the same model, saying,
``Are these things changing? Will they change? What is the
long-term impact?''
Mr. Peterson. Thank you.
Mr. Kolbe. Thank you. We only have five minutes left in
this vote. And I have a whole series of other questions, but I
do not think it would be fair to have you come back or to have
us come back, since we have a hearing scheduled this afternoon.
I will submit mine for the record for you. I apologize that we
are shortening this just a little bit, but our schedule is
determined by what happens on the floor also.
We thank you very much for appearing with us today. Thank
you so much.
We will resume at 2 o'clock.
Thursday, October 21, 1999.
YOUTH ANTI-DRUG MEDIA CAMPAIGN
WITNESSES
MARCY KELLY, BOARD MEMBER, MEDIASCOPE
ROBBY LONDON, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, DIC ENTERTAINMENT
LAWRENCE FRIED, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING, ABC
PATRICIA GOODRICH, DIRECTOR, CORPORATE INITIATIVE, ABC
Afternoon Session
Mr. Kolbe. Good afternoon, and thank you very much. We will
resume the subcommittee hearing. My distinguished, Mr. Hoyer,
has another subcommittee meeting going on now, and he may or
may not join us later, and other members may join us for this
afternoon. But I do want to go ahead, particularly inasmuch as
we are going to be interrupted here in about 25 or 30 minutes
by votes here and a series of votes. Many of you have been
around Capitol Hill enough to know that our life depends on
these bells and things that go on here. So we will try to work
around that, and there may be a period that you will have some
time for conversation among yourselves, but we will get back as
quickly as we can afterwards.
We began this morning, for those of you that were here, by
exploring the role that is played by the entertainment media
and the National Youth Anti-Drug Campaign. And so this
afternoon we want to focus on the entertainment industry
itself, and we welcome four witnesses and experts that come
from the entertainment industry and our media experts. And you
are all here agreeing to lend us your expertise and experience.
You come from both bicoastal worlds there, California and
New York, the capitals of our entertainment world, and weare
very appreciative for your coming and participating in this hearing.
Our witnesses this afternoon include, and we will go in the
order from right to left, include Marcy Kelly, who is founder
of Mediascope and a member of its board of directors. This
organization has a lot of experience in the area of portrayal
of public health and social issues in the entertainment
industry.
We have Robby London, vice president of DIC Entertainment,
who has an impressive portfolio of children's entertainment
programming to his credit.
Patricia Goodrich is director of Corporate Initiatives for
ABC. And I hope that she will be able to give us her
perspective as network executive on the workings of the match
requirement, as well as the campaign's outreach initiative.
And lastly, doing the same, is Lawrence Fried, executive
vice president for Marketing and general sales manager for ABC.
So we look forward very much to the testimony this
afternoon and what we can glean from you about this media
campaign. Let me just add, parenthetically, as my own personal
view, this is something that I have a great personal interest
in, and there are many in Congress that feel a kind of parental
responsibility for this program and helping to not only get it
off the ground, but to keep it moving forward. And so the
purpose of our hearing today is certainly not in any way to
find fault with the program, but rather to understand it and
hopefully to try to make sure that, as members of Congress who
have a responsibility for funding for this program, that we are
making the right decisions and directing this in the right way.
And so with that thought in mind, and if he is able to be
here later, I certainly would call on Mr. Hoyer for his own
statement. But let us begin with Ms. Kelly.
Ms. Kelly.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you.
Mr. Kolbe. And may I add for all of you, your full
statements can be placed in the record if you would prefer to
summarize the statements or just discuss the comments that you
want to make.
Ms. Kelly.
Ms. Kelly. Good afternoon, Chairman Kolbe, and Mr. Peterson
and staff. My name is Marcy Kelly, and I am the founder, past
president and current member of the board of directors of
Mediascope, a nonprofit organization that is based in Studio
City, California. I am very pleased to be here today to speak
about incorporating pro-social content into entertainment media
so that audience reach for public health information can be
maximized.
We are very pleased to be part of the National Youth Anti-
Drug Media Campaign, which has been designed to extend its
audience penetration beyond the traditional methods, to
incorporate the use of popular culture so central to the lives
of young people. We know today that media is a primary source
of information for most people in this country. The October
18th edition of Newsweek lists television and movies as the
most influential sources in the lives of 10- to 15-year-olds,
the so-called ``tweens.'' And so it is imperative that those
who work in entertainment media have access to the most up-to-
date information about high-risk health issues so that
responsible and accurate portrayals can be incorporated into
programming. Some of the topics that we have addressed to date
include violence, AIDS, teen pregnancy prevention, media
ratings and substance abuse.
Our work is focused primarily on promoting constructive
depictions of social and health issues in film, television and
music. We accomplish this by bringing public policy issues to
the attention of professionals working in the entertainment
industry, and this is often accomplished by brokering
information before the public health and academic communities
and the creative communities.
Typically, we will bring one or more leading experts in a
particular field together with interested entertainment
professionals. The resulting dialogue often provokes interest
that may eventually be integrated into a line of dialogue or
accurate character development, a background visual, such as an
anti-drug poster or a full story line. Mediascope provides,
when asked, access to whatever expertise may be requested,
including consultation with the creative team.
Examples of our collaborative efforts with the creative
community can be found in recent projects relating to children
and teens. Building Blocks, a guide for creating children's
educational television was the culmination of a year-long
series of meetings with development executives, writers,
producers and network representatives to create a resource for
those seeking to fulfill Federal Communication Commission
requirements on program content.
Through the Eyes of Children was a full-day conference last
March at the Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences, which
dealt with such issues as on-screen diversity and quality
programming. And last month, with DIC Entertainment, a leader
in children's production, Mediascope co-sponsored the
Children's Media Summit, which focused on developing voluntary
guidelines for creative professionals in the field and details
of all of these projects have been provided to the
subcommittee.
In addition to these kinds of activities, we also strive,
through research and publications, to objectively report on
media content. This allows us to study how topics are depicted,
to identify the kinds of portrayals that may be misleading or
have the potential to cause harm and to use that information to
help educate the creative community. The National Television
Violence Study in 1996 revealed that most programs and feature
films aired on television contain violence and that
consequences to violent behavior are too rarely shown. While
recognizing the importance of conflict and story telling, this
information has enabled us to focus our educational efforts on
the media risk factors that may lead to the learning of
aggressive attitudes and behaviors, the desensitization to
real-world violence or fear of victimization. And by media
factors here, I am referring to things such as who commits the
act of violence, whether it is trivialized by humor or whether
an act is rewarded or punished.
Earlier this year we released another study, Substance Use
in Popular Movies and Music. You have a copy of it. It was
sponsored by the Office of National Drug Control Policy and
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. It
was authored by leading researchers at Stanford University and
Lewis and Clark College. It is a content analysis of two years
of the 1,200 most popular film and recording titles. This study
revealed, as you learned this morning, that 98 percent of
movies and 27 percent of music recordings included depictions
of alcohol, tobacco or illicit drugs.
One of the major concerns raised, aside from the sheer
amount of substance use found, was the fact that consequences
to use are rarely depicted. Research shows that if negative
consequences are not shown, young people will interpret and
internalize the behavior as positive. Clear negative
consequences are essential.
The results of this study provide an opportunity to educate
the creative community about ways to portray drug use that is
consistent with the messages of the campaign. We expect to
release in January 2000 a similar study supported by ONDCP that
will report on about 170 episodes of the most popular prime
time shows among African-American, white and Hispanic teens. An
additional important benefit of these studies is that they
provide a benchmark for potential evaluation in the future.
As leaders here in Congress and in Hollywood agree, popular
entertainment is significant to the lives of America's young
people. The campaign's congressional mandate requires that its
anti-drug messages be delivered through a full range of media.
Our goal then is to utilize the visibility and credibility of
popular media with young audiences to convey accurate
information that you will reinforce the messages they are
receiving from campaign ads that drug use is not the norm, it
is unglamorous and socially unacceptable.
We have provided you with a detailed summary about the
entertainment program of the campaign, but I'd like to take a
moment to just identify a couple of areas of effort. One is
that we have been, and will continue to host forums and
dialogues for members of the entertainment industry.
Information about drug prevention messages has now been
presented to all of the television networks, members of the
industry professional guilds, the Writers' Guild, Producers'
Guild, Screen Actors' Guild, et cetera, trade publications, as
well as writers, producers, directors that may be involved with
specific shows or films, as well as development executives.
Providing resources and information on substance abuse to
the creative community is also an ongoing activity. This is
accomplished by offering access to experts in drug abuse and
related fields, such as child psychology, providing support for
the development of stories or characters, script reviews,
creation of specialized materials, mailings, handouts and a
website designed specifically for the creative community.
We are also engaging celebrities, such as Lauryn Hill, the
Los Angeles Lakers, Venus and Serena Williams, the Dixie
Chicks, as well as cast members from top shows like
``Felicity,'' ``Jessie'' and ``Cosby,'' who are willing to
volunteer their time to promote campaign messages. They do this
in a variety of ways, including Public Service Announcements,
on-line chats and participation in special community events.
To help guide program strategy and execution, Mediascope
staff members frequently rely on members of its National
Advisory Committee, which is comprised of leaders in
entertainment. That includes film, television, and music,
prevention, public policy, health and academia. This committee
provides a valuable sounding board, which reinforces our
direction and the potential effectiveness of our approach to
this special audience. And I should add that this committee is
also serving as an advisor to the campaign.
We are pleased to report that thus far the entertainment
industry has been receptive and responsive to our outreach
efforts. It is a unique culture integrating both business and
art and fiercely protective of its creative freedom. We
recognize that our role is to bring the campaign and its
purpose to their attention to serve as a conduit for
information, facilitate discussion and encourage them to use
the information as they wish in the context of their particular
situation.
We are pleased to note that accurate and responsible
depictions of drug abuse, addressing myths, misconceptions and
the consequences of use have now been included in a number of
high-rated broadcast television shows, including ``ER,''
``Chicago Hope,'' ``Sports Night,'' ``NYPD Blue,'' and ``The
Practice.''
As you know, the campaign's entertainment outreach
activities are still in their first year, and we have many
challenges ahead. The reception we have had thus far, however,
makes us confident that we can fulfill your mandate to
incorporate a full-scale media outreach in order to maximize
the campaign's effectiveness. We feel privileged to be part of
one of the most important public health campaigns in the
Nation's history.
Thank you for this opportunity, and I am happy to answer
any questions.
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Mr. Kolbe. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Ms.
Kelly, and we will go through all of the statements before we
take questions.
Mr. London.
Mr. London. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Peterson,
assorted staff.
I am Robby London. I am executive vice president, Creative
Affairs, for DIC Entertainment. I have been a writer and
producer of children's television for over 20 years. And for
the last 14 years, I have been in charge of Creative Affairs
for DIC, which has produced over 3,000 episodes of children's
programs, which have been shown in virtually every outlet in
the U.S. and around the world. Our shows include such things as
``Inspector Gadget,'' ``Captain Planet and the Planetiers,''
``Where on Earth is Carmen San Diego?'' and ``Madeleine.'' Our
programs have won Emmy, Cable Ace, Humonotous, and
environmental media awards, and we have been recognized by the
National Education Association.
I can add sort of a perspective from a writer-creator
specifically of programs targeted to 2- to 11-year-olds, which
have kind of a very unique challenge in terms of the audience
we are trying to reach. Because children are so impressionable,
special skill and sensitivity are required when media broaches
subjects such as substance abuse. One must walk a very fine
line between presenting children information that will be
beneficial to them and frightening him or her in an unhealthy
or inappropriate manner.
There is a desire to be age appropriate in our messages,
and yet our audience is comprised of such a wide range of ages
and associated developmental capacities that it is all but
impossible for us to service one age without doing a disservice
to the others. Furthermore, in trying to portray the drawbacks
of certain behaviors, we risk actually introducing a young
person to a behavior to which they might not otherwise have
been exposed. And lastly, we prefer neither to offend nor
certainly to supplant parents who have their own ideas about
what their children should or should not be told.
These are just but some of the challenges faced on a daily
basis by creators of children's programs. And make no mistake,
producers, creators, and broadcasters acknowledge the power we
yield, and we take our responsibilities very, very seriously.
But there is another fine line that we have to walk, and
that is of being story tellers versus being instruments of
propaganda. We welcome accurate information, and yet we share a
deep concern about our freedom of creative expression. We
insist on free speech, and we can be highly sensitive to being
co-opted or made pawns of political or social agendas with
which we may or may not agree.
We see ourselves largely, first and foremost, as story
tellers, which is not to say that we object to being conveyors
of accurate, objective information when it is appropriate to
our stories. We welcome the advice of experts. We welcome
practical, accurate information on children's behavior and the
problems and dangers they face.
That is where the entertainment outreach component of the
campaign comes in. It is an extremely cost-effective way to
reach the audience at large simply by passing the information
along to the creators and gatekeepers of that program to that
audience. And if such information does wind up in an episode,
you have reached millions of people, and you have reached them
in a way that is more likely to have impact because it is part
of the stories and characters they love to watch. And I think
there is a real danger in trying to quantify simply these
exposures because I think it is the nature of the impact that
is equally important as the amount of them.
It is also far less likely than Public Service
Announcements or commercials to elicit a sort of backlash
response. Kids from about 9 on, in my experience, are very,
very sensitive to overt efforts to manipulate them or preach to
them. And I think doing it within the shows stands a far better
chance of getting that reaction than does a commercial.
So how does one go about providing accurate information to
the creative community in a manner that is most likely to
produce results and end up in the programs? I feel the most
effective way has been the meetings or roundtables in which
experts come to the media and present research findings and are
available to discuss and answer questions. Invariably, this
type of an event, to me, makes a stronger and more lasting
impression in the creators and will be more likely to have an
impact on the programs. These workshops or meetings can be
supplemented with written materials and funded consulting
services which are cost-free to the users and websites, et
cetera.
But the reality is that most of us are too rushed and
pressured to research these things proactively. Most writers
work on a freelance basis, paid per script, they are not given
research funds, they work under intense deadlines. Producers
and executives face similarly daunting pressures. That is why I
find these meetings, and lunch and roundtables to be the most
effective tool.
I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the role of
organizations such as Mediascope in getting the message out to
creative professionals. Mediascope is an organization I am
personally familiar with, and their philosophy of sort of
presenting information in a nonpejorative manner and not really
being an advocacy group, not really being an arm of the
Government, but really just trying to encourage straightforward
dialogue and information I think is very valuable. I think the
source of this information, in terms of speaking from the
creative community, it is really the source of the information
that is equally important as the information because it has to
be a credible source.
It is for that reason that DIC recently sought out
Mediascope to co-sponsor a summit that we held, which Marcy
just mentioned, in which we gathered together members of the
creative community, the National Education Association, the
National PTA, professors from Stanford and UCLA, and all seven
of the broadcast networks were represented, the Writers' Guild
of America and representatives of some of the new largest new
media outlets.
Their purpose was to draft some guidelines, and I want to
emphasize they were voluntary guidelines, and they will always
be voluntary guidelines to help creators of children's media.
And the guidelines fall into three broad categories: character
and values, conflict and violence, and diversity and
stereotypes. We hope these guidelines will be widely
distributed to creators and gatekeepers of children's media and
ultimately impact that which children see.
As an example of the power of the informational roundtables
I referenced earlier, there were special guidelines that we
came up with regarding bullying. And this came directly out of
a presentation under the auspices of Mediascope by Dr. Tony
Bigeland, who was mentioned earlier this morning, on the role
that bullying has played in therecent incidents of school
violence. And upon having been exposed to this information in this
research, we made a point to create special guidelines about bullying.
And so that came specifically out of a Mediascope roundtable.
DIC's and Mediascope's summit, and I think the guidelines
that will come out of it, represent a perfect example of how
representatives of the various disciplines which care about our
children can work collectively on our children's behalf.
So quickly to summarize the points. Content creators have
the potential to reach millions of kids in a very influential
way, programming for kids constitutes a unique challenge, most
creators are willing, if not eager, to receive accurate
information concerning issues of relevance to kids. To be
effective, the source of that information, however, must be
credible and nonpolitical. Outreach roundtables provided by
credible, nonthreatening sources, such as Mediascope, are an
excellent and effective means to communicate such information
to media professionals.
I would be happy to answer questions after the others have
made their statements. Thank you very much.
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Mr. Kolbe. Thank you. A most interesting statement. I have
got lots of thoughts for questions here, too.
Ms. Goodrich.
Ms. Goodrich. Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me here
today. I am going to give you a brief overview of ABC's public
service efforts, specifically our involvement in the war
against drugs, and I want to tell you why we think this program
is so vitally important. Then my colleague, Larry Fried, will
give you further detail and discuss the results we have
achieved together. At the end, we would be happy to try to
answer any questions you may have.
First, the Office of National Drug Control Policy--
Mr. Kolbe. You do not have to stop quite in mid-sentence.
We have 15 minutes to get over there for the vote. That should
give you plenty of time to finish your statement, and then we
will pause and go to the votes and return.
Please go ahead.
Ms. Goodrich. Thank you.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy's media campaign
is by no means ABC's first foray into the war against drugs. It
is, however, our most powerful. In fact, the project we are
here to discuss today is what we believe to be the farthest
reaching public service campaign in television history. I would
like to start with some background on ABC's involvement in
public service.
The focal point for campaigns has been the use of our
airwaves to educate and inform viewers about specific issues.
While we do not make a point of publicizing it, ABC has
traditionally broadcast far more PSAs than anyone else. Why
have we made it such a priority? Because we are a family-
oriented company serving audiences comprised of all age groups,
kids, teens and adults and because we understand how
influential television is in this country, and we appreciate
that with that influence comes responsibility. The fact that my
job, head of public service, and my department exists is a
measure of how important the company thinks it is to fulfill
our obligation on the national level. It is a responsibility we
try to fulfill locally as well with the ABC-owned radio and
television stations having a long history of service to their
individual communities. Our other principal national commitment
has been Our Children First public service campaign, which
focuses on mentoring as a way to, among other things, keep kids
off drugs.
ABC's public service commitment to the anti-drug effort
preceded the ONDCP campaign by about ten years. Our management
first became aware of disturbing statistics showing an increase
in drug use among America's youth in the 1980s. In April of
1987, we entered into an alliance with the Partnership for Drug
Free America. We committed to devote fully one-third of our on-
air public service time, transferring long-term into hundreds
of millions of dollars of ad time to the Partnerships' anti-
drug message. That relationship, which continues today, created
a new model for cooperation between a media company and a
public service organization.
We built on our alliance with the Partnership by launching
our own initiative in the war against drugs. In March of 1997,
we devoted a month of programming to the ABC march against
drugs. During that time, the ABC television network ran drug-
related PSAs hourly and integrated drug-related themes into our
programming. Research shows that the campaign was successful in
achieving our goal to encourage parents and their children to
talk about drugs. We were pleased by the supportive phone calls
and letters we got from teachers and parents thanking us for
our commitment to fight drug use. But we wanted to do more,
which is why, when we heard about the ONDCP's anti-drug media
project, we jumped at the chance to be its partner.
Why is the ONDCP effort so important? Because it has
changed for the better the way TV is able to spread the word
about important issues. The ONDCP project provides a much
increased and sustained level of exposure for anti-drug
messages. Simply put, the financial resources committed have
allowed us to significantly increase the amount of time we are
able to devote to warning our viewers against drugs, and that
repetition and increased level of exposure have allowed us to
successfully hammer home our anti-drug message.
Thank you, and I would now turn to my colleague, Larry
Fried, to provide further detail or after the pause.
Mr. Kolbe. I am looking here to see Mr. Fried's statement
here. We have 11 minutes. Do you want to give it all here or do
you want us to hold off here?
Mr. Fried. Do you want a couple minutes of it?
Mr. Kolbe. Certainly.
Mr. Fried. There is a film that will take a few minutes,
but I can go through the statement quickly.
Mr. Kolbe. Go through the statement, and then we will have
show and tell when we come back.
Mr. Fried. Okay.
Mr. Kolbe. That will be an incentive for members who like
to see visual things here when we come back.
Mr. Fried. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me this
opportunity to speak to you about ABC's relationship and
interaction with the ONDCP.
In 1997, when we first learned of the ONDCP's initiative,
we felt right from the start that ABC was a perfect fit. We
were already involved in an anti-drug campaign as an effort, as
Patricia just mentioned. We are a family-based company, family
oriented in programming, and we have a multi-faceted platform
from which to really launch a terrific effort in reaching
people with our platforms of television network, radio
networks, ESPN, cable properties and our Internet activities.
We really did have a perfect platform for the ONDCP.
So we formulated a plan that we felt met the ONDCP's
objective of getting out the anti-drug message and getting
substantial reach and frequency against the key demographics of
kids, teens and parents. And we won a contract from the ONDCP
across our platforms of $61 million, with the idea that we
would give back at least a one-for-one match in public service
commitment above and beyond what we have done before. And I am
pleased to report that during that contract period, we returned
$167 million worth of match for that $61 million-dollar
expenditure. That is nearly three times more or 173 percent
more than just a one-for-one match would have been.
We matched with a number of different program elements. One
was public service ads, two was creative and three were
outreach kinds of programs. But basically speaking, when it
came to PSAs, we were running the public service ads in our
top-rated programs, prime time shows, sports programs, and we
took extreme care with our standards and practices to match up
the PSAs that were part of the qualifying match pool to the
appropriate programming that they were airing in. So if we were
running a kids' program, we put a kids'-oriented PSA, and an
adult program, an adult-oriented PSA. We even went so far as to
create some PSAs where we used all of our own resources and our
chairman, Michael Eisner, was also an important contributor to
making a PSA for the ONDCP and the anti-drug effort.
We also worked very hard with the ONDCP and the creative
community. We had a meeting in March with a lot of our
executives, a tremendous number of creative talent in our
industry, and we stressed three things there. One, that the
issues of the ONDCP were important issues to our company; two,
that we would be open to story lines along the lines that the
ONDCP was looking for that stressed anti-drug, anti-addiction
kinds of story lines that we would be receptive to putting
those on the air; and, three, that the ONDCP should be thought
of as a resource for our creative community in the presentation
of materials about addiction.
Now, ABC has always had strong anti-drug themed programming
on the air. We have always had a certain quantity of it. But we
believe that the encouragement that we gave our creatives right
from the very beginning, from all of our creative executives,
helped to really ramp up this effort in this 1998-1999 season.
And what I would do is, at this point, is tell you that I
would show you the tape and then have about one paragraph's
worth of closing remarks after the tape. But I leave that to
you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Kolbe. In the interest of time, we will watch the tape
when we come back, and then you can close your remarks, and
then we will go to questions. We have, unfortunately, a total
of four votes here, plus final passage. When the fifth vote
starts, we can leave and come back, even though they will be,
after the first one, five-minute votes, it will take us a
little time to get through these votes. So we ask you to
indulge us here while we go do what the voters elected us to do
here.
The committee will stand in recess temporarily.
[Recess.]
Mr. Kolbe. The subcommittee will resume its hearing, and my
apologies to the witnesses for the long delay here with the
number of votes that we had. But I think that should take us
through the rest of this hearing.
I think we were about to begin showing some clips; is that
right, Mr. Fried?
Mr. Fried. That is correct, Mr. Chairman.
If I could just say one thing. The clips you are about to
see are just some of the episodes that ABC produced that we
felt really fit into the mode on the matching opportunity that
we had with the ONDCP. We also did a lot of other kinds of
matches for the ONDCP that involved creativity, one of which we
were especially proud was our freevibe site that we created for
the ONDCP on the Internet, which has had over 6 million page
views with an average visit of about nineminutes, and we have
children and teens going to that ONDCP freevibe site.
So I think we can now go to the videotape and take a look
at creativity of ABC.
[Video played.]
Mr. Fried. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Kolbe. Mr. Fried.
Mr. Fried. Our partnership with the ONDCP, we are very
proud of it. We have reached millions of viewers, millions of
listeners, millions of Web surfers. We have incented our
executives and our creative community to the cause of the anti-
drug and anti-addiction effort, and we look forward to working
with the ONDCP in the future.
Thank you very much for this opportunity.
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Mr. Kolbe. Thank you very much, and thank all of you very
much again for being here and for your patience this afternoon.
I will ask a few questions, see if Mr. Peterson has some, and
then we will see if we have any final questions before we let
you go.
This has been very interesting, and the information that
has been presented has been very helpful. Let me just, before I
get into the line of questioning that I wanted to follow here,
let me just ask a couple about what we saw there.
I was interested in the couple of programs that were
targeted to young people that do not specify drugs, using
instead pancakes and snacks. What is the age group of the
audience that we are targeting there? Is it high school, middle
school, high school? What is the age group?
Mr. Fried. Well, I think if you are talking about Doug, the
episode with Nick Nax----
Mr. Kolbe. Nick Nax, the cartoon, yes, and the pancake one.
Mr. Fried. The cartoon is a Saturday morning program, and
that would be aimed at children.
Mr. Kolbe. And the other one?
Mr. Fried. The ``Sabrina'' is our TGIF line-up. It has the
highest reach of teens. It also has the highest reach of kids
of any network programming. It is also very strong on women 18
to 49, men 18 to 49, but it is also the most popular show for
teen and young adults, and young children----
Mr. Kolbe. Let me ask any of you, but perhaps Ms. Kelly
might be the one to answer this, do we have any research data
which shows the effectiveness of a message that uses a
surrogate thing for the message; a surrogate product, a
surrogate, in this case, pancakes or snacks? Do we know that it
works as transference to giving kids any message about the
behavior they should have? Are you following? Do you understand
my question, what I am trying to get?
Ms. Kelly. I think I do. Offhand, I cannot specify
particular research. However, I am happy to go back and see if
I can identify some. As Mr. London mentioned in his testimony,
reaching young children with this issue is very problematic
because you do not want to introduce something to them that
they are not ready for.
Mr. Kolbe. They are not ready for.
Ms. Kelly. Or their parents may not appreciate them being
introduced to. So it is a very sensitive issue. So I think what
the entertainment industry tries to do sometimes is to----
Mr. Kolbe. It is building values.
Ms. Kelly. Yes. And to lay the groundwork----
Mr. Kolbe. Being able to say no, et cetera.
Ms. Kelly. Exactly--for problems that will arise later.
Mr. Kolbe. Now, that would not be true, though, of
``Sabrina,'' which is teenagers. And certainly they are old
enough to have the drug issue addressed to them. So I am trying
to understand why we think that using a surrogate message, a
surrogate evil, works here when it comes to drugs or alcohol or
whatever.
Mr. London. Could I respond, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Kolbe. Sure. Yes, absolutely, Mr. London.
Mr. London. Two responses. One is I am not aware of any
research, but over the years I have been advised by many
experts, credentialed experts in children's programs that this
was an appropriate and certainly potentially effective way to
get at some of these issues without introducing children to a
behavior which was either too frightening to them, which they
could not understand, or which might serve as an example or
educate them about a behavior that they did not already know
about. So that is one answer to your question.
In terms of ``Sabrina,'' the prime time series, as Larry
mentioned, the highest rating of kids 2 to 11 watching prime
time shows watch ``Sabrina.'' So even though that may not----
Mr. Kolbe. I am sorry. Two to eleven?
Mr. London. Uh-huh. I believe that is correct, is it not?
Mr. Fried. Yes. It is aimed at basically a very young
target audience. It is also 18 to 49, but, also, our TGIF line-
up early on Friday is basically kids and teens.
Mr. London. And more to the point as to whether it is aimed
there, the point is kids are watching it. And so, speaking
personally, that seems to be a very appropriate way to try to
communicate that message to an audience that is comprised of
such a large amount of 2- to 11-year-olds.
Mr. Kolbe. About addictive behavior.
Mr. London. Correct.
Mr. Kolbe. Clearly, the message there is about addictive
behavior.
Mr. London. Correct.
Mr. Kolbe. But you do not, and I am not challenging whether
it is a good idea to do it, but you do not know of any
empirical evidence that says that kind of message on addictive
behavior that has nothing to do with the addiction we are
talking about works.
Mr. London. I do not.
Mr. Kolbe. For our two ABC people, I was interested in the
one on the sports one, the Preakness. Can you just tell me
whether that, I mean, that is clearly just not an entertainment
program. That is, well, I guess the Preaknessmight be
entertainment, but it is sports. It comes under sports news coverage.
Did that qualify for, that particular little story on Chris Antley
qualify for a match?
Mr. Fried. Yes, it did. We count it as qualifying for the
match, that is correct. And I believe the ONDCP counted it also
as qualifying for the match.
Mr. Kolbe. That raises a question. The match is not
program-by-program; is that right? Or did you have some----
Mr. Fried. Let me explain. We had an obligation, the way we
broke down the obligation is the obligation was twofold; one
was to deliver Public Service Ads and, in fact, ABC virtually
matched its dollar-for-dollar value in Public Service
Announcements. Anything above and beyond the Public Service
Announcements was extra. So if we had just done Public Service
Announcements and done no more, we would have virtually been at
our match level on a one-for-one basis, which is what we were
trying to achieve. We added all of these theme programs to what
we considered the value that we returned, to give an example of
how the company participated in this effort. But on a one-for-
one basis, we would have virtually qualified on the basis of
PSA match alone.
Mr. Kolbe. Let me just ask you, if there was not any match
program, would that be a story you would run?
Mr. Fried. Actually, the answer is yes because our ground
rules were that these would be above and beyond, for the most
part, what we had done the previous year. ABC is, I do not want
to misquote these figures, Mr. Chairman, but in the year prior
to our relationship with the ONDCP we ran about 55 percent of
all of the PSAs on the broadcast networks----
Mr. Kolbe. On your own network.
Mr. Fried. On ABC. And in the year that we had the
partnership, we ran 60 percent. And the incremental was even
more than the amount that we just ran as match for PSAs for the
ONDCP. So we actually ramped up our entire PSAs, in addition to
the amount that we did for the ONDCP.
Mr. Kolbe. I salute you for that. That is obviously very,
very commendable. But it seems to me that story is a news story
that has merit in and of itself, regardless of the message that
we are trying to convey. It, at the same time, does convey a
message without question. But that is a real news story, is it
not, about a very successful jockey who has successfully beaten
back addiction?
Mr. Fried. You said that is a news story?
Mr. Kolbe. A news/human interest.
Mr. Fried. We actually never count any news program. Well,
that is a news story, but it told a story about a person who
had a problem with addiction.
Mr. Kolbe. Right.
Mr. Fried. There was a lesson to be learned from it. And I
think----
Mr. Kolbe. You just started to say ``we never count.''
Mr. Fried. We do not count news programming in our
qualifying at all. So if we did any stories, that would not be
news, that would be sports.
Mr. Kolbe. Oh, okay. Okay. Sports is in the entertainment
category.
Mr. Fried. Sports is more in the entertainment property. A
news program, if it had a story line about drugs or addiction,
we would be----
Mr. Kolbe. If that had been on the evening news, when it
came to the sports part of it, that would not have been part of
the qualifying match.
Mr. Fried. That is correct.
Mr. Kolbe. Do you have some more questions, Mr. Peterson?
Mr. Peterson. First, I would like to commend you on the
efforts you are making and how you are participating. But as I
was listening to those, if we are going to effectively deal
with this issue, I think parents today--now, I am speaking
again from rural. I come from rural, and rural is different
than suburban, urban. Rural parents do not know how available
drugs are, and they would be shocked if they knew that probably
within a block of their house their kids could buy drugs from
seventh grade on, maybe even younger.
And I guess that is a message. Helping educate parents, are
there any efforts to educate parents on what to look for? What
happens when your children start using? Educating them on being
aware that there is a pretty good likelihood that if their kids
just get with the wrong friend, they are going to have drugs
given to them. Is that a part of the programming, to educate
parents?
Ms. Kelly. Well, I think that even in the examples of the
clips that we have seen today, we have seen some very important
role modeling of parents, of communicating with their children
and responding to exactly what to do if you discover that your
child is using. Also, I would like to mention that with ONDCP--
I think you have this--this is a guide that we have put out for
parents, and it deals with, for parents, how to use the media
as a tool, how to use it, when you see something on television
or the Internet or in a film that you may have some concerns
about, how to communicate with your children, what to look for,
and what at different ages they understand and what they are
comprehending.
Ms. Goodrich. And, also, ABC has put together guides that
we have sent out to our stations to distribute in their
communities in whatever form they thought most appropriate. We
have also done guides that have gone into the schools so that
teachers could watch these programs with their students and
then perhaps better talk with them about what the repercussions
were and try to give them direction on how we felt it was best
to approach that.
Mr. Peterson. But, see, I guess the fear I have is that
parents are not as suspecting as they need to be. They are just
not as aware of the drug culture as they should be. They just
do not think it is in their town yet. They think that little,
small town, it is down the road, it is at the bigger city, but
it is everywhere. In fact, I think it has been growing. It is
my opinion it has been growing faster in rural America than it
is in urban America. It is easier there. I think the drug
culture has found out that is a ready market. There is not as
much enforcement.
I have talked with lots of parents, and they would then go
and corner their youngsters, and over a period of time come
back to me and say, ``You know, my son told me he can, but he
never told me that, he could buy it anywhere. He can buy
anything he wants.''
Of course, then we have the large number of children that
are being raised by sort of a family. I mean, not a real
family, and maybe somebody cares whether they do drugs, maybe
somebody does not. And then we have that whole audience to work
with that I guess I worry a lot about, too, because I have a
granddaughter who tells me an awful lot ofher girlfriends are
raising themselves. They do not have any guidelines, they are allowed
to go and do what they want at 14/15. They just do not have any parent
supervision. They have a mother, and maybe she works a lot or a couple
of jobs, but there is not really a family, and they do not really live
under many rules. And I guess that is a whole new phenomenon we have,
that we try to think about the traditional family. Well, the
traditional family is not raising over half of our kids, in my view.
Ms. Goodrich. Agreed.
Mr. Peterson. That is an audience, too. How do we get
parents aware of what their kids are exposed to out there?
Ms. Goodrich. One of the things that ABC has done in the
past is, when we did the March Against Drugs, for instance, the
big message was talk to your kids about drugs. Because we
recognize that in the suburbs, for instance, a lot of the
parents do not think that it can happen to them. And so we were
advocating strongly talk to them, at least open the discussion,
and it will be, as you found out, there will be all kinds of
things that come out of that. But you can advocate that as
strongly as possible, and that is what we have tried to do.
I do not know if you all are familiar with it, but there is
a Partnership for a Drug Free America spot where there is a kid
on a skateboard on a big, wide beautiful street, and he is
skating around, and they give out some really startling
statistics about the fact that the drug culture is growing much
more rapidly right now outside of the urban areas than it is
within them.
Mr. Peterson. I have not seen that.
Ms. Goodrich. So the information is out there, and we just
try to disseminate it as often and as regularly as possible.
Mr. Peterson. Thank you.
Mr. Kolbe. Ms. Kelly, this morning General McCaffrey spoke
about the process that is used to decide about the match and
how it qualifies. Is that the way you understand that it works?
I guess what I am trying to understand is who makes the
decision as to whether or not a particular editorial--we are
talking now about the soft content, well, and also about the
messages that might be put on, the direct messages--who gives
the final approval on that and decides they qualify for the
match?
Ms. Kelly. As I think you know, there are two major
contracts that are part of this campaign. And one is what we
call the advertising portion of it, which is led by Ogilvy &
Mather, and they deal with that aspect. My contract is through
the nonadvertising side, and we do not directly deal with the
match at all.
Mr. Kolbe. Explain to me a little bit more about your
contract, if it is on the nonadvertising side, does it have to
do with the soft match?
Ms. Kelly. Yes, it would have to do with----
Mr. Kolbe. So it does have to do with the soft match.
Ms. Kelly. Yes, except that the way we approach is not--in
other words, the contract I have is through Fleishman Hillard,
and the work that we are doing is targeted toward trying to
educate and inform people who work in the entertainment
industry about the issues and to encourage them to incorporate
those into their story lines. But we do not actually purchase
any of the time or have that connection. Most of the people we
work with on the creative side are not even particularly aware
of the match. They take on the issue because they think it is
important and because it can be incorporated into their shows.
They have characters that are the right ages and so forth.
Mr. Kolbe. Well, that leads me into the next area that I
wanted to talk about, and that is I think it--maybe it was you,
Mr. London, I forget which one of you said you thought the
outreach program, the forums and seminars that you were doing
with the creative people, was the most effective way.
Mr. London. Yes. That was me.
Mr. Kolbe. More effective than my simply giving them a
piece of paper saying, ``You put this kind of message in, you
are going to get this many dollars credit for it here?''
Mr. London. Just speaking solely from the creative
community, which is not necessarily to speak from the business
side, but there is a sort of strong demarcation in the
entertainment industry between the creative side and the
business side.
Mr. Kolbe. I am sure there must be.
Mr. London. But speaking from the creative side of that
desk, we get deluged with paper, brochures, reports, we get a
lot of information sent to us, and we just do not have time to
look at it. And the reason I support the roundtables and the
meetings is because I feel, as a general statement of
principle, person-to-person contact and dialogue is always a
more impactful and more important----
Mr. Kolbe. I can believe what you just said. Because as one
who gets deluged with reports, and studies, and so forth and
pieces of paper that never see the light of day or that I do
not, at least, get to read a lot of it, but then I also face
the same thing of an overwhelming number of meetings that I
have to sit down and attend, go to. Why would, if you are a
creative person, you would be any more interested in sitting
down in a roundtable just to discuss this than looking at some
report about it?
Mr. London. Let me give you two answers. The first answer
is many of these meetings are held over a meal, either
breakfast or lunch, and we have to do that, and that helps. I
do not mean to imply that the food is the incentive, but it
does not take time out of your working day. You have that time
anyway.
Mr. Kolbe. It helps to make a more casual, informal
setting.
Mr. London. But the larger reason, and I would not
underestimate the value of this, there is a tremendous desire
on the part of creative professionals to network and to hear
what each other are doing, to share information and anecdotes,
and very frankly, in some cases, to meet people that you feel
can offer you an opportunity, in some way, in the future. So I
think if you can get a certain level of attendee at these
events and make it known to other attendees that these people
will be there, I think there is an incentive for a lot of
people to come. And, again, judging by the things I have
attended, that system works.
Mr. Kolbe. When you sit down at one of those meetings, who
are you representing?
Mr. London. Me, personally? I represent DIC Entertainment,
which is a producer.
Mr. Kolbe. You would be at the same meeting, Ms. Kelly?
Ms. Kelly. Chances are I would have organized it.
Mr. Kolbe. You would have organized it.
Ms. Kelly. Yes.
Mr. Kolbe. Do they know, when they sit down with you, who
you represent?
Ms. Kelly. Oh, absolutely.
Mr. Kolbe. Other than Mediascope. I mean, that you have a
contract with ONDCP?
Ms. Kelly. Yes.
Mr. Kolbe. Or does this never come up? Do we try not to
talk about that?
Ms. Kelly. I do not know that we make a particularly big
issue about it, but generally we will announce who has funded
the event or what it is about, why we are bringing people
together. And, also, we would be giving out some materials from
ONDCP. So it is not hidden information.
Mr. Kolbe. So it is not hidden. Have you run into
resistance at these meetings, of people saying, ``You know,
stop getting over in my turf. I am the creative person. I know
what is needed here, what I want to do''?
Mr. London. Surprisingly not. Because as I mention in my
statement, creative people are extremely sensitive to that and
want no part of it.
Mr. Kolbe. I am just trying to understand how you tread
that fine line there.
Mr. London. It is a fine line. There is no question about
it. But I think very much the nature of Mediascope, and I keep
saying Mediascope because they have produced the most number of
events that I have attended, and the nature of the
organization, the way these events are publicized, explained
and actually executed, have a real sense about them of not
having an agenda and simply, ``Here is some information for you
to use or not use as you choose.'' And that is not offensive to
creative people.
Ms. Goodrich. A lot of them are going to----
Mr. Kolbe. Yes.
Ms. Goodrich. I am sorry, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Kolbe. Sure. Please, please, any of you any time here.
Ms. Goodrich. A lot of these people are going to be dealing
with these issues anyway because they are real-life issues.
They want to know how to deal with them appropriately, and that
is what the ONDCP and the organizations that represent anti-
drug initiatives can tell them. So they are looking for
information, what Mr. London is talking about. They are
thirsty, and this affords them the opportunity to ask questions
and get the kind of information that they can then parlay into
some wonderful, creative thing that we will see on the screen.
Mr. London. And it is very important that these meetings
are nonthreatening, perceived as such and, in fact, are.
Because all of us in Hollywood are aware of certain aspects of
the Government trying to regulate us, trying to point fingers
at us, trying to blame us for every ill the world knows. We are
familiar with hearing that litany.
Mr. Kolbe. Really? That has happened? I am shocked.
[Laughter.]
Mr. London. And so it is, for us, in a way refreshing to
attend an event, where that is not what the event is about and
where----
Mr. Kolbe. And they truly are perceived that way, then, as
nonthreatening, as that I am here from Washington to tell you
what is good messages you should be doing? They are really
perceived in that nonthreatening way?
Mr. London. Well, I cannot speak for every creator. I am
sure there are creators out there that are just absolutely dead
set against hearing anything that has anything to do with
Government, period. But by and large, certainly speaking for
the children's programming community, yes, they are perceived
as nonthreatening. Because, for example, Mediascope is not
considered to be an arm of the Government. Mediascope, I
understand to be a conveyor of information and nothing more,
not a regulator.
Mr. Kolbe. I am just getting warmed up here, but before I
see if Mr. Peterson has some more, let me just ask one more
question here.
As I listened to your testimony earlier, a thought occurred
to me. Is there a fundamental difference between the creativity
that we do for programming for children as opposed to adults?
Adults is truly entertainment, and you want to find out what
they like, what hits their hot buttons and what they are going
to watch. That is not quite the way we do it for children, is
it? It is not purely entertainment.
Mr. London. No, au contraire.
Mr. Kolbe. It is?
Mr. London. It has to be. It must work first as
entertainment, A, because we function in a business environment
that must bring us ratings, and B, even putting the ratings and
the business aside, if your goal is to communicate to children,
the first necessity is they have to be watching, and they have
the same remote control that adults have, and the same other
interests in the Internet and all sorts of things. So we are in
a very, very, perhaps, more competitive environment for
children's time and attention. So our programs must work first
and foremost as entertainment, or no one will see them. It does
no good to do a wonderfully do-good program and have nobody see
it, and children do very much control their own viewing after
about age, probably 3 or 4, they control their own viewing.
Mr. Kolbe. Pure entertainment for children would be
something like cartoons perhaps, or ``Sesame Street'' is
something that has a lot of educational content.
Mr. London. Correct. ``Sesame Street''----
Mr. Kolbe. Is ``Sesame Street'' geared to the parent whose
going to make the kid watch the----
Mr. London. It is geared to very young children. What
happens is after about age 6, there is a divergence in the way
kids watch TV and their ability to sort of perceive and sense
educational programs. So shows like ``Sesame Street'' and other
preschool shows can have a lot of educational content in them,
and young children find that entertaining. It is older kids, it
is the 6 to 11s that is really the challenge to try to educate
and entertain at the same time.
Mr. Kolbe. Mr. Peterson.
Mr. Peterson. Yes. I was just thinking here, since I have
been listening, as we watched the films, I mean, I commend you
for some pretty good work there. Is there anybody that could
show me a film of where young people have had the wrong message
on ABC or NBC or CBS or the movies? I cannot give you an
example, but I know there have been many times my wife and I
have been sitting there, and suddenly say, ``Boy, that is a
terrible message for kids to see. That is a terrible example.''
You know, it is 7:30 at night or it is 8:00 o'clock, and that
is a bad message.
Is there somebody who rates, monitors and does film clips
like that that--because you have picked out the ones you are
proudest of, right? You give us the things you think have been
very positive. Is there somebody who is watching regular
programming, where people have really sent the wrong message?
Ms. Kelly. Well, if I could speak to that, there is a study
that you have, which was released last, I believe, March or
April, ``Substance Abuse in Popular Movies and Music'', and
this is a study that we did with ONDCP funding, and we looked
at two years of the most popular movies, and we looked at two
years of the most popular recordings, five different genres of
music. And some of the statistics, I believe, that the General
reported this morning, some of the media statistics come from
here.
There is no question that in here we saw a number of films
and music recordings that just have a lot of depictions, lot of
use, with absolutely no consequences. A lot of scenes of young
people, say, drinking, but no consequences to it, or smoking in
particular. Those were the two biggest problems that we saw.
In January 2000 we will release a study that will look at
prime-time television, about 170 episodes, and that will
address the most popular shows among African-American, Hispanic
and white teens.
In the main, without that study, without having the data, I
can say that the broadcast network we find in general is the
most responsible area of media.
Mr. Peterson. You made a statement that intrigued me,
Robby, that you said you have been blamed for all the ills as a
creator. I do not think any of us ever envisioned that young
people would get as much of their education from television as
they do, especially those that do not have a family structure.
You know, the TV is turned on, and that is the baby-sitter.
Television is their life. And I continue to meet young people,
some of the smartest young people in the country today, but
then I also meet young people that do not know anything about
anything. I mean, they have not been schooled. They have not
paid much attention to the educational process. They have just
attended. They do not really have a family structure, and the
television has really been a major part of their life, and I
think that is why you have had more impact than you probably
want to have. But when you have the balance in a life, you can
watch some of that stuff, and it does not really bother you,
because you have somebody reinforcing the other side. There are
young people who have nobody reinforcing the other side. I
guess that is the ones I worry about. How do we deal with that?
Mr. London. Well, I absolutely agree with you, and I would
say that in the years I have been doing children's television,
I think 20 years ago creators were a lot more cavalier about
what they did, and I think one of the biggest arguments that
has helped to cause us to take our responsibilities more
seriously and why you see so many more of us in Washington and
you see voluntary guidelines such as I discussed, and the kinds
of spots that ABC produced, I think the reason for that is very
simple, and that is the acknowledgement that there are a lot of
so-called latch-key kids out there that are watching television
unsupervised. In the perfect world parents supervise their
viewing, and I think with proper parental supervision or
familial supervision, you could put almost anything on
television, and I think a child would survive it, and would
probably not lead to horrible behaviors. Without that
supervision, you are absolutely right, and I think that is why
all of us are more concerned about it. But I would say still I
think there are other influences besides television, even in
those homes without appropriate parental supervision. There are
still schools. There are still communities. There are still the
neighborhoods. There is peer pressure. There is other media
besides television, frankly. So we are a little bit defensive
about television being singled out as the cause of such things
as the school violence recently, certainly that has been so----
Mr. Peterson. You are just one of many contributing factors
in my view.
Mr. London. Certainly in my opinion, yes.
Mr. Fried. If I could just add, at ABC we are very proud of
the fact that we have a very stringent standards and practices
operation, that reviews everything that goes on the air. I
think I am correct in saying that our programming tries to be
time-period appropriate. So that if it is early in the evening,
it is aimed at a family audience, and we scrutinize programs
for where they are going to run and the kind of content that we
are going to put on the air, and we are always looking to
compete, but we are not looking to push the envelope beyond
what we think society is willing to accept.
So I think when it comes to ABC, we are very careful about
the kinds of programming that we put on the air. And if you are
looking for the other side of those programs, you might be able
to find them on occasion, but we think you would find them
maybe when they were running in a more adult time frame, and
not in a kids' frame, not in an 8:00 o'clock time frame, or an
8:30 time frame or a children's program.
Mr. Peterson. Would it be a positive thing to have a
positive rating, like, you know, when you excelled, you know,
``This network has done the most to send the right message?''
Mr. Fried. Well, you know what we find? I am an advertising
guy, so I can tell you what we found. When we put programming
on that is unacceptable to society, we get no support for it.
We may get a high rating because it attracted a lot of people
for whatever the topic was, but you cannot get--advertisers who
bail out of it right and left, so they are not very profitable
for us.
Mr. Peterson. That is good to hear.
Mr. London. I would love to respond to the rating question
if I could.
Mr. Peterson. Sure.
Mr. London. I think the value of ratings, unfortunately, is
somewhat overstated, because the reality is, is that in
households where there is somebody there to pay attention to
the ratings and try to enforce them, those are the lowest risk
households, as we just discussed. That is a family with parents
that care and understand and are educated, and try to do the
same for their children. The kids that are most at risk are
those most likely not to pay any attention at all to the
ratings.
Mr. Peterson. Well, I meant like we would rate the networks
and the movies as wholesome, give them a high score if they
were----
Mr. London. But who would pay attention? Who would that
rating be directed to and who would pay attention to it is my
question?
Mr. Peterson. Yes, you are probably right. Thankyou.
Mr. Kolbe. Thank you, Mr. Peterson.
Ms. Kelly, you said that you thought the broadcast industry
was the most responsible. That is an interesting comment. I
mean there is lots of stuff that appears in print today, but I
guess not very many kids read it. Is that what you meant, or do
you think they are actually more responsible?
Ms. Kelly. No. I was really referring to more electronic
media. I was thinking of films, television, cable and broadcast
television. Of all of those groups broadcast television is the
only one that consistently has broadcast standards.
Mr. Kolbe. We do not have anybody here today representing
the music industry. It seems to me that that is one that is
particularly difficult to reach. MTV does not use a soft match.
They would only take the hard dollars. And I am wondering if
you agree, and is that a significant way in which kids get
messages about behavior, any kind of behavior if their music--
personally, I can never understand the words anyhow, and to me
it is like listening to opera. I love listening to opera, but I
never understand the words.
Ms. Kelly. The music industry is a particularly difficult
industry to try to reach with pro-social information. In the
study that we did, we found that the biggest problem was in rap
music. One of the things that we are doing now is actually
strategizing about how to reach the music industry. The
researchers that we had working on this study felt, from some
of the focus group work that was done, that for a lot of young
people, in music, more than any other area of the media, young
people identify with the artist. And so if the artist has a
problem with drugs or is known to use them, or has that kind of
a reputation, that young people project drug use into their
lyrics, even if it is not actually there. So it is a very
complex area, and as I said, we are strategizing now about how
to reach into that community.
Mr. Kolbe. That is interesting. Your research suggested
that 98 percent of the most popular movies--I do not know
whether this was just movies or movies and broadcast TV----
Ms. Kelly. No, that was movies.
Mr. Kolbe. Just movies. Show some sort of substance use.
Ms. Kelly. Correct.
Mr. Kolbe. Do you define substance use as drugs, alcohol
and tobacco?
Ms. Kelly. Yes.
Mr. Kolbe. Because--and I do not mean this laughingly, but
there are serious food addiction problems, but since it is also
necessary for life to sustain life, you do not include that,
obviously.
Ms. Kelly. No. And included in that number is both use and
appearance.
Mr. Kolbe. Use and appearance.
Ms. Kelly. In other words, a bottle of beer could be on the
bar in a film. That would be coded as an appearance.
Mr. Kolbe. Appearance.
Ms. Kelly. Then if somebody actually swallows it, that
becomes use. So we differentiate between appearance and use.
Mr. Kolbe. So a scene with a couple at dinner and a glass
of wine in front of them, that is appearance and use,
presumably, if they are drinking it.
Ms. Kelly. Exactly.
Mr. Kolbe. And yet, research also shows that only 22
percent of the most popular movies depict illicit drug use. So
there is a huge difference between the total amount of where we
see some kind of use and those that have illicit----
Ms. Kelly. Exactly.
Mr. Kolbe. So how do we make the kinds of distinctions that
we need to make between the legal substances, while they still
may be bad, certainly in the case of tobacco. Nobody suggests
there is anything that is redeeming there. In the case of
alcohol, there is some evidence that there can be medicinal
value to that in certain circumstances. So how do we make a
distinction between those kinds of things that are legal, even
if they are not necessarily good for you, and the illicit
behavior where it is illegal?
Ms. Kelly. Well, the way we approach the entertainment
industry on these kinds of issues, is that we recognize that
tobacco, alcohol and drugs are part of life, and that sometimes
a story line or a particular character, that usage may be
important to help define that character. It might be a story
about somebody going through a substance abuse problem, or a
character who is an alcoholic. So we do not in any way request
people not include substances in their story lines. What we try
to do is encourage them, when they include those substances, to
provide some balancing information, perhaps consequences to
that use, to somebody smoking a cigarette, or using a
particular drug.
And that was our concern with the study's findings, we saw
an awful lot of use with absolutely no mention of any kind of
consequences, and sometimes when the consequences were there,
it was very difficult to tell if they were positive or they
were negative.
Mr. Kolbe. Mr. London, I think you made the comment that
the evidence shows that children over 9 are adverse to getting
their message from preaching. Can you expand a little bit on
that?
Mr. London. I hope I did not say evidence, because for me
it was just in my experience and----
Mr. Kolbe. I think you did say your experience, and that
was going to be my question. Is there evidence? Do we have any
evidence of that?
Mr. London. You know, I am always the wrong person to ask
about evidence because I am basically a writer. My job is to
create and not to research.
Mr. Kolbe. So your statement then is based on your own
perceptions, anecdotal information, that kind of thing?
Mr. London. Yes. And also, I have spent a lot of time
consulting with experts over the years, psychologists,
developmental experts, educators, and I have sort of
synthesized a lot of the information I have gotten over the
years, but I could not point in most cases to specific
research.
Mr. Kolbe. Ms. Kelly, would you agree with that statement?
Ms. Kelly. Yes, I would agree. As a matter of fact, a
conference we just did at the Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences, we had somebody from the advertising side of things
who actually did a report for the conference. Oneof the things
he noted was the high percentage of young people that are watching
shows not made for them, that do have control of that remote and do
surf and watch programs not made for their age group.
Mr. Kolbe. So the message has to be a much more subtle one
that you get with that age group?
Ms. Kelly. Very subtle.
Mr. London. I will tell you one thing that sort of
intuitively and indirectly has been demonstrated, and that is,
kids are really into things that are cool. Kids tend to
differentiate this is cool, this is not. And whatever message
you are trying to get across, it is really important that kids
believe that the message and the conveyor of that message is
cool. And for whatever reason that it is, it is very hard to
put your finger on what makes something cool and what does not,
but when it is not cool, it is very hard to be effective. And,
again, this is not based on research. This is based on sort of
anecdotal experience and ratings and seeing how kids respond to
television shows for 20 years.
Mr. Kolbe. Your use of the word ``kids'' here means pre-
teen and teenager?
Mr. London. I am pretty much referring to 2 to 11 from my
specific experience. However, I have some experience with
``tweens'' going up to about 14.
Mr. Kolbe. A 5-year-old is into what is cool and not cool?
Mr. London. Well, 5-year-olds less so; a 7-year-old is
starting to get there, and by 8, yes, at least in the urban
environment in which I deal.
Mr. Kolbe. There was one other line along there that I
wanted to ask, but now it slipped my mind. It may come back to
me. Just a couple of last questions here for Ms. Goodrich and
Mr. Fried here.
Can you describe a little bit about the decision process
you go into at the network on trying to decide whether you are
going to try to satisfy your content, satisfy your match I
guess, through a media buy or through the programming content?
Mr. Fried. I will try and answer that for you. I think at
ABC we first had to look at what the match would be in terms of
PSAs, because the content is more of a questionable thing about
how much content we have, particularly going in the first year,
knowing what we would be able to put on the air in that way. So
we really had to go back and examine our inventory and what the
company wanted to do, and we came up with the conclusion that
we could afford to do the kind of--for the kind of commitment
we would get, we would be willing to take more inventory and
put it into public service match. And we committed to making
that match on an equal basis with the hard match, I think you
called it before.
And then we did everything we could to ramp up the company,
and sent the company to do the other. But the first commitment
had to be--in our second year, it operated the same way. We
first had to determine whether we could cover the dollar
commitment in PSAs, and then if we could assure ourselves that
we had the inventory put aside, that we could cover that, we
would then move to incent the community to do more. But we
cover internally basically the idea that we are going to first
match with PSAs. So that is how we go about doing it.
Mr. Kolbe. Are most of your entertainment programs, the
sitcoms and other entertainment shows now, bought
independently? Are the scriptwriters, the people writing them
independent or are they within ABC? We have freelancing, I
guess is what I am trying to say.
Mr. Fried. We have a lot of owned product now, and we have
a lot of product that still we get from outside buyers, but the
creative community is the creative community. They are not
owned by ABC or the Walt Disney Company.
Mr. Kolbe. No, I understand. I guess where I was going with
that question is, at your conferences, it includes both
independent scriptwriters and people that work for networks; is
that correct?
Ms. Kelly. Absolutely, yes.
Mr. Kolbe. Is there any difference in the kinds of
reactions that you are finding between those that are within
the--that are working for somebody, getting a paycheck from ABC
as opposed to somebody that is a freelance?
Ms. Kelly. No, not at all. As a matter of fact, they switch
all the time too, so one season they could be independent, and
one season they would be on staff.
Mr. Kolbe. I see, yeah.
Mr. Fried. I think we were--when we held our big conference
with General McCaffrey, we were surprised at the participation
that we got. We sent out invitations. We wanted the creative
people to come, and I can tell you that everybody from ABC that
was in the room was surprised at the turnout that we got
because these people just do not show up just because we say
so. But they showed up because they were interested, and I do
not think they felt any obligation to do it just because it was
us. So I think they wanted to be there.
Mr. Kolbe. That was going to be my next question. you have
not experienced any kind of negative feedback then from your
creative people saying, ``What are you doing telling us about
conferences to talk about content?''
Mr. Fried. If anything, I think we received feedback that
they wished it would have been more targeted about this or more
targeted about some different way, and maybe less of this
research stuff, and more telling us a better way to tell the
story than was executed in this first meeting, not telling them
what to do.
Mr. Kolbe. Go ahead.
Mr. London. I would just say it is important to remember
there is no compulsion to use the information we are given, so
it is a pretty unreasonable position to say we do not want
information.
Mr. Kolbe. And you make that very clear, that nobody is
being told to use this.
Ms. Kelly. And also, as the person who organizes some of
these events, they typically run maybe two hours. They are not
long. TV people are very busy. They have very busy days, and as
Mr. London stated, generally we can get them in the morning
before they go to work or when they take a midday break. And we
will bring in experts who can talk about a whole variety of
issues, because every show has something different that they
might be interested in tackling. If you are a medical show, you
have one area of interest. If you are a law and order show, you
have another. If you are a family sitcom and you have a couple
of teenagers in the show, your interest is something else.
And so what we try to do and what we are now focusing on is
creating some forums for the staffs of shows that work in
particular genres of television.
Mr. Kolbe. Okay. So this is follow-up to what Mr. Fried was
saying, is they want more targeted kind of information.
Ms. Kelly. That is right. That is right.
Mr. Kolbe. Obviously, your conferences are much more
structured than a congressional hearing, which tend to drag on.
I can tell that.
It sounds to me like all of you agree that the system that
we have got in place here with ONDCP and both the system of the
match and the way in which we impart the information to the
creative people is working. Is that correct? Would you all
agree with that?
Mr. Fried. Right.
Ms. Goodrich. Yes.
Mr. London. Yes.
Ms. Kelly. Yes.
Mr. Kolbe. You are satisfied with the way it is working.
And, finally, back to ABC. We are constantly hearing on the
floor of the House in Congress, politicians talking to
executives and to media people about the bad messages that are
being conveyed through the media to kids, whether it is
violence, drugs, substance abuse of one sort or another. Is
this a bad rap the networks and the media is getting here?
Mr. Fried. I will be happy to say I think it is a bad rap
for ABC. I do not want to speak for anybody else, but I think
all of----
Mr. Kolbe. Would you like to separate yourself from the
others?
Mr. Fried. No, but the broadcast networks all have
standards and practices operations. They all scrutinize their
programming, and they all come up with positions for
themselves.
I think our position has been that we are very careful
about what we put on the air, and we are very careful about
what time things go on the air that reach the audiences that we
reach, and I think it would be unfair to categorize that we are
just willy-nilly programming things that are inappropriate for
the people that are watching. I think that is exactly what we
are doing. We are time period appropriate, and we are
appropriate to the kind of audience that we think watches ABC,
which is family and teens, and the kind of audience that we
want to reach.
Mr. Kolbe. Ms. Goodrich.
Ms. Goodrich. It is pretty much the same thing. I mean,
there are watchdog groups. Mr. Peterson was asking earlier
about who judges these things. There are watchdog groups who
keep an eye in whether or not we are doing what we say we are
supposed to do. And ABC generally comes up smelling pretty good
out of those. There is the Kids Nets from down here. I cannot
think of the names of a bunch of them right now, but we feel
very strongly from our internal structure, as well as the
external people, we do what we are supposed to be doing.
Mr. Kolbe. Yes. There are a bunch of the watchdog group,
and I guess that is why I was going with that, because they
have been--and I cannot tell you because I have not seen their
data recently, how specifically ABC ranks there, and I will
take your word for it that you come out better on that. But
they have been generally fairly critical of the entertainment
industry. And I am wondering if any of the others of you, Mr.
London, Ms. Kelly, would agree that there is a change taking
place. One of the things that is most critical again--now, let
us leave aside purely the drugs and even substance abuse--is
that TV generally has depicted what society regards as bad
behavior, violence, drug abuse, substance abuse of one sort or
another, without consequences to it. Is that changing in the
way our media now is beginning to show that there are
consequences? Are there more consequences being shown now?
Mr. London. I think this panel is heavily weighted towards
television, and I think it absolutely is true in television. I
think in general television has, I would say, taken more
responsibility perhaps than other media. I think I can only
speak for television.
Mr. Kolbe. Just let me clarify that. Has always taken more
responsibility or is taking more responsibility? There is a
change going about.
Mr. London. Yes. I think it has absolutely been increased
in the last ten years, just because of more awareness of
television's impact and more research coming to bear, and it is
become--frankly, we used to argue that television could not be
blamed for things, and there was no evidence that people got
behaviors from watching television, particularly kids, but
frankly, evidence has come to light in recent years, that it
has been fairly irrefutable, and it is difficult to deny any
more our role, that we have a role in people's behavior.
Mr. Kolbe. Thank you. I want to thank all of our panelists
today. This has been, for me, a fascinating hearing, and I wish
all of my colleagues could have been here today, but I can
assure you, we are going to share this information with them,
and I think it helps us a great deal as we go into the next
regular budget cycle as we talk about this issue. You have been
extraordinarily I think frank, candid, forthcoming, using all
those words that we use in ``diplomatic-ese.'' But, it really
has been very, very helpful to us today. And I know you have
extremely busy schedules, and I appreciate very much your
taking time out of your day to be here, and traveling the
distance that most of you did to be with us here today. So I am
very grateful to you for your participation in this hearing.
And I thank you again very much, and since there is no one
else here to make a further comment, the Subcommittee will
stand adjourned.
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David, Susan..................................................... 37
Dyak, B.L........................................................ 131
Fried, Lawrence.................................................. 51
Goodrich, Patricia............................................... 51
Kelly, Marcy..................................................... 51
London, Robby.................................................... 51
McCaffrey, Gen. Barry............................................ 1