PTC up to it's old games: Toyota ads defect Nip/Tuck

[Lowerdeck]

Alright. Here's the story. PTC is notorious for sending out mass calls to their membership rolls, protesting advertisers to pull away from TV shows in an attempt to get them edited or cancelled. They tried the same scheme four years ago with the then-WWF. WWE sued the PTC, they settled and PTC found more shows to target.

This one is a particuarly strange area. Nip/Tuck airs at like 10 or 11 pm, and it's on a cable network. It is nowhere near the Family Hour or on the public airwaves, two of Bozo's favourite fronts. Basically, the PTC hates all television not meant for Conservative Christian families and goes to great lengths to destroy it. To any fans of Nip/Tuck, may I suggest you send e-mails and letters to sponsors of the show as well as any broadcasters related to the show. It worked for our fight against the attack on WWE, it can work here.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/eo/20051111/en_tv_eo/17754

"Nip/Tuck" Ads Slashed

By Bridget Byrne Thu Nov 10, 8:20 PM ET

Toyota is peeling away from Nip/Tuck.

Pressured by the self-proclaimed decency mavens at the Parents Television Council, the auto company has pulled all its advertising from the FX series about the ethically fraught personal and private lives of a couple of Miami plastic surgeons.

The PTC trumpeted Toyota's pull-out on its Website, saying the auto maker wrote a letter last week to PTC boss L. Brent Bozell III "indicating the company is pulling their advertising from the ultra-raunchy FX show Nip/Tuck.

"Toyota's letter indicated that while Toyota seeks out 'edgier' programming to reach a younger demographic, a review of the content on Nip/Tuck led them to pull out of all remaining episodes. The PTC applauds Toyota for this responsible decision."

Toyota spokeswoman Nancy Hubbell tells the Los Angeles Times, which first reported the story, that the carmaker's decision was based on several factors, including the show's content. She adds that the decision was part of a broader reevaluation of Toyota's advertising strategy.

FX declined to comment on the Toyota defection. But network spokesman John Solberg did tell the Los Angeles Times that "the show is sold out for the season at one of the highest advertiser rates in all of cable."

While Toyota didn't specifically cite the PTC factor in its withdrawal, the watchdog group has targeted "hundreds" of Nip/Tuck advertisers via letter-writing campaigns.

"Without question, Nip/Tuck is one of the most sexually explicit, profane, and violent television programs in the history of American television, and it's about to get worse," the PTC says on its Website. "We need your immediate help to send a loud-and-clear message to the sponsors who are paying to bring this salacious material into our homes. The FX network and the series creator are on a mission to obliterate every remaining taboo for television, and they don't care how many young minds they harm in the process."

Tim Winter, executive director of the Los Angeles-based group, tells the Times that "dozens" of the advertisers contacted "have responded by no longer sponsoring shows or letting us know that they won't continue their sponsorship in the future."

Last year, Ben & Jerry's and Gateway were among major advertisers to pull Nip/Tuck commercials, but neither company offered an explanation why.

The so-called "disturbingly perfect drama" is admittedly not family-friendly fare. Creator Ryan Murphy has described the explicitly brutal depiction of plastic surgery as deliberately "thought provocative." And layers of flesh are not just on view in the operating room as the morally challenged doctors, Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) and Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) mix and match with numerous women, including Sean's ex-wife, Julia (Joely Richardson).

Back when the series began in 2003, Peter Liguori, (at the time FX's president and CEO, now Fox network's entertainment chief) addressed the issue of advertiser fear. Asked whether sponsors would pull out as they did with FX's police drama The Shield, another PTC target, Liguori said that advertisers had been fully exposed to the tone and content of Nip/Tuck before choosing to sign on.

"Adults buy products. And they [advertisers] can advertise on adult-like shows. And as long as we're handling it responsibly, scheduling it correctly, putting on viewer discretions, and frankly, getting the word out, publicizing this is a bit more of adult content...[that] protects everyone along the line," he said at the time.

Now in its third season, Nip/Tuck has been averaging 2.8 million viewers in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic, and ranks among the most watched shows on basic cable.

[Benji]

Was I the only one who thought this meant Primetime Central?

[Skummy]

L. Brent Bozell III is one of my least favourite excuses for humanity on the face of the Earth. He sums up everything wrong with American Conservative Christianity.

If the PTC had their way, everything on television would be "clean" and "family friendly", fair enough, they're desirable values. But it's difficult to be challenging and to be creative in that kind of a restricting environment, it would kill careers.

Furthermore, it wouldn't stop violence or bad behaviour or whatever the PTC think they're going to achieve, it would just make people blind to it, so if something terrible does happen in real life, it becomes that bit more terrible. Is that a good thing? I guess it could be, the idea of desensitisation comes into play, but in most cases, it won't be. If Little Billy has never seen violence on TV, never heard anything about violence, Little Billy's going to get quite a shock when he wanders into the wrong neighbourhood and finds a knife to his throat, isn't he?

And just to further my bitter ranting, who actually listens to this cunt? Surely anyone with the same ideologies that the PTC are fighting for don't need the PTC to tell them that this show is violent and profane? Surely they're intelligent enough to work that out for themselves? And of the people who aren't offended by it already, how many are going to turn away because the PTC don't like it? I wouldn't. I don't think many people would at all.

And since when did a late-night program, marketed as a thoroughly disturbing black comedy, become the business of the Parent's Television Council? Surely by definition they should be, if they're monitoring anything, be monitoring things that their children are watching? If their children are watching Nip/Tuck, then I don't think that's the program-maker's fault, it's the parents' fault, surely? I wouldn't let my kids watch it, and if their kids are watching it, maybe they ought to step back and take a look at their parenting skills.

Rant ceased.

[Valentina's Boyfriend]

L. Brent Bozell III is one of my least favourite excuses for humanity on the face of the Earth. He sums up everything wrong with American Conservative Christianity.

Even some of the right don't like him either

[Gongsun Zan]

I'm going to start a notion for the news to be withdrawn from TV. Hell, let's get rid of CNN, the BBC, and the rest of them channels too.

Edited November 17, 2005 by Gongsun Zan