Striving to Shake Up Jell-O

By Ellie McGrath

Religious groups fight sponsors of "immoral" TV shows

More than 83 million television viewers tuned in to Dallas three weeks ago to find out who shot J.R. Ewing. In an hour's time, they saw Ewing's accused attacker, Wife Sue Ellen, stagger around drunk and mourn her former lover. They watched a flashback in which Sue Ellen's comely sister Kristin fired a gun at J.R.

The evening's climax: Kristin's announcement that she was pregnant with her brother-in-law's child.

Dallas drew the largest U.S. television audience in history; members of an estimated 40 million households were riveted to their sets to find out which sinner did the dastardly deed to J.R. But the show also turned off an increasingly militant minority of viewers: in the past nine months half a million Christians have pledged themselves to boycott the products of sponsors of television programs like Dallas that "depict scenes of adultery, sexual perversion or incest, or which treat immorality in a joking or otherwise favorable light."

So far, the boycott has been largely ineffective, but it continues to grow, and the potential of the movement is worrying top executives of sponsoring companies and network officials. Says Alfred Schneider of ABC, the network that the campaign finds most offensive: "If you lose advertisers, that is an indirect form of censorship. When there's a threat of a boycott, there is a chilling effect." Says Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union: "We believe we are facing a major struggle with these groups over the Bill of Rights." Replies John Hurt, a Tennessee minister who is leading the crusade: "We are not trying to censor anybody at all. We are not trying to say you have to follow our moral judgment. What we are saying is that we don't like this material and we have no obligation to pay for it."

The "Clean Up TV" campaign began in earnest early this year when the elders of Hurt's Church of Christ in Joelton, Tenn., became disgusted by the increasingly explicit sex on their television screens. Exhorted Hurt: "If you ever plan to take a stand for moral decency, now is the time, while hundreds of thousands of others are moving in the same direction."

The Joelton church members, who consider themselves fundamentalists, wrote several thousand other Churches of Christ, asking which five television shows they found the most morally offensive; a spokesman for the church members termed the response "an absolute explosion." The church compared the findings of its survey with the views of the National Federation for Decency, which was founded in 1977 in Tupelo, Miss., and now publishes a monthly newsletter that attacks what it considers to be distasteful TV programs. Hurt's congregations deemed the five most offensive shows to be Soap (ABC), Three's Company (ABC), Dallas (CBS), Saturday Night Live (NBC) and Charlie's Angels (ABC). The chief sponsors of these programs were General Foods Corp., American Home Products and the Warner-Lambert Co.

In March of this year, Hurt launched a drive to get other congregations of the Churches of Christ to boycott the advertised products unless the companies agreed to stop sponsoring its hit-listed shows. By mid-June, 6,000 churches had agreed to take part. Says Hurt's literature: "They [the sponsors] are the 'Achilles' heel' of the entire television industry ... The purpose of the campaign is not to take programs off the air, but to insist that they be cleaned up so that they are no longer an insult to decency and [a] negative influence on our young people."

In July Hurt set up a meeting attended by the three sponsoring companies. Warner-Lambert, which was advertising Listerine mouthwash and Dentyne chewing gum, withdrew from Dallas, Charlie's Angels, Soap and Saturday Night Live. A company spokesman said that the change was due to "marketing considerations" and, in the case of Saturday Night Live, to the fact that the company could not prescreen a live program. Hurt then removed Warner-Lambert, the eighth largest television advertiser, with billings of $60 million in 1979, from the boycott list.

American Home Products refused to negotiate with Hurt. General Foods talked with him, but would not stop advertising on Dallas, Charlie's Angels or Three's Company. Says a spokesman:

"While General Foods regrets this situation, it recognizes that standards of taste are subjective." Indeed, before the crusade began, the company had decided to put no more money into The Newlywed Game and The Dating Game because, says an executive, "the company no longer found them to be in good taste." The Churches of Christ agree: those two shows are on an expanded hit list.

The refusal of General Foods and American Home Products to cooperate intensified the boycott. In October the Joelton congregation began distributing some 5 million boycott forms to interested churches, mainly in the Bible Belt. The local church distributes the forms to members. The forms are returned to the pastor, who sends them back to Joelton. Hurt then informs the targeted companies how many people are participating.

The form urges "every morally decent adult and teen-ager in America" to promise to boycott about 100 products for three months. As a reminder, the members of the movement get a wallet-size card listing products that are outlawed by the movement. Included are such familiar American Home items as Dristan, Anacin, Chef Boyardee, Wizard air freshener and Woolite, and General Foods' Gravy Train dog food, Kool-Aid, Maxwell House coffee, Birds Eye frozen foods and JellO. (Asks an outraged General Foods executive: "How can anyone consider Jell-O un-American?") In Dayton, the Belmont Church of Christ sent in 200 cards and passed out more than 800 to people in the com munity. "This is a grass-roots type of thing, and it is spreading like a fire," claims Morris Thurman, minister of the College Church of Christ in Oklahoma City. "We do not want to hurt these companies, but we do not want to buy the products of people who are undermining the moral fiber of our society and our families."

So far, apparently, the boycott has had no effect on sales at General Foods or American Home Products. Says one General Foods executive: "Some management levels were initially terrified, but now it's settled into a wait-and-see mode."

Sex on TV was a major topic last week when the 18-member board of the Association of National Advertisers, which represents 450 companies, met in Manhattan. Some executives at the session, which included representatives from such major advertisers as General Mills, Procter & Gamble and Nabisco, said they had been receiving scattered criticism from religious groups. The executives also admitted that their companies were having trouble finding shows that met their own standards. Still, the association decided not to try to influence the programming of producers or networks. Says Tony Lunt, the association's spokesman: "It's a First Amendment consideration."

The networks say they have not been hit by any wave of protests generated by the crusade of the Christian right, nor do the Nielsen ratings seem to have been affected. The latest figures rank Dallas as the No. 1 show, Charlie's Angels eighth and Three 's Company eleventh.

Nonetheless, there have been worried meetings at both the sponsors' headquarters and the networks. Says Bonn O'Brien at CBS: "We don't feel any one group has the right to decide what programs we put on the air." Says another corporate executive: "The real fear is that this will take hold and spread. If the conservative right and the Sunday television ministers take this up as a cause, you will find that we are more than upset."

Such an assault may be imminent. Evangelist Jerry Falwell, leader of Moral Majority, whose sermons on television and radio reach an estimated 25 million people, plans to enter the fray early next year and is seeking allies among blacks, as well as Catholics, Jews and Mormons.

"All the offensive shows have a potential for being cleaned up," says Cal Thomas, a Moral Majority vice president. "We are not suggesting a return to the days of Ozzie and Harriet. Sex and interpersonal relationships are a legitimate subject for artistic portrayal."

Moral Majority, which claims 4 million members, played an active role in the election, campaigning hard against liberals and helping to defeat some. Foes of the Christian right's crusade against television are worried that it will become part of the movement's growing campaign against political liberalism. Moral Majority's Thomas is frank to admit there is a connection. Says he, only half in jest: "The revolutionaries always take the radio station first. They get the presidential palace later."

-- By Ellie McGrath. Reported by Jonathan Beaty/Washington and Anne Constable/ Atlanta

With reporting by Jonathan Beaty, Anne Constable

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