Fox Under Fire for Its Promos on Radio Show

“Let me get out the old scripteroony,” host Chris Leary begins on “Fox Kids Countdown,” the nationally syndicated pop hits program that airs locally on KIIS-FM (102.7). “We’re meeting one of the NFL’s greatest quarterbacks . . . Dan Marino. . . . I’m also going to dial you into some awesome inside info on this Saturday morning’s all new killer Fox kids shows. Like ‘Big Bad Beetleborgs,’ ‘C-Bear and Jamal,’ Spidey [‘Spiderman’] and the whole lineup.”

Indeed he does. From the No. 15 song to No. 1 two hours later, Leary and an announcer with efficient synergy promote the Fox TV children’s lineup, Fox movies, NFL football (which airs on Fox) and even toys tied to a Fox kids show.

“This special news bulletin just in,” an announcer intones. “Earth is being threatened by evil space aliens. Experts advise all kids to rush to their favorite store and get the new ‘Power Rangers Zeo’ toys.”

So effectively do the promos, ads and assorted host chitchat bleed into each other that it’s sometimes hard for an adult--no less a child--to tell which is which. As a package, the 2-year-old “Fox Kids Countdown”--which began airing locally Sept. 8--can sound like one big infomercial. Designed by a former Fox marketing official, it is heard on more than 180 stations representing almost 90% of the country.

What might not be allowed on children’s television appears to be OK on children’s radio.

Federal Communications Commissions rules, adopted in 1974, prohibit the host of a children’s TV show from using his special bond with young viewers to push products on them and require broadcasters to maintain “an adequate separation between programming and advertising.” But the rules do not apply to radio.

“There are no rules about children’s radio that I know of,” Robert H. Ratcliffe, senior legal advisor for the FCC, said. No complaints have been registered about the Fox program, he said.

But Jeff Chester, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Media Education, an advocacy group that works to promote better programming for children, said he believed that “these kinds of program practices call for new FCC regulations to protect children from unscrupulous programming on radio.

“When the FCC deregulated radio in the early 1980s,” Chester said, “there was not a children’s radio market. Today, radio for kids is a booming business, with companies like Fox aggressively programming the airwaves. Clearly the rules which protect children on broadcast television . . . need to apply to radio.”

Chester said that Media Education will ask its attorneys “to investigate, file [a complaint] and ask the FCC to come up with new rules. . . . Parents don’t want their children listening to infomercials. This is a pure, blatant strategy. Not only does Fox want to get the kids’ eyeballs glued to their screen, now they want to tape their ears to the radio to get them to march off to buy Fox-related toys.”

Margaret Loesch, president of the Fox Children’s Network, which produces both the radio program and the TV fare, said the “Countdown” show is “following the rules and doing better than the rules” that apply to TV.

“We’re very sensitive to the issue,” she said. “This is a good clean music ‘Countdown’ show for kids. We’re not even carrying the amount of commercials that we could under FCC guidelines for television. . . . We tried so hard to do the right thing.”

Saying she was “stunned and offended” by Chester’s remarks, Loesch contended that commercial breaks in the program are set off by appropriate “bumpers”--a short segment meant to distinguish program content from advertising--but allowed that the radio series might “not [be] doing as effective a job as perhaps we need to. . . . If there is a lack of clarity . . . about isolating the commercials from our programming, that can be fixed.”

As for the “Power Rangers” toy announcement, she said that was clearly a commercial. The FCC prohibits placing products based on a children’s show within the same show, she said, so this was not a violation.

In last Sunday’s “Countdown,” however, there was a commercial for the video of the 1965 Fox movie classic “Sound of Music” that was followed a short time later by Leary asking kids to call in with their favorite scenes from the film.

At another point in the program Leary advised: “Wanna get ahead? Then witness wicked happenings on this Saturday morning’s all new episode of ‘Goosebumps.’ Hill House’s most famous resident is the 1,000-year-old ghost of a 13-year-old boy who lost his head. Will he finally find his noggin? Or will the ghost just take yours? Being scared out of your wits has never been this much fun.”

Loesch said she did not believe Leary’s recommendations to watch children’s series on Fox qualified as commercials--or made the program an infomercial. “A promotion is not selling a product. It’s simply promoting a show,” she said.

The FCC wrote in 1974 that, with regard to children’s television, “The commission does not believe that the use of a program host or other program personality to promote products in the program in which he appears is a practice which is consistent with licensees’ obligation to operate in the public interest.”

While the Sept. 15 broadcast might appear to have been “promotion-laden,” Loesch said, that was only because Fox was launching its new TV season. Even Fox kids TV shows, she pointed out, promote other Fox shows. “The FCC allows that. . . . The [radio] show is an extension of what we do on television insofar as we cross-promote our entertainment.”

Roy Laughlin, president and general manager at KIIS, maintained that “Fox Kids Countdown,” which airs 6-8 a.m. Sundays, is “not children’s radio anyway. We see this as family radio because that’s what we do--like Disneyland.”

Nevertheless, Laughlin said the station “will take a look at it. If we discover there are problems or if it’s not in the spirit of the law, we’re not going to be associated with that.”