Weekend Question 2: What’s More Offensive Than Profanity to a TV Network Exec?
ANSWER: God and the Bible.
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Brett Bozell has the story at his Townhall column (HT Pro Ecclesia). Nothing need be added:
Maybe you’re familiar with the computer-animated cartoon “Veggie Tales,” a video series targeted at children ages 2 to 8, and which features moral and religious tales hosted by Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber. Beginning in 1993, the series was distributed on VHS tapes, telling biblical stories like the Battle of Jericho, David and Goliath and the tale of the Good Samaritan. Each show ended with a Bible verse.
And it’s been a marketing phenomenon. Without any broadcasting or syndication on television, “Veggie Tales” has sold more than 50 million “Veggie Tales” DVDs and videotapes — primarily, but quietly, through big chain stores like Target, Wal-Mart and Family Christian Stores. As their popularity spread, so did “Veggie Tales” T-shirts, plush toys and other products.
….. Eventually, someone in Tinseltown saw the commercial possibilities. Now, the news breaks that NBC (as well as NBC-owned Telemundo) will begin showing “Veggie Tales” cartoons on Saturday mornings for the new fall season.
….. But here is what should be news. The early word from producers is that NBC has grown increasingly fierce about editing something out of “Veggie Tales” — those apparently unacceptable, insensitive references to God and the Bible.
So NBC has taken the very essence of “Veggie Tales” — and ripped it out. It’s like “Gunsmoke” without the guns, or “Monday Night Football” without the football.
Think about this corporate mindset. NBC is the network that hired a squad of lawyers to argue that dropping the F-bomb on the Golden Globe Awards isn’t indecent for children, but invoking God is wholly unacceptable. Or, as one e-mailing friend marveled: “So, saying ‘F— you’ is protected First Amendment speech on NBC but not ‘God bless you.’”
The cartoon’s creator, Phil Vischer, posted on his personal Web log the news of NBC’s increasing creative stranglehold.
….. He said, “We’re having to do a little more editing.” How much? So much so that Vischer implied that the God talk is landing on the cutting-room floor. Now, he’s merely hoping that people will “maybe wander into Wal-Mart and buy a video with all the God still in.”
This is one of those moments where you understand that networks like NBC are only talking an empty talk and walking an empty walk when it comes to the First Amendment, and “creative integrity,” and so on. They have told parents concerned about their smutty programs like “Will and Grace” that if they’re offended, they have a remote control as an option. The networks have spent millions insisting that we have a V-chip in our TV sets. Change the channel. Block it out.
But when it comes to religious programming — programming that doesn’t even mention Jesus Christ — just watch the hypocrisy.
