ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 16, 1997 TAG: 9704160025
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELLEN GRAY KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
You can't please everybody.
Nowhere is that truer than in broadcast television, a medium that by its very definition must attempt to try.
Advertiser-supported and dependent on huge audiences to draw those advertisers, network TV can't afford to take chances.
It also can't afford not to take them.
Sure, we're a mixed-up country, with 260 million people, nearly all of whom, given a moment, would be able to identify themselves with one special interest or another.
We offend easily.
But with broadcasters losing audience share to cable, and satellite services poised to offer niche programming to those whose oxen are particularly gore-prone - there's the Conservative Television Network in the pipeline, not to mention the Recovery Network - broadcasting can't afford to sit still, either.
Enter ``Ellen.''
Nothing about the April 30 coming-out party for network television's first starring gay character has been easy, and dealing with potential advertisers has been no exception.
First, there was the Human Rights Campaign, a lobbying group for gays and lesbians, which wanted to place a commercial about discrimination in the workplace during the big episode. No issues advertising, said ABC, citing a long-standing policy.
Then Chrysler, GM and Johnson & Johnson decided they'd rather not be associated with that particular episode. No problem, said ABC, confident that it would still find advertisers for all the commercial time available during the hourlong episode (which the network now says it has).
Then Olivia Cruises and Resorts, a California-based travel agency that caters to lesbians, wanted to buy a 15-second spot during the April 30 show to promote one of its cruises. And things got sticky.
``It's a gray area,'' ABC spokeswoman Anne Marie Riccitelli acknowledged last week, before restating the network's official position: ``We will be looking at commercials that will be presented to us on a case-by-case basis, but we do not discuss reasons why we accept or reject ads on the network.''
Olivia Cruises' ad was rejected, however, and Riccitelli did hint at a reason. ``We try to keep the advertising broad-based.''
She has a point.
In an interview last week with the San Francisco Examiner, Olivia president Judy Dlugacz called the April 30 episode ``a golden opportunity'' for the company ``to reach an entire market we've been trying to reach for 20-something years.''
``We believe this entire market, which doesn't want to be easily identified, would be watching this show,'' Dlugacz said.
She, too, has a point.
But Riccitelli's point is better. While Dlugacz's idea is smart marketing - targeting a specific audience you know will be watching, in large numbers, at one particular time - it is a niche strategy, and not one that could do anything for ABC, which still has to sell commercial time year-round, and not just for 15 seconds here and there.
The breakthrough that ABC and ``Ellen'' are making is an inclusive one, in which network television acknowledges, at last, that gays and lesbians are mainstream enough to be considered TV stars. The cruise that Olivia wants to advertise, by contrast, is exclusive. Unlike the 1994 Ikea ad that featured two men shopping for a table together as part of a larger campaign whose message was basically that all kinds of people shop for furniture, an ad for a lesbian travel agency suggests that some people choose to travel outside the mainstream.
But if the concept of broadcasting, rather than narrowcasting, is to survive, sooner or later we're all going to have to get in the same boat.
LENGTH: Medium: 73 linesby CNB