Accessible Airwaves

Once again, the United Church of Christ's inclusion-themed, 30-second TV commercial has been rejected by the broadcast networks and now cable network, Viacom.

The United Church of Christ's all-inclusive message has been deemed "too controversial."

It’s time for equal access.

1. Let Your Voice Be Heard - Send a Message to Viacom Viacom accepts ads laced with sexual innuendo, greed, violence, and the politics of personal destruction, while our message of openness and welcome is not allowed. Tell Viacom to make the airwaves accessible. 2. Tell Your Friends Broadcasters who use the public airwaves have a responsibility to operate in the public interest. Spread the word about our campaign!

When the Old Media said NO the Blogs said YES

Last December, although I had heard of the blogosphere, I had no idea of its power and influence. Then, the United Church of Christ tried to place an ad on CBS and NBC. Our message of extravagant welcome was rejected for being “too controversial.” I was outraged by this abuse of power by the networks. How else could we get our word to the people?

Enter the bloggers, who recognized the absurdity of the networks allowing ads that feature half-naked women mud wrestling and former presidential candidates talking about penile dysfunction, but who find the notion of a church welcoming all people to be too threatening. Bloggers such as John Aravosis at AmericaBlog and Chris Bowers at MyDD picked up the story and gave it legs. I've come to admire bloggers' passion and willingness to tackle out of the box issues that haven't yet been framed by traditional media. After talking with some bloggers, we decided to follow their example and launched http://accessibleairwaves.org to tap into the passion and energy of the blogosphere.

I believe this is the next great revolution in journalism. In the tradition of this nation’s earliest pamphleteers, bloggers are sharing news and information as a mark of a truly free society, not as something that can be controlled and manipulated by multi-national corporations.

So when we started to consider the next round of advertising, blogs seemed like a obvious choice. True to form, CBS and NBC again rejected our ad. While we will continue our campaign to pressure the FCC to enforce the public interest obligations of broadcasters, we are not going to let the networks stop us from getting our message to the public. It seemed only natural to embrace the blogs to get the message out since the blogs helped bring our message to light in December.

So starting today and for the next several weeks, we are running our ad on over 50 of the top blogs. I hope that our message, “No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome at the United Church of Christ” resonates on the blogs and helps get the word out to both the traditional media and the public at large.

Posted by The Rev. Bob Chase
3/08/2005 09:30:00 AM
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About OC Inc.

The Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ, Inc. is the media advocacy arm of the United Church of Christ, a mainline Protestant denomination of over 1.3 million members. The United Church of Christ was the first voice to demand that broadcasters who use the public airwaves have a responsibility to operate in the public interest. In the 1960s, the United Church of Christ earned its place in U.S. broadcasting history by successfully challenging the license of WLBT-TV in Jackson, Miss, for refusing to broadcast news and information about African Americans.