We do entertainment, not nutrition policy, says Nickelodeon.
The NYTimes reports:
One year ago, the Walt Disney Company unveiled a strict new set of nutritional standards and said it would ban ads for noncompliant foods from its child-focused cable channels by 2015. Advocacy groups fighting childhood obesity cheered.
And then they shifted their focus to Nickelodeon, Disney’s archrival and the country’s other major children’s programmer. Exactly when would it be following Disney’s lead?
The answer appears to be never — not only because doing so could hurt Nickelodeon’s bottom line, but because the children’s cable behemoth may have taken enough steps to blunt the attacks.
Despite continued pressure on Nickelodeon to restrict ads for products like Trix and Cocoa Puffs — four United States senators renewed the pleas in a letter to the company last week — the Viacom-owned network has remained defiant. Nutritional standards, it contends, must be decided by regulators and food companies, not Hollywood.
It’s often surprising how pragmatic leftists can be when it comes to the bottom line.
They demand higher taxes, but don’t pay Uncle Sam a dime more than they must; they rail against gun rights, but make no sacrifices when it comes to their personal security; etc.
I think this just shows that Nick is a lot more dependent on ad revenue than Disney.
When you push people hard enough, sooner or later, they will put their foot down especially when they are going above and beyond what is expected yet are not doing that one thing that their critic desires.
Considering Nickleodeon’s left leaning on a lot of stuff, this surprises me.