PTC Rates Best, Worst TV Advertisers

With its annual ranking, the watchdog group calls on holiday shoppers to support "responsible" companies.
By
TVNewsCheck,

The Parents Television Council released its annual ranking of the "Top Ten Best and Worst Advertisers." PTC lists television advertisers from best to worst according to content in the primetime broadcast television programs they chose to underwrite.

Advertisers that landed on the best list primarily sponsored family-friendly television shows, while those on the worst list often supported programs containing graphic sexual content, excessive violence or profanity.

Story continues after the ad

"The role that television advertisers play in determining what type of content comes into every home in America cannot be overstated," said PTC President Tim Winter. "We commend the advertisers on our best list that have chosen to associate their hard-earned corporate brands with positive programming that the entire family can watch together.

"By contrast, parents can thank many of the advertisers on the worst list for enabling the networks to pump some of the most shocking and outrageous content on the air today directly into their living rooms.

"During the holiday season, we call on our members and all concerned citizens to carefully consider which companies they will support with their shopping dollars. The PTC will continue to encourage corporate responsibility for advertising buys and ask consumers to do the same by reinforcing that message with their wallets," Winter concluded.

The PTC's list is based on each company's primetime network television ad buys during the 2007-2008 television season. Each company listed purchased at least 25 ads on primetime broadcast programs. Companies with the most ads on green light shows, based on PTC's trademarked traffic-light ratings system, were ranked the best, while companies with the most ads on red light shows were ranked the worst. PTC "campaign shows," which consistently feature problematic sexual, violent or profane content, were given special weight. To see each prime time show's rating, please visit http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/familyguide/main.asp.

BEST

1. Coca-Cola

2. The Clorox Co.

3. Century 21 Real Estate

4. H&R Block

5. Ferrero S.p.A. (U.S.A.)

6. CVS Caremark

7. Whirlpool

8. The Hershey Co.

9. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance

10. Hewlett-Packard

WORST

1. General Motors

2. Nissan North America

3. L'Oreal USA

4. Pepsi-Cola North America

5. GlaxoSmithKline (Brands include: Beano, Lowerthepain.com, Os-Cal, Nicoderm, Sensodyne, Valtrex, Advair, Aquafresh, and Myalli.com)

6. Reckitt Benckiser (Brand: Delsym)

7. Target

8. Kohl's

9. Verizon Communications

10. Toyota Motor North America

To compare this ranking to 2007, visit  http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/news/release/2007/0808.asp.

 

Edit Article

Comments (0) -

Today's Top Stories

Classifieds

The Market

Symbol Last Change (%)
Nasdaq 2905.66 +45.98 (+1.61%)
NYSE 8060.43 +115.00 (+1.45%)
S&P 500 1344.90 +19.36 (+1.46%)
Updated 02/04 4:07a ET Quotes delayed at least 20 mins.
Source: Financial Content

Ratings

Overnights, adults 18-49 for February 3, 2012
  • 1.
    3.9/11
  • 2.
    3.5/9
  • 3.
    2.5/7
  • 4.
    1.5/4
  • 5.
    1.5/4
  • 6.
    0.9/2
Source: Nielsen
Reviews
Opinions
Features
  • Robert Lloyd

    Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, veterans of Fox's sketch comedy MADtv, have a new series of their own, Comedy Central's Key & Peele. It is a genial, at times almost genteel, half-hour in which the pair's obvious niceness shines through even their more pugnacious characters. (Key's version of road rage is to shout, "Selfish!") In a roundabout way, that's the point. The sketches are consistently smart and smartly acted and flow easily from ordinary premises to weird conclusions.

  • Hank Stuever

    Discovery's Bering Sea Gold doesn’t seem at first like it has crossed any new reality TV frontier, relying on elements and structure familiar to the form. Enticingly (to the network), it combines the ocean and the gold and the cold and the reactive testosterone among bad-tempered desperados. To which I am surprised to cry: Eureka, they’ve found it! Bering Sea Gold is a testament to how thoroughly absorbing the genre can still be, when it’s done right.

  • Neil Genzlinger

    All Star Dealers, Discovery Channel's sports-memorabilia addition to the bloated auction/pawnshop/storage locker subgenre of reality television, should have been a winner, with endless stories to draw on and a built-in fan base. But rather than find its own formula, it was content to borrow from existing shows, and it borrowed all the wrong things.

  • Joanne Ostrow

    Kiefer Sutherland displays his softer side in Fox's Touch, a touchy-feely drama merging paranormal, spiritual and sweetly familial elements. shows off his acting chops, long forgotten, in scene after scene. It's heavier lifting than usual for the actor who was often reduced to caricature in 24. Sutherland is all about vulnerability in a show whose goal is nothing short of proving the interconnectedness of human life. We'll see if audiences can tolerate the notion of profound interrelatedness as weekly entertainment.

  • Tim Goodman

    Let's jump right to the most obvious of all sentiments when it comes to HBO's new horse racing/gambling series Luck: Do not bet against David Milch in this one. Like a lot of HBO series, Luck will require patience. It's telling a dense story with nuanced characters and it doesn't feel the need to rush in, like a network series, and hammer home the main themes. But each episode is more enriching, more engrossing than the last and there's Hoffman's superb turn at the forefront, even though his story unfolds with the least rush. Luck is a smart and ambitious series that looks to truly pay off in the home stretch.

  • Mike Hale

    The timing of FX's animated series Unsupervised is unfortunate. A kind of reversed Beavis and Butt-Head — in which the teenage heroes, while losers in just about every way, are also social strivers yearning for suburban domesticity and dispensing Oprah Winfrey-style affirmations — it has the bad luck of coming along three months after the original was revived by MTV. The new show looks awfully pale by comparison.

This advertisement will close automatically in  second(s). You will see this ad no more than once a day. Skip ad