From Gray Panther to National Nanny: The Kidvid Crusade and the Eclipse of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, 1977–1980
This article chronicles the FTC's proposal to significantly limit children's advertising in 1977, a controversial episode for advertisers and corporate America alike that has come to be known as the “kidvid crusade.” As a comprehensive political economic analysis, this article relies on dozens of trade press articles, archival sources, government documents, and oral histories. In 1978, the U.S. Congress launched a retaliatory attack on the FTC; failing to renew the FTC's funding, it shut down the agency for the first and only time in U.S. history. The kidvid crusade is a lens through which to understand the broader political and economic shift toward neoliberalism in the coming years and, indeed, portended the rise of deregulation and new forms of corporate public relations in the political sphere.
The Birth of an Advocacy Group
This article uses oral history, archival research, and popular and trade publications mostly from the 1960s and the 1970s to tell the story of Action for Children's Television (ACT). An advocacy group started by a group of mothers in Newton, Massachusetts, ACT changed the way that the broadcasting industry and the Federal Communications Commission approached TV programming for children. Policymakers credit the women of ACT with shaping current children's television programming and advertising regulations. Although the group's leadership changed over time, the organization always maintained the goals it set in the first few months of its existence. With these goals, ACT exemplified the impact that a determined advocacy group can have on government and the television industry.
Remedies for Consumer Protection: Prevention, Restitution, or Punishment
When preventive measures are inadequate, should consumer protection remedies focus on securing consumer redress or on inflicting severe loss to the wrongdoer as a deterrent to future misconduct?