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.
Government Regulation of Food Marketing to Children: The Federal Trade Commission and the Kid-Vid Controversy
In a rulemaking proceeding subsequently called the most radical agency initiative every conceived, in 1978 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed sweeping regulations to restrict television advertising to children. I was put in charge of developing this rule-making proceeding. The FTC first proposed to ban all television advertising to children who were too young to understand the selling intent of commercials, on the theory that such ads were unfair and deceptive. Second, for older kids, roughly eight to eleven, we proposed to ban all television advertising for highly sugared products, such as candies that caused dental risks, on the theory that, although kids know they’re being advertised to, they lack the ability to understand longterm serious health consequences—they can’t balance the desire for immediate gratification versus the hazards of tooth decay. And third, for older kids—eight to eleven and older—with respect to sugared products like soft drinks that have long-term adverse nutritional consequences but not necessarily tooth decay, we proposed to require either in-ad disclosures warning purchasers’ kids of the nutritional consequences, or full counter-ads—public service announcements opposing consumption of those products paid for by the advertisers of those products. We also made other proposals in the same rule-making proceeding—to limit selling techniques such as host selling, to limit
In search of optimum chest radiography techniques.
A nation-wide study of chest radiography in Sweden had previously revealed a large variation in the physical and technical factors involved, in particular the radiation dose. In this study the image quality could not be assessed unambiguously. The aim of the present study was to try to establish a correlation between visual grading of radiographs and physical and technical factors in order to find the optimum chest X-ray system. The physical and technical performance of 24 chest units was evaluated. Radiographs were taken of an anthropomorphic chest phantom supplied with test structures simulating various pathologies. Image quality was assessed by visual grading analysis of the radiographs. The physical and technical parameters of the units rated best were used to exemplify good radiographic practice. The results were in agreement with the recommendations issued by the Commission of the European Communities (CEC). It was also shown that low radiation dose is compatible with high-quality radiographic imaging of the chest.