Advocates Want Visibility for the Animal’s Place in American Life
Bowing to pressure from viewers, advocacy groups, and the Federal Communications Commission, NBC announced over the weekend that it will begin working more sheep into the plot lines of its sitcoms and dramas.
The network said it would also work with producers of its talk shows and news broadcasts to raise the visibility of sheep on those programs.
Pressure on the network to make the program changes had been building in recent months as sheep ranchers and farmers across the country pointed to the decline of the number of sheep in the United States over recent decades and blamed television broadcasters for ignoring the animal and failing to salute its historic prominence in American culture.
The final push that apparently led to the programming change came last week during a photo opportunity with President Bush in the Oval Office as he met with a delegation of sheep ranchers from Wyoming. Responding to a shouted question from a reporter, the president said, “I for one would probably watch more television if I thought I might come across something about a sheep once in a while.”
In announcing the new policy, NBC’s chairman and CEO Bob Wright said, “I had my doubts at first, but after looking at what our sheep advisory group had to say on this issue, I think we’re on the right track now. You will see more sheep.”
Under pressure from sheep producers and sheep advocacy groups last spring, Wright appointed a blue ribbon panel to examine the question of sheep visibility in the network’s programming. The group included animal rights activists, former President Jimmy Carter, and the reality program duo of Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie, among others. The panel’s report was delivered to Wright two weeks ago.
“This will certainly ramp up the pressure on the other networks,” said Roger Haller, editor of the newsletter Animals on Television. “I think it’s just a matter of time now until the others fall in line. They won’t like the kind of pressure that the sheep people seemed to be able to bring to bear on NBC.”
Haller said he gave “high marks from an advocacy standpoint” to sheep producers for their ability to generate something as striking as a president endorsement of their cause during an Oval Office photo opportunity for the White House press corps.
“It seems inevitable that other animal advocacy groups will get in on this,” Haller predicted. “Pigs will be next, I predict. Then all you have to do is think about the 40 million households in this country that have a dog or the 60 million households with a cat. How long can it be before, say, dachshund owners are pushing all of America’s soft buttons to have more wiener dogs on television.”