News

Watchdog Raps Kids Ads For PG-13 Films

By Robert Marich
    June 27, 2008 -- An advertising watchdog organization has asked the major studio trade group MPAA to check if ads for Paramount’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Warner Bros. Get Smart were placed in broadcast TV programs with inappropriately young audiences.
    The Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) made those referrals. CARU monitors marketing of all products and services for appropriateness as a unit of the Council of Better Business Bureaus and on behalf of the advertising industry. Results of referrals are usually not announced.
    CARU noted that broadcast advertising for Indiana Jones aired during children’s programming hours. The film is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for “adventure violence and scary images.” Iron Man’s PG-13 rating cites “some intense sequences of Sci-Fi action and violence and brief suggestive content.”
    Another PG-13 Paramount release, Drillbit Taylor, was also referred to MPAA, though that film made less of an impact at the box office.
    CARU monitors whether the media industry’s own self regulation is actually enforcing its own standards. CARU’s Self-Regulatory Program for Children’s Advertising states that industry “should take care to assure that only age appropriate videos, films and interactive software are advertised to children, and if an industry rating system applies to the product, the rating label is prominently displayed.”