October 26, 2010; Source: The Escapist | Maybe 1950s pop singer Pat Boone is writing love letters in the sand to his legions of fans, but that hasn’t seemed to be helping the nonprofit Parents Television Council, where he serves on the board of directors, raise money. The “decency watchdog” group has been shedding staff significantly due to decreasing revenues and reducing its “major report” output from four in 2008 to one in 2009 and none this year so far, despite PTC’s recent visibility denouncing Miley Cyrus for the sexy music video accompanying her recent single, “Who Owns My Heart?”
Even more galling to the PTC is the show “$#*! My Dad Says,” which it wants renamed or taken off the air, and it has gone berserk over a photo spread of “Glee” actors and actresses, which it described as bordering on pedophilia. Miley, $#*!, and Glee all seem to be safe for the moment. They haven’t lost much in the way of advertisers or fans. It used to be that advertisers feared a bad word from the Parents Television Council, but cultural issues don’t “stir up indignation . . . at a time of economic woe” according to a Minnesota professor of media and politics.
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That can’t be good news to Boone and his compatriots on the board, including Brent Bozell from the Media Research Center, known for his regular stints on Fox News shows where he details instances of the liberal bias of the mainstream media. PTC’s advisory board includes William Bennett, chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities under Reagan and drug czar under Bush I, Naomi Judd, singer and mom to Wynnona and Ashley, Dean Jones, star of “The Love Bug,” Tim Conway, the comic genius from “The Carol Burnett Show,” conservative media critic Michael Medved, and Senators Sam Brownback, Republican from Kansas and Blanche Lincoln, Democratic senator from Arkansas—and, in an ironic twist, Miley’s dad, Billy Ray Cyrus.
One would think that with all of those luminaries, the Council would be financially sitting pretty, but it isn’t. Some of the Council’s financial and managerial woes may have been self-inflicted. Apparently, its former VP for development, Patrick Salazar suggested that PRC was playing fast and loose with membership numbers, counting anyone who has ever signed a petition or donated to PTC as one of its purported 1.3 million members instead of the real number of regular annual donors which is around 12,000.—Rick Cohen
