Local News | Best bet for seeing ACLU marijuana video featuring Steves? Comcast | Seattle Times Newspaper
The TV program is titled “Marijuana: It’s Time for a Conversation,” but it’s unlikely many viewers of network stations will be talking about it.Of the three local network stations, only one agreed to run the show, produced by the American Civil Liberties Union and hosted by travel writer Rick Steves.
KOMO-TV turned down the ACLU this week; KIRO-TV never got back to the group at all. KING-TV ran the program in March — but only at 1 in the morning.
ACLU produced the video to engage people in a serious conversation about whether marijuana laws are good and working well, or are actually harming society, said Alison Holcomb, ACLU of Washington’s marijuana-education project director.
Jim Clayton, vice president and general manager at KOMO, the ABC affiliate, refused to sell time. The show, he said, promoted marijuana use.
“The last I checked, it’s illegal,” Clayton said. “We don’t use our public airways to promote illegal things.”
Monday, Clayton met with ACLU Director Kathleen Taylor and others. “They said, ‘How do we generate discussion?’ ” Clayton recalled. “I said, ‘Get it on the ballot.’ ”
KIRO-TV, the CBS affiliate, did not respond to requests from the ACLU.
At KING-TV, Pat Costello, vice president and station manager, said the video was a “very well-done program” that was “fairly balanced” and outlined the arguments “pretty fairly, given that it’s done by a group that has an objective.”
However, the show delivered “an adult message,” he said. “We don’t want to send the wrong message to kids that might be impressionable.”
Locked into network programming slots, and not wanting to run the show during hours when children might watch, he said, left the 1 a.m. slot. In March, the show ran 11 times on KING and its affiliate, KONG, at 1 a.m. Holcomb said KING leaders told the ACLU that they were concerned about the business impact of running the show in an earlier slot, particularly about reaction from advertisers.
This is the big obstacle we face in overturning adult marijuana prohibition – the prohibition in simply talking about ending prohibition!
The station manager says he doesn’t promote illegal things on the airwaves. Really? There is nothing illegal promoted on Boston Legal (suborning perjury), Desperate Housewives (murder, adultery), Dirty Sexy Money (extortion), or Jimmy Kimmel Live (an extended pot-smoking tour of Snoop Dogg’s home)?
“Get it on the ballot,” he says. In order to get it on the ballot, we need to have people talking about it! We can’t talk about ending adult marijuana prohibition because you fear the backlash of your advertisers. I wonder if those were your beer and pharmaceutical advertisers giving you some pressure.
