Letter to Sony from the PTC
Sony was the sole sponsor of the season premiere.
August 29, 2005
Howard Stringer
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Sony Corporation
550 Madison Ave.
New York, NY 10022
Dear Mr. Stringer
On behalf of the Parents Television Council's one million members, I write to
express my shock and dismay that Sony has chosen to be the exclusive sponsor of
the season premiere of FX Network's Nip/Tuck. Without question, Nip/Tuck is one
of the most sexually explicit, profane, and violent television programs in the
history of American television. By underwriting such graphic content, Sony would
be violating parents' trust in the Sony corporate brand and image.
Enclosed you will find a CD containing examples of the sort of explicit and
irresponsible content from prior episodes of this program. The producers of the
show have indicated this type of material will continue, and therefore you would
be choosing to support content like this with your advertising dollars:
• A gang member injecting Botox into a man's penis.
• An incredibly graphic and bloody scene of the doctors performing plastic
surgery, including breaking a man's nose with a chisel and slicing open his
eyelids.
• A gang member is shown having sex with his girlfriend from behind while Sean
McNamara is forced to watch. He threatens Sean by saying "This could be your
wife."
• Dr. Christian Troy having graphic sex complete with partial nudity with a
model, Kimber, whom he just met in a bar.
• Dr. Christian Troy receiving oral sex from an anonymous woman. She asks him to
reciprocate, so he lies on the bed and tells her to "saddle up." She sits
astride his face as he performs oral sex on her.
• Dr. McNamara stands naked in front of a plastic sex doll. He puts his penis in
the doll's mouth and moves the head up and down. Then he throws the doll to the
floor, face down, and enters it from behind. While he is thrusting into it, he
imagines it is his estranged wife, and his thrusts become more violent.
• Dr. Troy takes Kimber to an orgy at a house where each room caters to
different fetishes. He takes her into the "girl on girl" room and encourages her
to have sex with another woman in the room while he watches. Clearly
uncomfortable at first, Kimber nevertheless puts her hand on the other woman's
breast, kisses her, and allows the other woman to perform oral sex on her.
Your sponsorship of Nip/Tuck's sexually graphic content, gratuitous violence and
foul language will be a reflection of Sony's corporate values. Does this kind of
material really reflect Sony's hard-earned brand image and corporate principles?
Of the hundreds of programs Sony could have sponsored, why did you choose the
most violent and raunchy one of them all?
In this new age of corporate responsibility, poor decisions with ad dollars can
easily affect a company's bottom line. In addition, many parents and families
are equating corporate ads with corporate endorsements of program content, as
they should. At some point, the light may dawn on your corporate boardroom that
Sony is risking its reputation by sponsoring such vulgar and explicit
programming, particularly when your products are directly marketed to families
across the nation. Corporations staking their reputation on Hollywood's vision
of America have a responsibility to exercise discernment, and this is especially
the case with the shocking content in Nip/Tuck.
I urge you to reconsider Sony's decision to underwrite – and in fact exclusively
sponsor – any episode of this program unless and until the content accurately
reflects your corporate brand and image.
It is our intention to broadcast publicly in clear and unmistakable language
that the Sony Corporation is a chief sponsor of the sewage pouring out of our
television sets, very much in the hope that consumers will take this to heart
when next they consider purchasing one of your products.
Sincerely,
L. Brent Bozell, III
Founder and President
Parents Television Council