LOS ANGELES - The Parents Television Council (PTC), the nation's most influential advocacy organization protecting children against sex, violence and profanity in entertainment, today issued a report on the "Top Ten Sponsors of MTV Sleaze" and found that Procter & Gamble was the leading advertiser supporting the smut-filled MTV cable network.  In individual letters, the PTC also called on each company to defend its sleazy actions.

"These companies are directly responsible for the raunchy programming poisoning the minds of impressionable children.  We are calling on these sponsors to explain why they choose to support a network that contains substantially more sex, foul language and violence than any broadcast television program aimed at adults.  These companies must be held accountable for underwriting this material," said L. Brent Bozell, president of the PTC.

This new report comes on the heels of a recent PTC study which found that MTV programming contains much higher levels of sex and foul language than anything found on adult-targeted broadcast television.  For both reports, the PTC recorded and analyzed 171 hours of programming around the clock during the week of March 20, 2004, to March 27, 2004, during MTV's "Spring Break" coverage.  MTV's reality programs averaged 13 sexual scenes per hour, while music videos on MTV averaged 32 instances of foul language per hour.

"MTV is tremendously influential in the lives of millions of children -- and these companies know it.  In fact, MTV's own marketing materials -- the materials they send to advertisers to get them to underwrite their programs -- assert 'Young adults 15-17 are excited consumers and extremely impressionable. Now is the time to influence their choices.'  These advertisers are funding the most offensive messages on basic cable aimed directly at young children," Bozell added.

The Top Ten Most Frequent MTV Sponsors during 2004 Spring Break include:

1) Procter & Gamble Co. -- 218 ads
2) Sony Corp. -- 170 ads
3) Time Warner -- 131 ads
4) PepsiCo -- 115 ads
5) Viacom -- 112 ads
6) Colgate-Palmolive Co. -- 98 ads
7) Hershey Foods Corp. -- 94 ads
8) Cadbury Schweppes -- 89 ads
9) Foot Locker Inc. -- 85 ads
10) General Electric Co. -- 84 ads 

MTV is watched by 73% of boys and 78% of girls ages 12 to 19, and it is profoundly influential in the lives of its young fans by glamorizing drug and alcohol use, sexual promiscuity and violent behavior.  MTV is owned by Viacom, the same corporate giant that owns CBS (the network that aired the 2004 Super Bowl at which Janet Jackson deliberately exposed her breast to a world-wide audience that included millions of unsuspecting children) and Nickelodeon. That corporate synergy ensures that even the youngest TV viewers are getting acclimated to the MTV brand.

"If these companies believe they can influence young people's buying decisions by advertising on MTV, how can they not know that those same children are being negatively influenced by MTV's sleazy and irresponsible programming?" Bozell concluded.

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