NY Times reports that the Parents Television Council is crumbling

[alp227]

Those of you who follow popular culture might know that the Parents Television Council has made headlines lately for blasting the TV series Glee for an episode that guest starred Britney Spears, a GQ magazine photo shoot featuring some of the stars of Glee, a Revolver magazine cover featuring actress and rock musician Taylor Momsen, and Miley Cyrus's newest music video "Who Owns My Heart". Back in May, the PTC attacked the new CBS sitcom Bleep My Dad Says because of its title because the title was based on Justin Halpern's book and Twitter feed "Shit My Dad Says". The PTC also doesn't like Cee-Lo's new song "Fuck You!" So whenever something on TV, the Internet, radio, or other media offends its members' over-prudish mindsets, the PTC will come out with a statement defending traditional values to ensure that the nation will not crumble down in an epidemic of excessive swearing or shagging.

The New York Times has this profile of the PTC for its Monday edition, "Guardians of TV Morals, Bowed." It reveals that the PTC has been in financial trouble lately:

As the organization successfully busied itself with cleaning up America’s airwaves, its internal operations grew messy, an examination of internal documents and Internal Revenue Service forms shows.

Escalating costs collided with declining donations, resulting in a 2008 loss of almost $1 million. In 2009, as the recession battered fund-raising efforts anew, council revenue totaled $2.9 million, a 26 percent drop from the previous year. To cut costs, the organization has reduced its staff by 38 percent over the last two years.

The council’s elaborate reports — given provocative titles like “MTV Smut Peddlers” — have grown infrequent, severely hampering the organization’s lobbying and fund-raising efforts. In 2008, the council published four major reports; it published one in 2009 and has published none so far this year. (Mr. Winter said he planned to publish three reports in the next two months, including one centered on online video.)

And it turns out that one of its former staffers quit and has a lot of nasty things to say about the Council:

In a March 2009 e-mail to Mr. Winter, Patrick W. Salazar, who was the council’s vice president for development but is now one of its critics and has been accused by the group of trying to extort money from it, wrote, “Almost 195,000 pieces of donor/member mail was never sent to the intended recipient.” He added, “Most of these were time-sensitive docs whose value is now shot.” That September, Mr. Salazar sent another concerned note to Mr. Winter about the fulfillment of direct-mail petitions.

“Dude, I told you I was working on fulfillment,” Mr. Winter responded. “It is under control.”

Mr. Winter said that he had done his best to sort through the backlog, but he conceded that ultimately, the council decided that a stack of petitions was too old to be of any value. The council says it is now caught up.

Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, a charity watchdog that gives the council a “C-plus” rating for financial efficiency based on its I.R.S. filings, said unfulfilled direct mail should ring “serious alarms” with potential donors. “It certainly tarnishes the credibility of this organization,” Mr. Borochoff said.

Mr. Salazar was also troubled by membership claims. For instance, council leaders put membership at “more than 1.3 million.” But that number counts people who have signed a petition or donated since the group’s founding, according to the council. In reality, 12,000 people at most respond to annual fund-raising appeals, Mr. Salazar said.

Mr. Winter says there is nothing misleading about the council’s membership claims, asserting that many nonprofit groups count participation in a similar fashion. As for the meager response to fund-raising appeals, Mr. Winter said that is partly a reflection of the number of solicitations sent out. “We can’t afford to communicate with everybody on our total membership list every time,” he said.

In November, Mr. Salazar left the council. He says he quit. The group says he was fired but will not cite a reason. Mr. Salazar then started an effort to extract thousands of dollars in severance by threatening to alert the news media, including The New York Times, about the internal dysfunction he said he witnessed. In addition to the direct-mail predicament and the membership count, Mr. Salazar claimed a laundry list of other wrongdoings.

In a statement, the council said that Mr. Salazar had “demanded that the P.T.C. pay him a substantial sum of cash or he would contact P.T.C. members and the media with certain allegations.” It continued: “His allegations are littered with patently false statements and misrepresentations of the truth. The P.T.C. has refused to negotiate a financial payment (or any other terms).”

The council asked the Los Angeles Police Department to investigate Mr. Salazar for extortion. A police spokesman said an investigation was completed and presented to the city attorney, who rejected it on the grounds that Mr. Salazar’s actions did not constitute a crime.

So...why does the PTC keep getting free news articles for every statement such as "Taylor Momsen is a slut" or "Glee is bad" if its membership is inflated by 100x?

Oh, another sign that the PTC is simply getting "life support" from the controversy-loving media? One of its prominent Board of Advisors members is criticizing the PTC. Billy Ray Cyrus, father of Miley Cyrus and hitmaker of "Achy Breaky Heart", disagreed with the PTC regarding the GQ photo shoot with the Glee cast members. (I don't know what he's said about his daughter's rather racy music video.)

[Democat]

1. These puritans help TV shows as much as they hurt them.

They may have been dangerous once, but it's 2010. By complaining about TV shows today, they get attention for those shows. NBC should send them a check for a million dollars to keep them in business, with the stipulation that they only complain about shows on NBC.