Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood vs The Hub

Hub Logo Source

The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood is concerned about Hasbro owning The Hub, according to parentdish.

"Even before The Hub launched, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), a watchdog organization devoted to limiting the impact of commercial culture on kids, came out strongly against Hasbro's participation in the new venture, telling The Times it's like an "infomercial."

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"We certainly hope that the FCC will take a closer look, and that what The Hub does is show that the few rules we have about protecting children from over-commercialization are both inadequate and not enforced" "

The CFCC has recently petitioned the FCC against Nicktoons series Zevo-3, which features characters originally developed for Sketchers Shoe commercials. They claim that the series is a "program-length commercial", in violation of FCC rules. While the outcome of that petition is still to be determined, it may have an impact on The Hub and shows that feature characters from toy lines, like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. However, there may be a fine line of difference between toy company shows, and shows featuring spokes-characters.

Any ruling by the FCC against shows based on toys, like My Little Pony, would have a major impact on everything from TV showings of Hollywood feature films (like the Transformers franchise) to the Disney marketing machine.

"“Just because there is a character in a program that initially originated as a toy, does not transform the program into a program-length commercial or a commercial at all,” Association of National Advertisers executive vice president Dan Jaffe said. “To ban or severely restrict these programs if they don’t have an explicit selling message would be censorship of noncommercial speech that has the highest level of First Amendment protection.”"