Home Depot has become the 17th company to stop advertising on the ABC show, “Nothing Sacred.” A spokesman for the home improvement center said that representatives of the advertising department previously previewed only part of the pilot program and were not sufficiently aware of the show’s content. He said that the ad that was placed on October 2 was the last one that Home Depot would run.
The other companies that have quit sponsorship are: Isuzu, Weight Watchers, K-Mart, Benckiser, DuPont, Red Lobster, Ocean Spray, Sears, AT&T, Glaxo Wellcome, Ponderosa, Dunkin’ Donuts, Scott’s Liquid Gold, Chrysler-Plymouth, Honda and Arm & Hammer.
William Donohue greeted the news this way:
“The sincerity of the senior public relations person who called me from Home Depot is not in doubt. He very much wants to distance his company from ‘Nothing Sacred.’ That has already been done.
“If this were just another show, it would have been pulled by now. For instance, UPN has announced that it is going to pull ‘Head Over Heels,’ a show that was getting only slightly worse ratings than ‘Nothing Sacred.’ Unlike UPN, ABC is one of the four major networks and it cannot afford to go out on a limb for a program that few are interested in watching.
“If the show lasts it will only be because the ideological investment is so great that the executives at Disney/ABC are prepared to take a financial hit. That would be tragic because it would then reveal more about them than we already know.”
