It is one of the newest cigarette commercials on TV, but it looks as old as the George Washington Hills. A Marlboro-type man is seen puffing happily in a duck blind. Cut. The sound track plays Smoke Gets in Your Eyes while a Winston kind of couple revels in a shipboard romance. Cut. A Salem-style twosome, high on tobacco and each other, enjoy an apres-ski spree. How can such a splice-up of burnt-out cliches sell cigarettes? That's the point. The voiceover during the 60-second spot has been saying right along: "Cigarette smoke contains some interesting elements: carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, benzopyrene, hydrogen cyanide. Cigarette smoke has been related to increased rates of lung cancer, coronary heart disease, peptic ulcers and emphysema." And so on.
The sponsor is the American Cancer Society. The commercial represents what might be called the new "spoiler" genre of public-service messages that are stirring the TV air and, at times, the American conscience. Urban America Inc has a commercial showing a ghetto child who calls, "Here, kitty. Here, kitty, kitty. Nice kitty." The camera discovers a rat. Voiceover: "If your child mistook a rat for a cat, how would you feel? Our cities need help, your help. If you think there's nothing you can do to help, think harder."
Sickening Collision. A water-pollution spot uses the background sound ( a flushing toilet to dramatize the condition of many U.S. rivers and streams; an antilitter campaign depicts a community overrun by snorting pigs. In the "Give a Damn" campaign for the New York Urban Coalition, a black narrator suggests to white viewers: "Send your kid to a ghetto for the summer. Want to see the pool? C'mon. The kids clog up the sewer with garbage, open a hydrant . . . You don't want your kids to play here this summer? Then don't expect ours to."
And by now almost every viewer has been jolted by the National Safety Council ad showing a couple tooling down a highway. An announcer's voice says "Guess who Sid and Gladys ran into day before yesterday?" There is silence, then the sickening sound of a collision followed by the return of the voice with the answer: "Hank and Marilyn." Even Smokey the Bear is growling nowadays: his fire-prevention spots feature footage of charred woodlands.
Hipper Pitches. The new tough sell has little problem finding air time. The Federal Communications Commission requires TV stations to carry free public-service spots in accordance with "the needs of the community." In compliance with the FCC "fairness doctrine," broadcasters run a one-minute antismoking commercial for every three regular cigarette ads. While there have been some complaints that the stations bury the public-service pitches in off-hour, low-audience periods, it is generally true that the more sophisticated and zingier ads get the best slots.