All about the unproduced series, “The Chester Cheetah Show”. These articles are posted without permission.

Frito-Lay, Fox Draw Up Cartoon Plans : Television: Children’s advocacy groups are taking aim at a program based on the snack food company’s Cheetah character.

December 25, 1991|SHARON BERNSTEIN | SPECIAL TO THE TIMES Fox Broadcasting Co. is negotiating with Frito-Lay to use one of the snack food company’s animated logos as the main character in a new Saturday morning cartoon for children. The news that Fox plans to air a program based on the character of Chester Cheetah, developed for Frito-Lay to advertise Cheetos snacks, comes on the heels of controversy over CBS’ use of the character of Ronald McDonald to host a series of animated specials. The proposed program, which Fox hopes to air next September, already has drawn fire from children’s television advocates. Peggy Charren, founder of Action for Children’s Television, said she plans to file a formal complaint about it with the Federal Communications Commission. Charren also is planning to complain about CBS’ use of Ronald McDonald as host of “Ronald McDonald’s Family Theater,” which aired last Friday. “By making characters of corporate logos, you’ve carried the idea of program-length commercials beyond the pale,” Charren said. “You could make a case that G.I. Joe (on which a children’s cartoon series was once based) was a product but not a commercial, but Chester Cheetah is a commercial. Ronald McDonald is a commercial.” Margaret Loesch, president of the Fox Children’s Network, said that if the company goes ahead with the series, tentatively titled ‘Yo! It’s Chester Cheetah’s Show,” it does not intend to air Frito-Lay commercials during the broadcasts. “They’re very protective over the character of Chester, so (Frito-Lay has) a very comprehensive creative control,” Loesch said. “But frankly, part of our rather intense negotiation is . . . to make sure that there is no tie-in between product and series.” Fox is so determined not to confuse Chester with Cheetos that the character will never be shown eating anything on the program, Loesch said. But Michael Jacobson, co-founder of the Washington-based Center for the Study of Commercialism, said that won’t help. “If they’re using a character that’s associated with a product–Cheetos–the whole show becomes an advertisement for Cheetos,” Jacobson said. “And I think it’s yet another example of how big business takes advantage of little kids. . . . It’s pitting the slickest minds on Madison Avenue against the most naive minds.” Loesch said that Fox has been interested in the character of Chester for several years, but was initially outbid by CBS for the broadcast rights. CBS let its option lapse last year, she said, and Fox is hoping to shore up its own arrangement with Frito-Lay in time for the 1992 season. A Frito-Lay spokeswoman said that executives who could comment on the deal were gone for the holiday and could not be reached. Loesch said that she is interested in the property “because we think the Chester Cheetah character is a very attractive idea for kids.” There is little difference, she said, between a kids show based on Chester and “Sesame Street.” “That show is a commercial for a Big Bird doll,” Loesch said. “Just like the Bugs Bunny show is a commercial for Bugs Bunny paraphernalia.” That the networks would even consider shows based on corporate logos displays a marked change over the strict policies of years past. Loesch said that while working at the Hanna-Barbera animation studios years ago, she tried to pitch the networks on a program based on Cap’n Crunch, the animated character used to sell the cereal of the same name. That time, she was rebuffed. “The networks wouldn’t touch it–they just felt it would be too problematic,” Loesch said.

THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING; Commercial Cartoon Furor Grows

By STUART ELLIOTT

Published: March 05, 1992 In the latest skirmish over marketing to children, a coalition of advocacy organizations is seeking to block a proposed television show that would star Chester Cheetah, an animated character originally intended to sell snack food. They are concerned that there will be a rush of similar characters from ads into programs. Indeed, there are also plans for a syndicated cartoon series that would star Cheesasaurus Rex, a cheese-colored dinosaur that appears in advertising for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Dinner. Seven organizations, including Action for Children’s Television and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, will file a petition in Washington today with the Federal Communications Commission. They will ask for a declaratory ruling that the show, titled “Yo! It’s the Chester Cheetah Show!,” would be no more than a “program-length commercial.” Though the debate over the boundaries of propriety in programming and advertising aimed at children has raged for decades, this contretemps marks a new turn. Chester Cheetah — an animated beast that sells Cheetos, a cheese-flavored snack made by Frito-Lay Inc. — has become the demon symbol for children’s advocacy groups in the same way that Joe Camel, the cartoon animal in Camel cigarette advertising, has become the epitome of evil for those opposed to smoking among the young. Here, the organizations contend that it is exploitative and improper for a character like Chester Cheetah, created in 1986 by the DDB Needham Worldwide advertising agency expressly to sell products, to cross over into the world of entertainment. They were also furious in December, when Ronald McDonald, the clown character who appears in advertising aimed at children for the McDonald’s Corporation, played host for CBS’s first “Ronald McDonald Family Theater” special, called “The Wish That Changed Christmas.” (CBS said the program complied with all network and F.C.C. policies.) The “Chester Cheetah Show” has been under development at the Fox Broadcasting Company for possible inclusion in the fall 1992 schedule as a Saturday morning cartoon on the Fox Children’s Network. “His only previous television appearances,” the petition said, “indeed his entire existence, have been in traditional commercial spots designed to sell a product.” That renders any program in which such a character would be featured the equivalent of a “program-length commercial,” the petition added, and thus “fails to strictly separate programming material from commercial matter,” as required under F.C.C. regulations. The petition marks the first time that Action for Children’s Television “has moved in on something before it became a program,” Peggy Charren, the organization’s president, said in a telephone interview yesterday from Cambridge, Mass. She continued, “But we thought: ‘This isn’t a program. It’s an ad.’ ” Advertising and marketing executives responsible for the trend counter that what they do is not significantly different from using classic characters like Mickey Mouse, Babar and Curious George, which originated in books or films, to sell dolls, toys or other products. “Yes, he’s coming from the opposite direction,” Tod MacKenzie, a spokesman for Frito-Lay in Dallas, said of Chester Cheetah, “and started his life as a spokesperson.” “But there’s little on now that hasn’t gone to the commercial side,” he added. “If we can come up with a worthwhile program, offering something informative and entertaining, is that necessarily bad?” Margaret Loesch, president of the Fox Children’s Network in Los Angeles, the largest children’s commercial television network, disputed the advocates’ objections. “A child doesn’t know if a character was created first for a comic book or a book or a toy or a logo,” she said. “And the fact that a Mickey Mouse cartoon sells Disneyland and toys and books is not an issue? That’s absurd.” Ms. Loesch added that “extended and protracted negotiations” over the project were continuing and that no agreement had yet been reached. One aspect prolonging those discussions, she said, has been Fox’s “concern that we have a good product that doesn’t show us to be irresponsible broadcasters.” “It’s not our goal to sell Frito-Lay products,” she said. Not only would Fox comply with F.C.C. policies and exclude Cheetos spots from the show, she added, but the network would also “be willing not to run Cheetos commercials anywhere on our Saturday-morning schedule.” In television commercials and in ads on the backs of Cheetos packages, Chester Cheetah — a self-described “hip kitty,” designed to appeal to the young males who most ardently devour salty snacks — says, “I’m a cool dude in a loose mood.” His routine is that his blase behavior lasts only until he sees Cheetos, when, he says, “my cool turns to drool while my snout and eyeballs pop out.” Chester Cheetah’s popularity was underscored last year, when Frito-Lay introduced a variety of Cheetos, called Cheetos Paws, inspired by him. The character also appears on that product’s packaging. “Some of the most lovable characters around come from the world of commerce,” said John Frierson, a principal in Frierson Mee & Herman, a New York agency specializing in toy advertising. Among examples he cited were the California Raisins, which originated in advertising for the California Raisin Advisory Board and subsequently appeared in animated television specials and sold products like T-shirts and figurines.

THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING — ADDENDA; Talks End on Show Using Ad Character

By STUART ELLIOTT

Published: March 16, 1992 The Fox Children’s Network and Frito-Lay Inc. have ended negotiations over a proposal to feature Chester Cheetah, a character that appears in advertising for Chee-tos snacks, in a television cartoon show. The decision followed the filing of a complaint about the proposed show with the Federal Communications Commission. But Margaret Loesch, the network’s president, said the discussions ended for other reasons. Among the reasons, she said, were the length of the negotiations, which lasted more than a year, and an inability to agree on creative control of the character, which was introduced in Chee-tos advertising by DDB Needham Worldwide in 1986. “I still believe he’s one of the best characters since Bugs Bunny,” Ms. Loesch said, “and the fact he is associated with a product was irrelevant to us.” That, though, was the crux of the objections raised by a coalition of organizations in the complaint they filed on March 5. The groups complained that using an advertising character for entertainment would have resulted in “a program-length commercial.”

THE MEDIA BUSINESS; TV Cartoon Plans Are Dropped

Published: March 31, 1992 Animated characters that originated in advertising seem unlikely to cross over into children’s television programming anytime soon. Two proposals to base children’s shows on such characters are no longer under consideration. A spokeswoman for Kraft General Foods said yesterday that a proposed syndicated series based on Cheesasaurus Rex, a dinosaur character that appears in advertising aimed at children for the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Dinner, was “a gleam in a brand manager’s eye.” Earlier this month, it was reported that negotiations had ended over plans to create a program for the Fox Children’s Network based on Chester Cheetah, a character featured in advertising for Frito-Lay’s Chee-tos snacks. “We feel we have zapped, for the time being, the problem of logos turning into half-hour programs,” said Peggy Charren, president of Action for Children’s Television in Cambridge, Mass. Ms. Charren’s advocacy organization has been leading a fight against ad characters’ appearing in programs, saying their presence would represent an invasion by commercial values. Proponents asserted, however, that the characters’ origins would not matter if the programs were entertaining and educational.