Sarah McLachlan’s PSA: Angels, dogs & cats
Sarah McLachlan’s 2 Minutes for the Animals
Few would argue that the world in 2006 was a very different place than it is today. Original programming streamed over the internet didn’t exist.
Dial up just wasn’t there yet. But cable stations had found a permanent home in people’s lives — creating their own programming and showing reruns of beloved classics.
Cable was a good place in 2006… and then a Moment in TV Herstory happened. Or I should say, it happened on many occasions — many minutes — for a number of years.
In that window of time when the economy shook with intensity that was unsustainable but we hadn’t fathomed what a Great Recession would look like, when Stephen Colbert coined the word “truthiness” that referred to the lack of veracity found in then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about his and other administration officials’ roles in alleged abuses committed at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. We looked at power differently — without the jaded skepticism we have today. The middle class hadn’t evaporated.
And so it was in 2006 that Sarah McLachlan asked us if we’ll be angels.
Advanced TV Herstory has recounted careers that’ve lasted decades and TV series that ran for a dozen seasons. Today, we’ll revisit the 2 minute long infomercial — PSA, the song itself — which was released 20 years ago — and the artist who wrote and performed it and then asked us to be angels, the PSA’s impact and the controversy that ensued.
Our federal airwaves — broadcast television and cable — are governed by the Federal Communications Commission — the FCC. TV station owners can jeopardize their licenses for a host of violations. The FCC’s authority usually only gets discussed when things like Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction occurs — accidental or intentional — that’s not for me to decide — in front of millions of viewers during “family hour” or early evening Super Bowl halftime. Violate standards and expect to pay a huge fine to the FCC.
In addition to monitoring standards, the FCC tracks every TV station’s commitment to public service, educational and community programming. An infomercial that promotes the wonders of a line of kitchen gadgets is just paid programming — no different than a TV show. An infomercial with video of starving villagers in Africa and how you can help — — that’s public service. Air time afforded to a recognized not-for-profit organization at little or no cost.
Big name celebrities will occasionally do PSA’s, but none has ever achieved the impact that Sarah McLachlan’s work for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — the ASPCA did in 2006 and subsequent years.
For 2 minutes, she spoke of the national epidemic of abandoned and abused animals. Viewers watched…
