For years, critics of all political stripes have been attacking network television producers for the sex and violence that increasingly dominate their programming. Yet, at the same time--and unbeknownst to most viewers--the oft-reviled medium has been an active partner with special interest groups working to bring about positive social change.

More than 150 organizations--from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to Planned Parenthood to the Environmental Media Association--actively lobby television producers with story lines, prop placements, and character development ideas designed to get their message out to an audience that increasingly views TV as its window on reality. Nearly one-fourth of all American teens in a recent survey said they learn about pregnancy and birth control from television and movies, so what better vehicle for a message about safe sex? "I can't knock on every door in the country and discuss safe sex with teenagers," Marisa Nightingale of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy tells writer Jane Rosenzweig in The American Prospect (July/Aug. 1999), "but if Bailey and Sarah on Party of Five discuss it, that's the next best thing."

Television has always had its maverick producers, willing to risk advertisers and ratings to explore a controversial social issue (Maude's abortion in 1972 preceded Roe v. Wade; and Billy Crystal's gay character on Soap was a lightning rod for anti-gay activists in the late '70s), but the past 10 years have seen a dramatic proliferation of single-issue messages on network TV.

Much of that can be traced directly to the success of Jay Winsten and his 1988 designated driver campaign. In four network TV seasons, the Harvard professor and director of the school's Center for Health Communication managed to get his designated driver message inserted into the story lines of 160 prime-time shows. The results were astounding: Surveys showed that 67 percent of U.S. adults were aware of the designated driver concept a year after its introduction, and 52 percent of adults under 30 had served as a designated driver by 1991. Nationwide, drunk driving fatalities dropped by 32 percent between 1988 and 1997, and though some of that decrease can be attributed to tougher state drunken driving laws, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gives most of the credit to Winsten's campaign.