The Parents Television Council is looking to shame Subway into withdrawing its advertising from Fox's The Mick.
Subway's famous pound-shedding spokesman, Jared Fogle, also famously pled guilty in 2015 to federal charges of pornography and having sex with a minor, a point PTC made obliquely in chastising the fast-food chain.
“Given its embarrassing experience with a former company spokesperson you would think that Subway would, at all costs, avoid associating its brand with a TV show that makes light of child pornography and other explicit adult content, and that routinely features child actors delivering that adult content,” said PTC President Tim Winter in a statement.
Related: PTC Asks FCC to Be Mindful of ‘Live’ 'SNL'
Was PTC singling out Subway strictly because of the Fogle connection? A PTC spokesperson said that their focus had been on multiple-episode advertisers -- of which Subway was one -- and that it had also reached out to multiple-episode advertiser Weight Watchers.
The series, from the team behind It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, has generally been critically panned as an unsuccessful attempt to transfer the edginess of cable fair to broadcasting in what USA Today called an "equal opportunity offender," including, as the New York Times pointed out in its review, scenes like: "Mickey shoving her hand down the 7-year-old’s throat to make him throw up a balloon of drugs, or an episode in which the recurring visual joke is the family sitting in the living room listening to the 17-year-old sister have sex upstairs."
At press time, neither Subway nor Fox had returned a request for comment, though Fox does not historically comment on PTC campaigns. PTC has taken aim at various Fox shows in the past, notably Family Guy, though last fall it did try to drum up more viewership for a then-new Fox show.
