Washington,U.S.A — Only months after the office of the U.S. Surgeon General warned that exposure to on-screen smoking causes young people to start smoking, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has spotlighted the U.S. movie industry’s failure to protect young audiences.

Reversing a five-year decline in movie smoking, from 2005 to 2010, four out of the six major Hollywood studios featured more smoking in their youth-rated (G, PG and PG-13) movies in 2011. Overall, tobacco incidents per youth-rated film climbed by more than one-third above 2010; in 2011, youth-rated movies delivered almost twice as many tobacco impressions to domestic theater audiences as in 2010, topping 10 billion. The three major studios with published policies addressing onscreen smoking — Disney, Universal (Comcast) and Warner Bros. (Time Warner) — saw the sharpest increases in the number of tobacco incidents per youth-rated movie.

“These data show us that individual policies that movie studios created in good faith to address this important public health problem do not stand up,” said Cheryl G. Healton, DrPH, President and CEO of Legacy, a national public health organization dedicated to reducing the tobacco epidemic in the United States. “The only way to ensure a substantial and permanent reduction in young people’s exposure to on-screen smoking is for the movie industry to adopt a uniform set of policies that apply to all producers and distributors and provide structural incentives for lasting change,” Healton added.

The Legacy-funded study “Smoking in Top-Grossing US Movies in 2011″ published today in the CDC’s Preventing Chronic Disease found that the number of top-grossing, youth-rated movies that were tobacco-free dropped 17 percentage points from 2010 to 2011 among companies with policies, and the number of tobacco incidents in their movies climbed from an average of 1 in 2010 to 8.5 incidents per movie in 2011.

Across the industry, youth-rated movies accounted for 68 percent of all tobacco impressions delivered to theater audiences in 2011, compared to 39 percent in 2010. The review was conducted by Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down! (TUTD), a project of Breathe California of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails and the University of California, San Francisco, Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. (Tobacco impressions, an index of audience exposure, are estimated by multiplying the number of tobacco incidents in a film by paid admissions to the film)

“In 2011, the steady progress we had seen since 2005, led by three companies who each demonstrated that smoking in youth-rated movies could be all but eliminated, stopped and slipped backward. The stark difference in performance between those three major studios with policies and the three without all but disappeared last year,” said Stanton A. Glantz, Ph.D., Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and lead author of the report.

“The result of this increase in the amount of onscreen smoking will be thousands of more kids starting to smoke,” Glantz added. “That’s why only a uniform, industry-wide R rating policy for smoking will protect kids from exposure to tobacco imagery. It creates a sustainable, voluntary incentive for producers to leave smoking out of films produced to be marketed to kids.”

The problem of smoking in movies is a top public health priority, as the U.S. Surgeon General, the CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have emphasized the importance of reducing youth exposure to on-screen smoking.

“The industry knows what these policies are, because they have been recommended repeatedly by health agencies and organizations, civic bodies, youth groups, and, earlier this year, by more than three dozen state attorneys general: the R-rating for future smoking, certification of no tobacco payoffs, strong anti-tobacco spots before any movie with smoking, shown in any channel, and an end to tobacco brand display in movies,” Healton said.

“How many more movies will it take for Hollywood to get the big picture and stop recruiting kids for Big Tobacco?” Healton asked. “When an actor lights up, so does a child. It is time for the media companies and their movie studios to take real, lasting action on this issue.”

To learn more about Legacy’s life-saving programs, visit www.LegacyForHealth.org or follow them on Twitter @legacyforhealth and Facebook www.Facebook.com/Legacy.

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DC Entertainment, a Warner Bros. Entertainment company and home to iconic brands DC Comics, Vertigo and MAD, revealed a new brand identity. The new identity is reflective of the company’s mission to fully realize the value of a rich portfolio of brands, stories and characters, distinguished by incredible breadth and depth across publishing, media and merchandise. A new logo for DC Comics was also introduced, closely aligning with DC Entertainment’s new mark.

“It’s a new era at DC Entertainment and the new look reflects a dynamic, bold approach while at the same time celebrates the company’s rich heritage and robust portfolio of characters,” stated John Rood, EVP of Sales, Marketing and Business Development for DC Entertainment.

“It was just a few months ago that Superman, Batman and many of our other Super Heroes were updated when we launched DC Comics – The New 52 and now it’s time to do the same for the company’s identity while remaining true to the power of storytelling which is still at the heart of DC Entertainment.”

DC Entertainment worked with Landor Associates, one of the world’s leading brand consulting and design firms, to develop an identity that creates a visual connection among the company, its three brands DC Comics, Vertigo and MAD and its vast array of properties as well as celebrates the power of the company’s stories and characters.

The design of the new DC Entertainment identity uses a “peel” effect – the D is strategically placed over the C with the upper right-hand portion of the D peeling back to unveil the hidden C – symbolizing the duality of the iconic characters that are present within DC Entertainment’s portfolio.

“It was our goal to capture DC Entertainment in a dynamic and provocative identity. Our solution is a living expression which changes and adapts to the characters, story lines and the ways fans are consuming content,” explains Nicolas Aparicio, Executive Creative Director at Landor’s San Francisco office. ”The new identity is built for the digital age, and can easily be animated and customized to take full advantage of the interactivity offered across all media platforms.”

The new brand identity will come to life across all consumer touch points in order to create a clear and consistent message in support of DC Entertainment. The new identity will begin to appear on comic books and graphic novels as well as new websites in March. Consumers will also see the new identity rolled out over time on other DC Entertainment products from Warner Bros. including film, television, interactive games and merchandise.

“We believe our new brand identity will strongly resonate with our loyal fans who will want to proudly express their affinity for DC Entertainment and their passion for their favorite stories and characters, this new look allows them to easily do this.

In addition we were excited to update our identity, it’s not often a company gets to revisit something as important as its brand and we took the opportunity to make sure it represented the multi-media business we set out to build with the formation of DC Entertainment,” said Amit Desai, SVP of Franchise Management for DC Entertainment.

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