24:Redemption (yes, I watched TV)

I should begin with a confession: I am addicted to the TV show "24." Usually I resist such widely popular cultural phenomena (I still haven't read a Harry Potter book), but Jency had season 6 of 24 sent to us in our Netflix, and I found myself hooked from the first episode. We've since gone through seasons 1-3 on DVD.

Shocking, I know. But we've found it to be a nice escape from the stresses of day-to-day life. It's got lots of action, lots of political drama, and, believe it or not, lots of great thought-provoking ethical dilemmas. Plus each episode ends with a cliffhanger, and so you find yourself running to Blockbuster at 10:00 PM and spending five bucks that you didn't really need to spend, just so you can go to bed knowing how that little subplot gets resolved.

But enough justifying my addiction. Let's come to the point.

Last night Fox broadcast a 2-hour special "prequel" to the forthcoming 7th season (which will start in January of 2009). A couple years have passed since the end of the last season due to the Hollywood writers' strike, so you can imagine my excitement.

And, knowing that 24 is a popular entertainment program on a major media network, you can imagine my surprise when I saw that the episode is set in Africa (in a fictitious nation called Sangala), and that a central theme is the issue of child soldiers.

And you can imagine my further surprise when I found that the commercial breaks, mainly populated by expectable corporate giants like Hyundai and Sprint, were peppered with spots from Human Rights Watch and the UN showing statistics on things like child soldiers and malaria in Africa. Kiefer Sutherland, star and producer of 24, had an ad personally beseeching viewers to support anti-malarial measures like mosquito nets.

Could mainstream entertainment media have turned a corner?

Who knows. But it's good to see another example of Hollywood addressing important humanitarian crises that have been languishing unnoticed for decades. Here's my open request to Fox executives (not that they'll ever see this blog): partner with existing NGOs doing development work in Africa in order to leverage the potential impact of your 24 fan base. If enough Americans begin to care about what happens outside US borders, we can make a significant difference in the lives of Africans.

And thank you, Fox, for allowing your most popular program to be used as a platform to raise awareness.