Proctor & Gamble Productions
Posted by Nick S. on March 16, 2008
A brief post on a question that’s been bugging me for a while: exactly what is Proctor & Gamble Productions? The Proctor & Gamble website mentions nothing about the company, and IMDBPro, normally a wealth of information, only has a filmography available. PGP isn’t even mentioned in Proctor & Gamble’s Annual Report (I searched). The only thing I could track down was an address in NYC.I’d love to know more about how Proctor & Gamble Productions is structured (they don’t even appear to have a website)…and why P&G seems to deny all knowledge of its existence. I’m in fact quite surprised that PGP still produces soaps, especially when it’s almost certain that it could be done ‘in-house’ for less money. Answers on a postcard…
lynn liccardo said
“I’d love to know more about how Proctor & Gamble Productions is structured (they don’t even appear to have a website)…and why P&G seems to deny all knowledge of its existence.”
wouldn’t we all, nick. wouldn’t we all… i ‘ll let sam fill in the particulars.
Sam Ford said
We will discuss this further when we talk about my thesis research, Nick, but here’s the short version. P&G, as we know, has been involved in making soaps since the 1930s or so. At first report around the mid-1980s, but it’s unsure exactly when, these shows started being listed as produced by Procter & Gamble Productions. There are only two or so employees of PGP in actuality, working in Cincinnati. Primarily, they are given a budget that is handed over to TeleVest, a division of MediaVest, which makes ATWT, GL, and any other programming created under the PGP banner. TeleVest basically brought together all the parties who helped create the shows and centralized them, and MediaVest has a close relationship with P&G, so the alliance makes sense. In that case, P&G itself doesn’t create media programming but rather just allocates the budget and has someone on their end overseeing the operation. That person is Pat Gentile, who is located in Cincinnati but travels out regularly to NYC.