FAMILY FRIENDLY VIDEO STORE OPENS ON THE INTERNET
Contact: Dick Rolfe, Chairman, The Dove Foundation 616-454-5021 <dickrolfe@dove.org>
Grand Rapids MI -- September 14, 1998 -- In this day and age parents are skeptical, if not downright worried about what their children might run into while surfing the Net. The Dove Foundation has contracted with an Internet marketing firm that has developed a new online video store where families can choose from hundreds of wholesome videos for sale at discount prices on the Web. Then, in a matter of days, the video arrives at the customer’s home.
The site is called Shop@Dove and is located at http://www.dove.org/shop
The Dove Foundation, whose advisory board members include such luminaries as entertainer Steve Allen, film critic and talk show host Michael Medved and former Cowboys Head coach Tom Landry was established in 1991. Its mission is to encourage and promote wholesome family entertainment. The Foundation's Review Board has awarded its blue and white Dove Family-Approved Seal to over 2,000 movies and videos that are devoid of gratuitous violence, explicit sexual behavior and gross profanity.
Dove Services, L.L.C., an E-commerce marketing company, will offer exclusively Dove-approved entertainment products for sale at Shop@Dove. A royalty for each product sold over this Internet site will be paid to The Dove Foundation according to Scott Rolfe, President of Dove Services. "This is our way of providing The Dove Foundation with additional funding to help them carry out their worthy mission," he said. For the past four years he was Director of Corporate Services at The Foundation where he headed up their Dove Retailer Program.
"We are delighted that Dove Services has offered to help us advance our cause by making wholesome movies and videos more accessible to the consumer via the Internet." said Dick Rolfe, CEO of The Dove Foundation. The fulfillment technology they utilize coupled with their the E-commerce programming skills makes Dove Services an ideal partner," he said.
"We have direct access to a complete video inventory, as well as state-of-the-art systems and fulfillment services. This enables us to offer highly competitive prices and unusually high product fill rates which ensures prompt delivery to our customers," said Scott Rolfe of Dove Services.
Both executives are confident that Shop@Dove offers a unique service to parents and families. "Many online video sites boast 50,000 or 80,000 titles to choose from. But big numbers are not necessarily seen as an advantage to discriminating consumers," said Scott Rolfe. "We conducted a keyword search for 'Babe' on three other online video stores. Among the titles we pulled up were adult videos like Playboy's Biker Babes, Snowboard Babes and The Babes of Baywatch. The same keyword search on Dove's site found only three titles -- Babe; the Gallant Pig, Babe Ruth Remembered and Babette's Feast.
"We want shoppers who are looking for family-oriented entertainment to feel confident that they are not going to find any surprises, except for our competitive prices," said Scott Rolfe. Dove-approved videos, DVD's and laser disks are priced similarly to those on other online video stores.
Shop@Dove also offers two TV set-top blocking devices for sale. One is an after market version of the V-Chip. The manufacturer, Parental Guide TM is the patent holder of the blocking technology that will be mandatory in all TV sets manufactured after January 1, 2000. The other device, TVGuardian "Foul Language Filter" by Principle Solutions Company, blocks profanity from nearly everything that can be shown on a television set. TVGuardian reads the closed caption signal and replaces any questionable words with a brief sanitized onscreen script. The blocking devices retail for $99.95 and $149.95 respectively.