The Parents Television Council is again releasing its annual ranking of the top 10 best and worst advertisers, with the advertisers ranked according to their sponsorship of shows that are family-friendly versus shows containing sexual content, violence or profanity.

The envelope, please …

The winners for sponsoring the best shows are Coca-Cola, Clorox, Century 21 Real Estate, H&R Block, Ferrero, CVS Caremark, Whirlpool, Hershey, State Farm and Hewlett-Packard.

Listed as the 10 “worst” advertisers are General Motors, Nissan, L’Oreal USA, Pepsi-Cola, GlaxoSmithKline, Reckitt Benckiser, Target, Kohl’s, Verizon Communications and Toyota.

“The role that television advertisers play in determining what type of content comes into every home in America cannot be overstated,” said PTC President Tim Winter. “We commend the advertisers on our best list that have chosen to associate their hard-earned corporate brands with positive programming that the entire family can watch together.

“By contrast, parents can thank many of the advertisers on the worst list for enabling the networks to pump some of the most shocking and outrageous content on the air today directly into their living rooms. Our top offenders include General Motors, which advertised on one of the most shocking episodes of Fox’s ‘Family Guy,’ and Nissan, which helped pay for the bloodiest episode in the ‘Dexter’ series to air on broadcast television. In the 2007-2008 TV season alone, these two advertisers showed up nearly 1,000 times on ‘red light’ shows that are unsuitable for children according to PTC’s traffic light ratings system."