Two Sponsors Wash Their Hands Of ‘Nothing Sacred’

A week after ABC began “Nothing Sacred,” a television series about a somewhat hip and self-doubting Roman Catholic priest, the show has lost sponsors following a campaign led by a Catholic group.

Two advertisers, American Isuzu Motors and the Weight Watchers International unit of the H.J. Heinz Co., have withdrawn from the show, which has received positive reviews for its portrayal of a handsome priest, played by Kevin Anderson, who is ambivalent about church doctrine on such issues as abortion and celibacy.

Lina Webb Carilli, a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers, said the company had decided to pull away from “Nothing Sacred” because “we got a tremendous amount of feedback from the public about the show, and we just decided it wasn’t necessary for us to be on that program.”

An executive at American Isuzu Motors, who spoke on condition he not be identified, said that after one ad on the show, “There were complaints received.”

The pullouts by the advertisers come after several months of criticism from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which says it has 350,000 members. The group has called for a boycott of the show.