I would have thought this would be against some kind of FCC or FTC regulation. But my local CBS station just aired a “story” that consisted entirely of announcing that Taco Bell was now offering “rattlesnake fries”. The item was described, pictured from various angles, and there was something about when it would be available. Nothing that I could divine about any controversy, or even about their corporate strategy. It’s hard for me to imagine they would have aired this “story” without being paid; but there was nothing on the screen acknowledging this as a paid placement or “advertorial” type deal.
I spent 30 years in various types of “media relations.” TV and radio stations have to identify paid advertising. However, there’s no law about a station which happens to do a story that features a big advertiser, even an uninteresting story or one where 12 other companies in town are doing exactly the same thing.
In the case of your Taco Bell story I can almost guarantee that Taco Bell corporate headquarters told every TV station in the United States that there was really cool free footage of their brand new rattlesnake fries along with information, all the station had to do was download it, and your local CBS station had a producer lazy enough to use it. I myself got a lot of stories on a lot of TV stations by doing almost exactly that.
Our local ABC owned and operated station regularly has feature stories on its local news programs about Disneyland, Disney World, and other Disney stuff. ABC is owned by Disney.
I remember when the original The Apprentice TV show (the non-celebrity version) starring President Donald Trump aired on NBC, our local NBC owned and operated station really scraped the bottom of the barrel to find Apprentice-related stories for their newscasts. They would do stories about distant relatives of contestants or interview random drunk people who watched the show in bars.
Yeah it’s more a symptom of lazy journalism than paid advertising. If a single bush in SoCal is on fire you better believe every news outlet here is rushing over to record it to eat up some minutes. Similarly I’ve seen a lot of “Local restaurant owner remodels their eatery” stories under the justification that it’s “Local Interest”.
I have seen questionable stuff like you guys described before, but never this extreme.
I’ve often claimed our local news programs consist of the same predictable segments every day.
- Danger teaser. Some threat to our safety that will be defined later (“Be sure and stay tuned!”)
- Impending weather problem. Perky McWeathertits warns of looming weather disaster and tells us what to wear (“Bring your umbrella!” “Be sure and dress your kids in coats!”).
- The Apple ad. (“They’ve changed the color of the icons in the new release!”).
- The Starbucks ad (“Look! A new menu item!”)
- Minorities in peril.
- Men playing with a ball.
The sheer volume of minutiae about minor changes to Apple and Starbucks products has me convinced they are commercials. Whether this is thru direct payments or some back door method I don’t know.
[Moderating]
pullin, is “Perky McWeathertits” really the most apt label you can come up with for a TV meteorologist? There’s no other pertinent trait that said professional might have?
Do you mean that the local newscast aired the story, or that the station ran a standalone program (like an infomercial), or what?
In Aus, we get American Politics. It’s in English, there’s unlimited content, and it’s cheap. Australians know more about American presidential primary candidates than most Americans do.
I don’t know if it counts as “news,” but most major cities have these local morning shows where in between local news, traffic, and weather there are multiple guests talking about their business and products under the guise of information.
They are one or two hours of the hosts saying stuff like “Stay with us and we are going to be talking to Tony from Tony’s Windows and Doors on how you can save thousands per year on your electric bill. After that, we are going to have Daisy from Daisy’s Day Spa to tell us all about the latest in skin care treatments that all the stars are getting.”
I wouldn’t want to watch commercials all morning.
Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, especially in GQ. I’ll keep a lid on it in the future.
There’s compensation and there’s compensation.
Back when I was writing a daily investment column - online and 200 newspapers! - I learned pretty quickly that two or three companies - if I mentioned them - would get me more readership online and more emails responding to them. Two of those were Apple and Starbucks. Mentioning both would bring my readership up significantly for a day or two.
So it may or may not be a matter of getting paid. It may be as simple as ‘mentioning Apple increases on the regular increases our ratings’ and nothing more. Higher ratings equals job security and there’s no one allergic to that.
It’s not really any surprise that stations do this, After all, they seek viewers because viewers=$$$ for ads. Which of these do you think the average viewer will stay tuned for?
“After the break, Prof. Farnsworth disproves Fermat’s Theorem!”
“After the break, surprising ways a AA battery can harm your child!”
“After the break, tasty new treats available at Burger Heaven!”
“After the break, secret ways your Facebook friends spy on you!”
The stories that I can’t stand are those that feature the local news “talent.” These are typically pictures of all the news people with their SOs for Valentine’s Day. Or a story from a retired newscaster about how much he enjoys spending time with the grandkids. Or advice from a news anchor on raising your children (after she just gave birth to her first and only child 18 months ago and it has not been proved that the kid isn’t going to be a psychopathic killer).
My only journalism experience was on the college student newspaper, and as a result, I started to pay attention to what articles other papers carried. We would get press releases from companies, and I never thought them worth running as stories, but did notice that some newspapers do run stories that are re-written press releases. Some TV news stations run the video equivalent of a news release.
And by the way, one reason to run a video news release is the same one for running a print press release; it fills time, or column-inches, and is ready-made, so less work for your staff.
I also vote for laziness on the part of TV news operations.
Another example is stations running a story on a “groundbreaking” medical treatment that is actually of dubious benefit. When the reporter fails to interview experts who would cast doubt on the claims being made, the story is essentially an advertisement for quackery.
Of course they do. Your basic TV newscast is formatted as tightly as a situation comedy. One station offers a lot of “breaking news” full of videos of car crashes and fires, another has maybe one actual news story and the rest are pieces on “interesting people,” while a third has “consumer news” and “investigative reports” about a roofer who did a shoddy job.
Our local news does tons of “stories” about events their station is going to broadcast soon.
And I’ve noticed that they need at least one horrific crime story per show. If no one in their area has been courteous enough to commit one, they will run one from 2,000 miles away, not mentioning the location in the teasers.
oh and have you seen a 2 minute video with no sound but the anchor talking over it ? those are beamed in by satellite usually as press releases
One formerly independent channel news cast was well known for this especially if it was either medical or science related
if he started it with "researchers say " then someone watched it then rewrote it so it wouldn’t take more than 1:30 to repeat …….
It is just a byproduct of local news being generally shit. You have a bunch of D list talent that is using it as a stepping stone for a better career. There is so much going on in our community, but the local news just wants to do puff pieces about a church bake sale. It’s ridiculous. I don’t even watch it anymore.
Sinclair Requires TV Stations to Air Segments That Tilt to the Right
-Not paid because they are owned stations. Still, it’s free advertising for some political viewpoints.