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May 25, 2005
FCC Commissioner Endorses Commercial Alert’s Call for Disclosure of Covert Commercial Propaganda on TV
In a speech today, Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein called for "clear and prominent" disclosure of covert commercial propaganda on TV, including product placements and paid shills.
Adelstein said “In fall 2003, a group called Commercial Alert asked us to take a number of different actions regarding product placement, and its filing, and the recent press reports I mentioned, clearly indicate that the time has come for us to step up our enforcement in this area.”
“We are greatly encouraged by Commissioner Adelstein’s defense of viewers’ right to know by whom they are being persuaded,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert.
Take action now: tell the FCC to require disclosure of covert commercial pitches on TV. Click here:
http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/commercialalert/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=775
Commercial Alert’s petition for rule-making to establish adequate disclosure of product placement on television is at http://www.commercialalert.org/fcc.pdf.
Posted by Gary Ruskin at May 25, 2005 03:09 PM
Comments
Great news! With TV commercial spending plummeting due to DVRs (e.g. Tivo. see various WSJ, BusinessWeek, and NYT articles on the decline of ad spending on TV), advertisers are clammoring to bring value to their customers. Product placement is obviously successful, and subverts DVRs ability to advertisement skip. We should maintain our ability, as consumers, to have full disclosure when someone is paying for the opportunity to advertise their products to us. The current rules around product placement are way too loose, and the line between art and commerce is too blurry. Time to fix it.
Posted by: Jud Valeski at May 25, 2005 04:09 PM
