‘What No One Is Telling You’
4 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // February 16th, 2007 // 11:47 am
That’s the title of a forthcoming documentary on PBS that will air in April as part of its ‘Take One Step’ health series. One wag says, however, there’s a double entendre at work: A quick check of the PBS web site indicates that ‘Major Funding was Provided by GlaxoSmithKline,” which not so coincidentally just received FDA approval to sell Alli, an OTC version of the Xenical fat pill.
This kind of corporate sponsorship is misleading and is as much about fattening Glaxo profits as it is slimming waistlines, charges Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, and a frequent critic of commercialization of noncommercial broadcasting.
He wrote PBS ombudsman Mike Getler to complain about what he sees as lax sponsorship policies. PBS program executives need to “cut the fat out of their sloppy review of what’s appropriate for underwriting,” he wrote, according to Broadcasting & Cable magazine.
Under PBS rules, the mag notes, underwriters do not get any say over programming, and obesity is clearly a national health issue, but Chester fears the show will effectively be a plug for the new diet drug and that “”Programs on PBS should be free of connections to sponsors who have a vested interest in an issue.”
PBS issued a statement saying Glaxo had no editorial input, no one from the drugmaker has seen the documentary yet, and ’strict separation was maintained throughout production.’ Moreover, PBS argues Glaxo only ponied up last month as the film was nearly done.
What a surprise. Glaxo was anticipating FDA approval for Alli by then. Which only underscores Chester’s point: even if Alli isn’t mentioned by name in the documentary, the sponsorship comes as off as a thinly disguised (pun intended) form of DTC advertising.
[tags]GlaxoSmithKline, PBS[/tags]
jimmy white
is this really that big of an issue?
chloe
The catch-22 here is that if gsk did not have FDA approval, would that be considered off-label promotion and seeding work of the marketing team? If this program does not mention any drugs by name and brings awareness to what is clearly an epidemic in this country, isn’t the company doing good will? Obviously, gsk would not fund a program if they did not have a stake in it, but the real question is, who would do it instead?
ed
Hi and thanks for writing.
To answer your first question, Alli is an OTC product, not a prescription med, so if they’d sponsored such a program prior to FDA approval, it wouldn’t be considered off-label promotion.
Your second point is a good one. Yes, there is, presumably, goodwill here. Certainly, that furthers the larger goal of selling the product. But let’s take the company’s motives at face value.
In any event, I suppose there’s this old-fashioned notion that public broadcasting, which still gets some taxpayer funding, should be free from the kind of commercialization that characterizes network and cable tv.
And while anyone who views this documentary may not know PBS policies or the circumstances in this situation, its not unreasonable to imagine a viewer wondering the extent to which this program was developed independently, given that a major sponsor also sells a new diet pill.
PBS, in this instance, may have inadvertently raised the issue, which is what Chester is trying to point out, I believe.
I wrote about this because I found it interesting and thought it was worth exploring.
I don’t know how many others will see it that way, but its an interesting situation.
Cheers
Ed
Kell Brigan
Chester said in justification of PBS’ accepting Glaxo’s bribe in exchange for the airing of complementary content, “But in this case, there is little doubt how a program about obesity is going to turn out.”
Yes, especially if you’re only acknowledging the existence of arguments that come attached to a check. Whether an “obesity epidemic” even exists (most weight gain has been in the heaviest people, not in the general public), whether or not weight loss attempts create the weight gain & illnesses they purport to “treat”, whether or not fatness is even a “disease” at all, as well as the ongoing hatred and exploitation of fat people and numerous deaths and illnesses related to medications and procedures sold as “cures” are all outstanding controversies that Chester conveniently avoids seeing through his haze of dismissive bigotry.
They’re just fatsos. Who cares if they wind up killed by yet another weight loss attempt (with drugs or without), so long as PBS gets some cash?