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Hats off to the public relations flacks at Kellogg's (text link). Last month, when that one cereals brand announced that it would no longer advertise its high-sugar, high-salt brands on children's television, all three networks responded with free publicity. Now eleven other food conglomerates--accounting for a "whopping two thirds" of all TV food advertising targeted at pre-teens, according to CBS' Kelly Wallace--have joined Kellogg's in its pledge. Those eleven have to share the spotlight with their rivals. They are not even considered newsworthy enough to warrant a reporter from NBC. And both CBS and ABC point out the loopholes in their self-denying ordinance. Stated Dan Harris in ABC's A Closer Look, "they can still run ads in primetime on, say, American Idol, which is designed for all audiences but is very popular with kids." CBS' Wallace mentioned that General Mills' ads for Chocolate Lucky Charms--14 grams of sugar per serving--will be pulled but Cocoa Puffs--12 grams--will still get on air. Furthermore this marketing restraint applies to TV ads but not to product packaging.
At the other end of the marketing demographic, NBC's In Depth offered a corrective to skeptics--including NBC's own Josh Mankiewicz this January--who suspected that Restless Leg Syndrome is a disorder invented by Big Pharma in order to create a market for GlaxoSmithKline's heavily-advertised Requip brand of pills. According to genetic research in The New England Journal of Medicine, NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman told us, RLS is at least 50% authentic. Of the 20m in this country who complain of its symptoms, researchers have found that half share "the gene responsible." Snyderman did not tell us what proportion of those who carry the RLS gene turn out to have quiet feet in bed anyway.
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