Many Complaints About TV Advertising In U.S.

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29058, 21 November 1959, Page 13

Many Complaints About TV Advertising In U.S.

(Specially written for N.Z.P.A. by FffAh’K OLIVER.] WASHINGTON, November 19. The American television scandals will be frontpage news for some time to come and perhaps it is not too much to say that the future of a great entertainment and information medium is at stake. Revelations of fraud and deceit to date have shocked most of the nation, and more exposes are on the way.

As one official here has put it, television is facing a crisis of confidence both as to its programmes and its advertising. There is now good reason to believe that those who looked at television, about 150,000,000 people, have been fooled as much by the advertiser as by the quiz programme producers and contestants

This has reached the point where the Federal Trade Commission chairman has started referring to “deceitful television commercials” and the commission is being flooded with letters from irritated viewers complaining about alleged false claims made for headache remedies, reducing aids, beauty aids, soaps and detergents, and other household products. The Federal Trade Commission

is issuing more and more complaints and records a number of consent drders. A consent order means that a company, while not admitting guilt, agrees to stop putting on the screen commercials about which the F.T.C. complains. By general consent the great networks are “up against it” Up to now they have not exercised much control over what goes on television screens. It is the advertising industry of Madison Avenue, New York, known as “Advertising Alley," or “Ulcer Gulch,” which controls a great deal of what the public sees on its millions of television screens. But, judging from what the networks are now saying, this is coming to an end. Public reaction so far is somewhat mixed. There seems to be

a wave of irritation developing against what are described as fraudulent advertisements. But an astonishing number of people do not'feel greatly concemeeFSbout the quiz show frauds and an enormous proportion of letters to editors express sympathy with Charles Van Doren and say they’d be glad to have quiz shows back, whether they are rigged or honest. Many letters criticise Columbia University for discharging Van Doren and the principal of one of the most famous schools in the country told me recently that if she were hiring an English teacher she would hire Van Doren.

However, the bulk of the country is firmly against Van Doren, and the press has castigated him with little mercy. John Crosby, a noted television commentator, writing in the New York “Herald Tnbune,” says mail received by the National Broadcasting System was running nine to one in favour of Van Doren when the network dismissed him. Crosby referred to Van Doren as “a perjurer of deepest hue. He conspired to commit perjury and clung to his perjury until smoked out by overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” CroSby, and many others,

applaud the N.B.C. for refusing to have a double standard of justice and for preferring to be right rather than' popular. However, I have noticed no disposition to make a scapegoat of Van Doren, and the Washington “Post” spoke for many people when it said: "It will render very little service to the public to make Charles Van Doren a scapegoat. It is an industry, not an individual, that stands in need of redemption." The "New York Times” says the thing that can be salvaged from this sorry situation is an awakened sense of public outrage that may yet force reforms in the industry that made it possible -the Van Doren episode, bad as it is, is but symptomatic of a disease in the radio and television world.”