Online NewsHour: Advertising alcohol

REPEALING AD PROHIBITION

NOVEMBER 12, 1996

TRANSCRIPT

A self imposed ban on television advertising was lifted recently by the liquor industry, ending almost fifty years of black-out. Will this lead to greater alcoholism, or is it really no worse to advertise liquor on TV than beer or wine. Paul Solman takes a closer look.

A RealAudio version of this NewsHour segment is available.
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Phillip Morris Company and U.S. Tobacco Company propose curbs on cigarette regulation. Do they satisfy the Clinton administration.
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PAUL SOLMAN: Beer makers like Budweiser tromp Clydesdale horses through our living rooms; the Miller Brewing Company makes "tastes great, less filling" into one of America's most famous debates. Should the liquor industry be able to lighten up its image and sell its alcohol products on the tube as well? That's the question raised by the industry's decision to lift a self-imposed ban on TV liquor ads, a ban enforced since 1948. The ban was first broken in June when Seagram's began running this ad on cable television.
AD ANNOUNCER: (Seagram Ad - showing dog with "Pomp and Circumstance"playing in background) Obedience school graduate. (second dog carrying bag) Valedictorian. Crown Royal -the legendary import.
PAUL SOLMAN: When the rest of the liquor industry announced last week that it would soon follow Seagram's, President Clinton and Senate Majority Leader Lott, among many others, condemned the decision. For our own debate, we're joined by Fred Meister, head of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, and George Hacker, director of the Alcohol Policies Project for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group here in Washington. Gentlemen, thank you both for coming in. Mr. Hacker, what's wrong with liquor ads on television?
GEORGE HACKER, Center for Science: Well we already have enough beer and wine ads on television. The brewers and the vintners spend about $700 million a year, and many of the images that they send, many of their messages appeal to kids. Kids are in real trouble with alcohol in this country. It's a major factor in the three leading causes of death for people aged 16 to 24. There are masses of kids in the television audience almost at all hours--day and night. Um, the last thing that kids need is a mountain of liquor ads in addition to the beer ads that are already--uh, so frequently appeal to them.
PAUL SOLMAN: Mr. Meister, why should liquor advertisers be on television, if the results are so terrible?
FRED MEISTER, Distilled Spirits Council: Well, the results of advertising will not be so terrible. People don't like advertising. They don't like advertising of many products, but let's get the facts on the table. The fact, as reported by the seventh report of the Department of Health & Human Services to the United States Congress, the Federal Trade Commission, who has responsibility for this, have said there is not a relationship between advertising and consumption, let alone abuse. The important issue is responsibility and avoiding the targeting of under-age youth. We have 26 provisions in our Code of Good Practice that are directed at responsible placement and responsible content.
PAUL SOLMAN: For example--give us just a couple of examples--Mr. Hacker, then I'd like you to respond.
MR. MEISTER: Well, one example is that we will not advertise in market using objects or images or cartoon characters that predominantly are associated with children. We will not advertise or market environments where we know the most--most of the people attending it, such as a circus, for example, would be under-age. We are not going to advertise on college campuses or in college newspapers. We will not advertise in materials that appear and predominantly are oriented to the under-age.
PAUL SOLMAN: Okay. So--
MR. MEISTER: Now, that doesn't mean that people won't see ‘em, because they will, but there's a difference between seeing it and making a decision that that's going to cause ‘em to consume. If that was the case, the 600 million dollars of beer advertising, we wouldn't see a drop in the alcohol problems of youth. We would have seen an increase.
PAUL SOLMAN: Mr. Hacker, you're champing to get in here, champing at the bit.
MR. HACKER: Well, you know, it's amazing to hear that so much money is spent to do so little. Uh--
PAUL SOLMAN: That is--that's about $680 million in beer and wine advertising on television in a year.
MR. HACKER: On television, right. And let's look at the national experiment that we've had since television--since the advent of television in 1948. Since that time, the increase in alcohol consumption in beer has been about 20 percent. As far as liquor goes, it's been about equal; it hasn't gone up; it's gone down in a slight amount--slight amount. And that's the kind of natural experiment that the liquor industry would now like to reverse. They'd like to be able to do what beer has done on television, which is to sell more of their product. Well, I think that we shouldn't put America's kids at risk, uh, by allowing the liquor industry to potentially massively increase the inducements that, uh, kids receive to drink.
PAUL SOLMAN: But he thinks the beer industry has got an unfair advantage, don't you?
MR. MEISTER: Well, there's two different facts here, and let's keep them straight. We can talk about alcohol abuse--and that's a very serious problem--and there's a whole set of things we should be talking about then--education, we should be talking about tough laws; we should be talking about strict enforcement, or we can talk about advertising. You cannot say that advertising is causing it. Otherwise, how do you explain that $630 million a year beer advertising? One more point I'd make--
MR. HACKER: The advertising--
MR. MEISTER: The fact of the matter is--is that, yes, do we want to compete in television advertising? You bet we do. There are 100 million adults who drink responsibly as part of their normal adult lifestyle, and right now, what is the message that's being seen? They can't seen our products, but they can see beer and wine. That's not fair.
PAUL SOLMAN: And you've been losing market share all the time.
MR. MEISTER: In part, because we have brought the problem on ourselves because we had this voluntary agreement not to advertise--people said, well, you must not be advertising because you're different; you must be harder; you must be more potent. That is fundamentally, factually, scientifically wrong.
PAUL SOLMAN: Okay. Mr. Hacker.
MR. HACKER: Well, you know, it's astonishing that in this time with such intense scrutiny on the liquor industry about its advertising and--and not--and not withstanding what Mr. Meister says about the--the Code of Good Practice of the liquor industry--that Seagram's ads are targeting radio stations that have rock'n roll formats, where the target audience officially is 18 and up, which probably includes fourteen and fifteen year olds as well, that their ads are running in prime time, that they're running around the NFL football games and they're reaching potentially millions of kids if those ads were spread through network TV.
PAUL SOLMAN: And that ad as well, I take it, you thought was targeted at kids. That was graduation.
MR. HACKER: That was an ad--graduation time--with the most common graduation theme-- "Pomp and Circumstance".
MR. MEISTER: Those are adult dogs. That's a sophisticated ad. We can--we can disagree about type of ad, but the issue is: Are we responsible? Are we committed to avoiding the problems of under-age? The answer is yes.
PAUL SOLMAN: Mr. Meister, I want to ask you a question. Bill Clinton, Trent Lott, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, have condemned this decision. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, have all said we're not going to run the ads. Why court controversy after a half-century of abstinence?
MR. MEISTER: The controversy is not our decision to want to be able to advertise to those 100 million people. This demonstrates most clearly the serious fundamental problem that Mr. Hacker and we and everybody has to work on, and that's the fact of alcohol equivalency, so that the youth of America, the parents of America understand that a drink is a drink is a drink. Mothers Against Drunk Driving says that. The U.S. Dietary Guidelines say that. Mr. Hacker's own group has said that. The National Council on Alcoholism has said that.
PAUL SOLMAN: I have a question. I have a question.
MR. MEISTER: It's thought by everybody.
PAUL SOLMAN: If ads don't work, why run them? I mean, if the ads don't induce people to actually drink--
MR. MEISTER: It's not going to cause you to go out and drink if you don't drink. It's not going to cause you to drink more if you--what it does--we have a hundred million people, adults, that do not see our ads. We have a right--a legal right--to try to place our ads in a responsible fashion to those hundred million people so that you may have the pleasure of enjoying a fine product of distilled spirits, instead of always having that glass of Chardonnay.
MR. HACKER: Liquor has been--
PAUL SOLMAN: Mr. Hacker.
MR. HACKER: Liquor has been on a free fall for the last 20 years in terms of consumption. The liquor industry wants to reverse that.
PAUL SOLMAN: And--
MR. HACKER: They want--
MR. MEISTER: There's nothing wrong with that.
MR. HACKER: They want to have the opportunity to use the same powerful mass media that beer has used successfully to increase consumption over those years. The problem is that, like it or not, they can't avoid appealing to youth, large youth audiences in the broadcast media.
PAUL SOLMAN: Wait just a second. I wanted to get to a question of what you might be able to agree on and what we might be able to propose by way of--of how you deal with this problem. So, Mr. Hacker, what would you propose--and there are constitutional issues here of free speech in advertising and being able to advertise what you want, right?
MR. HACKER: There are, but there are certain protections, I think, that are probably appropriate when we consider broadcast that reaches millions of kids and also is publicly regulated, so that these broadcast stations serve the public interest. In terms of agreeing on things, I would--I have always said that there probably ought to be a level playing field, but I've always been taught also as a child--
PAUL SOLMAN: Level playing field between liquor and beer and wine.
MR. HACKER: In a way, yeah, but I've also been taught that we shouldn't--that two wrongs don't make a right, and just because the beer and wine people advertise freely on--on television today, which they have done for years and years, that doesn't make it appropriate for liquor as well. The kids don't need additional inducements to drink. The industry, which we have commended for many years for their public restraint for their, for their, their responsibility in keeping off the youth-oriented media, um, is just getting off course--their moral compass--
PAUL SOLMAN: So what do you propose doing? That's what I'm asking.
MR. HACKER: Well, we've suggested on many occasions that any advertisement, wherever it appears, include a warning message about the health risks of alcohol consumption. We've also proposed counter-ads, much like the counter-ads 25 years ago--uh--were on to combat the cigarette promotions.
PAUL SOLMAN: And are on today.
MR. HACKER: And are on today. So we would like to see a balance of information or, um, massive restrictions on all alcohol advertising that appeals to young people, so it reaches young people.
PAUL SOLMAN: A legal matter, in other words?
MR. HACKER: Well, we think that the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the U.S. Congress ought to take action.
PAUL SOLMAN: Mr. Meister, your response to those specific suggestions, and maybe a suggestion of your own as to what to do about it, if you think anything.
MR. MEISTER: Well, the important point, as we said, is the fact that people do not understand-- parents don't understand--youth don't understand--80 percent of the youth when polled didn't understand by the former Surgeon General what alcohol is. How can you talk about responsible use by adults and educating children not to purchase a product that is illegal for them to purchase anyway, if you don't educate? I would ask Mr. Hacker--I would ask Mr. Hacker to join with us in a national alcohol equivalence education program. I would ask Mr. Hacker to lobby with us. We are currently in states right now lobbying for zero tolerance for youth who have alcohol in their system if they're caught driving. We are lobbying to make sure there's alcohol education as part of their driver's manual. We would like Mr. Hacker to join with us and lobby those--
PAUL SOLMAN: Okay, thank you.
MR. MEISTER: And we'll get the job done.
PAUL SOLMAN: Last word to you, Mr. Hacker.
MR. HACKER: It's extremely ironic that you would like our support for all those things when in the past your industry has opposed all of our efforts to balance the message that kids and the rest of us get about alcohol so that people understand the risks, as well as the benefits.
PAUL SOLMAN: Gentlemen, that's all the time we have. Thank you very much, both of you.

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