Key Ethical Issues - Advertising

Lights, Camera, Advertisements

Question: What are key ethical issues this industry faces?

Summary: The article deals with the influence companies may project on TV media through financing TV shows. Kmart, which spends $600K on the comedy series "First Day," has the right to approve all aspects of the show - from clothing to the characters. The digital age makes it easy to blur the lines between traditional television and new methods of delivering programs to consumers - Netflix is about to produce its own show and "independent" YouTube series poster, Diablo Cody is backed by Lexus. The shift from pure TV shows brings us back to the era when advertisers had a lot of influence in the shows themselves.

This high level of involvement and association between brands and shows puts a lot of power in the hands of the sponsoring companies in terms of what gets shown. The more risque shows such as "Breaking Bad" could become disadvantaged due to advertisers not wanting to be closely associated with controversial stories.

The popularity, and therefore advertising power, of TV is shrinking. More people are opting to watch videos through alternative means, and the new generation is likely to not subscribe to cable TV as their parents did. This threat makes TV networks more friendly to the idea of advertiser-created shows. While the shows are expensive for advertisers to sponsor and companies are concerned with the risk of starting a failing show, many see this as a good advertising opportunity.

In the case of "First Day", Kmart was able to make the characters and the story line into an advertisement for the clothing lines their stores sell. The company did their best to make the characters relatable and the show completely unoffensive. The episodes are shorter and shooting time limited so as to minimize the total cost, maximizing the cost/profit balance. As TV ads prices continue to rise, more companies are looking into creation of their own TV shows as a profitable alternative.

Opinion: It can easily be argued that a quality TV show is an oxymoron, however the relationship between advertisements and TV media should be not only concerned with the further risk to quality, but also the threats to ethics.

Advertising is often on shaky moral ground - after all, a lot of the time its goal is not only to educate the consumers about the benefits of a product, but also to convince consumers that they want things they really don't need.

Shows sponsored by companies are advertisements that consumers may often not recognize as such, making them questionably ethical. Furthermore, such show-long advertisements undermine media's main goals - to inform and entertain - by associating the brand so strongly with the show. These shows are disinclined to be controversial, adding just another time-slot of bland, pointless chatter.

One of the main ethical challenges the media faces is balancing between the demands of financing itself through advertising and following through on its goal of entertaining and informing the audience. There are no clear answers as to where the line needs to be drawn, but this influence of sponsoring companies on TV networks is definitely in the dark grey.