John Oliver Tricked Local News Shows Into Promoting a Bogus “Sexual Wellness Blanket” He Invented

[noggi 600]

https://slate.com/culture/2021/05/last-week-tonight-john-oliver-sponsored-content-sexual-wellness-blanket.html

Quote

This week, Oliver tricked three local TV stations—KVUE in Austin, Texas; KMGH-TV (Denver7) in Denver, Colorado; and KTVX (ABC4), in Salt Lake City, Utah—into airing a promo for a completely worthless “sexual wellness blanket” called the Venus Veil. All three stations are ABC affiliates, and all three stations will apparently let you go on the air and hawk whatever kind of pseudoscience you want, as long as you can pay their extraordinarily low rates for sponsored content.

 

Here's the full episode:

 

 

[Yankees4life 529]

Good God Almighty. Some people running stations are that stupid

[Roadrunner 212]

Feels somewhat akin to this infamous incident last year: https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/05/26/11-local-tv-stations-that-pushed-amazon-scripted-segment/

Stations these days need to stop leaning into these awful sponsored segments and also as a bonus, those humorous types of stories you find at the end of an hour, because those are just the gateway to simply misreporting something that had gone viral. 

[TheRob 919]

KVUE responded, although it is buried deep in this article.

 

https://austonia.com/kvue-john-oliver

 

 

[Yankees4life 529]

25 minutes ago, TheRob said:

KVUE responded, although it is buried deep in this article.

 

https://austonia.com/kvue-john-oliver

 

 

Basically, "We f*cked up. We'll make sure it won't happen again"

[LoadStar 363]

7 minutes ago, Yankees4life said:

Basically, "We f*cked up...."

"... and the Venus Veil helped!"

[TheRob 919]

Salt Lake City Tribune story contains the same response (it's not a news show).

 

https://www.sltrib.com/artsliving/2021/05/24/scott-pierce-john-oliver/

[dpb 35]

The responses are not very impressive. Stations shouldn't just look at how their protocols were not followed. They need to change the practice of giving sponsored content the appearance of editorial content. 

[tyrannical bastard 3442]

Hank Price, a media consultant and former GM of WVTM in Birmingham and WXII in Winston-Salem weighs in...

 

He mentions in his last job (WVTM) that he fought against the practice despite the competition embracing it.   Do any Hearst stations have any pay-for-play content whether it's sponsored vignettes or paid lifestyle programs?

 

Probably the worst ones are the "Local Steals and Deals" pieces produced by a company called Knocking.  The Meredith stations pretty much directly put these in their newscasts usually leading into a break, and other groups including Sinclair, Morris and Cox use them too.  Not only are they anything but "local", but the products they feature on there are ridiculously overpriced, despite the "discounts" being offered.  I believe the incentive here is that stations receive a cut of every product sold.