Watching the News Advertisers
This blog is one of those: “Just for the heck of it.”
If you watch the news on TV, you know who the major advertisers are: Car Dealerships, Injury Law Firms and Pharmaceutical Companies.
Sometimes these ads are better than the reporting.
The first two advertise many other times as well.
Car Dealerships
Car Dealerships have traditionally used their paid slots to tell us about the latest models of certain brands and how much a 3-year, monthly lease will cost for the cheapest model. That’s traditionally done with lots of ballyhoo about the wonders of driving their vehicles and how much fun you will have stopping at the dealer’s location and talking to someone who will make you feel like part of the family.
Injury Lawyers
In my day these lawyers were called ambulance chasers. That would have been a lawyer without consistent practice or income following an ambulance to the hospital, then trying to convince anyone injured to sue somebody.
In today’s world suing has become big business. Virtually every community of any size has one or more law firms specializing in suing for personal injuries, physical and otherwise. Some of these firms are statewide while there’s a few that consider themselves national in scope.
The ads will state there is no cost to you for bringing a suit. Normally the attorney fee for any money received is one-third of the total awarded found by the court or via negotiation – after expenses. The remainder for the plaintiff will likely be much less than two-thirds of the total.
The environment is ripe for these lawyers as most insurance companies will attempt to negotiate a settlement rather than go to court – regardless of the merit of the claim – simply for cost reasons. That’s the thing that rankles me the most. Lawyers and people can get paid for something that is without much or any merit. Free money!
At the same time, the insurance industry has aided this now big business when taken in its whole. And who pays the cost incurred by the insurance companies? Answer: Policy holders.
So we have TV ads and billboards with people touting how grateful they are for a particular law firm’s “help” in getting some big pile of money.
Pharmaceutical Companies
Pharmaceutical companies have apparently defined their target audience as people who watch network news. They advertise new products that will diminish symptoms or cure all kinds of health problems.
Usually the ad starts with the wonder of some drug that the average person wouldn’t know how to pronounce if the enunciation wasn’t expressed out loud. The ‘new’ product is initially hyped – normally about 15 seconds – as the answer to the hopes of anyone who has the malady addressed, followed by a 45-second list of possible side effects from taking it. Those potential side effects range from certain death to an expensive divorce to an unbearable case of bad breath. I may have taken some license with that stated range, but as you read on, maybe my list isn’t far from reality. It certainly doesn’t go far enough.
Here’s the list of possible side effects of a randomly chosen drug called TECENTRIQ used to treat a type of lung cancer called non-small cell lung cancer.
- Can cause your immune system to attack normal organs and tissues. These problems can sometimes become serious or life threatening and can lead to death. You can have more than one of these problems at the same time. These problems may happen anytime during your treatment or even after your treatment has ended.
- Lung problems – Cough, shortness of breath, chest pain
- Intestinal problems – diarrhea (loose stools) that are black, tarry, sticky, or have blood or mucus, severe stomach-area (abdomen) pain or tenderness
- Liver problems – yellowing of your skin or the whites of your eyes, severe nausea or vomiting
- Hormone gland problems – headaches that will not go away, eye sensitivity to light, rapid heartbeat, increased sweating, extreme tiredness, weight gain or loss, hair loss, constipation, dizziness or fainting, forgetfulness.
- Kidney problems – blood in your urine, swelling of your ankles, loss of appetite.
- Skin problems – rash, itching, skin blistering or peeling, painful sores or ulcers in mouth or nose, throat, or genital area
- Problems can also happen in other organs.
- These are not all of the signs and symptoms of immune system problems that can happen with TECENTRIQ. Call or see your healthcare provider right away for any new or worse signs or symptoms…
Pharma used to rely on physicians to prescribe their drugs. The TV ads are aimed directly at potential users of the drugs, counting on the patient to inform their physician.
There you have it – the big three advertisers of TV news. All in all, the companies using ads on local and network news must know the demographics, the kind of people watching, as prime markets for their products.
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Have a great and prosperous week.
Hug somebody.
References:
SPIDER Bites
This week’s trivia question: Which science deals with the motion of projectiles?
The answer to last week’s question of how many seams are there in an American football: 4. The four leather panels of the ball are sewn together from the inside, and then the ball undergoes a process called “turning,” in which it’s taken out of a steam machine (to make it pliable) and forcibly reversed by hand on a metal pole. Next, the inflation bladder is inserted into the ball and then it gets laced up. All NFL footballs are made by 100 employees of Wilson in Ada, OH who make 4000/day. The 1st college football game was between New Jersey (now Princeton) and Rutgers in 1869.
COP28, the 28th UN climate change conference, had trouble last week finding a compromise between nations that wanted to reiterate the phase out of fossil fuel usage and those that finally said “no” this time. The two-week conference had to be extended because of the lack of consensus on the final document of the conference. The “deniers” finally stood up to the steamroller represented by the congregation of climate change ‘faithful’ and all the money and natural resources being spent to turn to an all-electric energy world, generated by solar and wind. American Energy Institute CEO Jason Isaac commented: “While diplomats are fearmongering about projected minuscule temperature changes, billions of men, women and children around the world would rejoice at the opportunity to enjoy reliable electricity that fossil fuels provide.” He continued: “Lunatics with the U.N. are inhumanely attempting to bribe countries into phasing out fossil fuels but [have] no realistic means for replacing the products and energy those hydrocarbons produce.” To me, frankly, it’s a breath of fresh and sane air.
For the last weeks I’ve been asking everyone I see/talk to let their combustion engine cars idle outside during the nights. If CO2 is causing global warming, I’m trying to get more of it in the air. It’s too cold here for this time of year.
Along party lines, the House voted to launch a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden last week, before adjourning for the rest of the year without an additional appropriation for Ukraine. Great!
Space X postponed the launch of the secretive X-37B spaceplane for the US Space Force last week due to weather. The plane, similar to a former Space Shuttle but a quarter the size, is launched with the Falcon Heavy rocket, but reenters the atmosphere and lands. It uses Avionics designed to automate all de-orbit and landing functions. Leave it to Elon Musk and his engineers – and Boeing.
Inflation came in at 3.1% in November. It just keeps adding up to more outgo than income for the average citizen. The Fed passed on raising interest rates further, now concerned with affecting even more the weak economy and home sales.
The FL Dept of Education released its grades for FL K-12 schools last week. Our Marion County schools overall scored a ‘B’ – up from a ‘C’ last year. Not closing FL schools during the COVID pandemic is showing.
Oh, with the apparent plagiarism uncovered used by the President of Harvard, we have a new term we’re supposed to learn, like ‘undocumented immigrant’ versus illegal alien. This time the term is ‘uncited quotes.’ It’s still plagiarism, isn’t it?
