Sponsored Content: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

moving on our main story tonight concerns local news the trusted place people go to find traffic whether and here in new york the single greatest 10 seconds of television this city has ever produced at 11 pay more at the grocer but getting less we'll tell you how to get the most the are you doing perfect absolutely perfect that is sue simmons by the way she sadly retired in 2012 and has been missed every day since because if any city needs a news anchor with an ability to say the are you doing it is new york we've talked about local news a lot on this show particularly regarding just how important it is to any community we are constantly featuring local news investigations in our stories and it isn't just important in a civic sense it's a major money maker for stations nexstar one of the biggest owners of local stations said they earned nearly half their advertising revenue from spots aired during local news programming but the need to both inform a community and make money has always been tricky to reconcile as you can tell from this 1960s clip of baltimore's channel 11 news in chicago today white mobs threw rocks and bottles at civil rights demonstrators that story after this message about mash's ham he's a lover no not the kind you're thinking of he's a ham lover and all ham lovers know that mash's hams are the best you can buy okay that is a very awkward transition to have to make to go from teasing a story about a racist mob with a mash's ham logo on your desk to a man who is no matter what he says definitely that ham which is absurd why would you do that when instead you could be honeysuckle white's fresh ground turkey the only ground turkey that's 93 lean and 100 get your phil with honeysuckle now clearly maintaining journalistic independence from advertisers is critically important so important in fact it's frequently referred to as the church state war and the fcc has rules requiring broadcast stations to announce when content has been sponsored or paid for in any way unfortunately many local stations have either completely broken those rules or violated the spirit of them through a practice known as sponsored content it's where advertising is blended directly into the broadcasts and it's both more widespread and harder to detect than you might realize so tonight let's talk about sponsored content and let's start with the stuff that seems essentially harmless people getting paid to hawk products on tv there is an industry of lifestyle experts that do this and here is one of them explaining the process to potential clients brand integration is where a brand its product and the messaging are all worked together within the content of a show in a pre-planned manner with so many shows offering integrated content it can be hard to choose but let's start with local okay we have a method that helps me get interviews in a snap hi michelle hey there jer bear hi michelle hey girl how you doing see in an instant we have access to shows across the nation that are ready for your content wow i gotta say that is pretty impressive the only person i can summon with a snap of my fingers is george clooney watch there he is hello hey george how you doing i'm doing fine what are you doing i'm just showing people how i can summon you with a simple snap of my fingers um i'm eating dinner i gave you that power in a limited capacity john understood george bye bye see the system works but the truth is michelle didn't just have the power to make people appear out of thin air she also crucially had the power to make them play along as she hawked horrifying products like these these are the new french's crispy jalapenos one fun idea is to use it in this jalapeno cheeseburger dip this is seriously everything you love about a cheeseburger in dipped form take a look is this thing gorgeous or what so this has just hit the party scene it's the velveeta shells and cheese life-sized liquid gold fountain okay so a few things i love are doritos melted cheese sticks and nachos and now there is a way you can enjoy them all in one these are doritos loaded it is a totally new way to experience doritos that's a really fun twist on a snack idea isn't it no no it isn't now that product has since been discontinued probably because it looks less like a snack and more like someone deep fried a fidget spinner and you probably assumed michelle was getting paid to do that but interestingly the station was also getting paid to have her on and while the fcc requires sponsored content like that to be labeled it has no requirements for exactly how or for how long so for instance in the case of doritos loaded the disclosure came at the very end of the segment for just two seconds with another barely visible reference in the credits at the end of the program for four more so six seconds total which is incidentally about the same amount of time doritos loaded stay in your body before being forcibly ejected from whatever orifice they're closest to this practice can be so lucrative that many big chains have now set up templates for local shows built around sponsored content scripps has morning blend tegner has great day next star has daytime and sinclair has what i can only assume is the muslims attack at dawn and it's not just brand experts joining by satellite sometimes local businesses will pay for an interview where they can script the questions and make sure that they're presented glowingly take jim hefner until recently he was a financial advisor in charlotte north carolina who was on the local show morning break all the time and always introduced in very positive terms we have jim heffner he is a certified financial planner he's the president and ceo of hefner financial he's a best-selling author and just an all-around great guy thank you so much mr hefner for being back here you're regular here thank you so much sir for being back with us you're welcome we like when you're here we're so glad to have you back because you're going to help our folks get financially fit welcome back mr hefner we love when you are here with us sir this man knows his stuff that level of enthusiastic co-signing seems pretty convincing until you remind yourself the station was being paid to say those things about him it's the reason no one who gets a birthday cameo from gary busey thinks wow gary busey hopes i make it to 156 years old he must be my best friend instead they think wow craig just wasted 350 getting gary beauty to wish me a happy birthday he must be my best friend and it's worth noting that hefner and the firm he worked for not only were ordered to pay a million dollars in an arbitration case over claims he lost retirees money but 22 plaintiffs recently sued him seeking damages related to the loss of 2.7 million of their investments with one of them even saying that he trusted hefner because he believed the longest running charlotte station would invite on trusted experts and yeah of course you would believe that people trust their local station that's the point here and it doesn't stop at these local lifestyle shows companies have also bought their way directly into local news broadcasts back in 2017 sinclair faced a 13.3 million dollar fine from the fcc over segments promoting the huntsman cancer institute which were broadcast more than a thousand times on local sinclair stations with no indication whatsoever that they were sponsored some of these segments aired during the evening news and in hindsight the tone of the reports were suspiciously upbeat this complex machine is eradicating cancer without the invasive procedures for patients like jeff this is welcome news if you're going to have prostate cancer this is the time to have it in salt lake city utah mark cabell reporting that is a hell of a positive spin no time like the president to have prostate cancer what are you waiting for and despite how he signed off there is mark cabell actually reporting because in retrospect it seems more like mark cabell is parroting the absurdly sunny cancer propaganda of his business daddy's favorite money friend but i will say this at least that is an instance of a broadcaster acting so egregiously the fcc was able to take action a lot of the time stations are doing just enough to stay the right side of the fcc but that does not mean that they're not doing massive harm to their credibility because even when a sponsorship is properly disclosed i'd argue that there are certain businesses local stations should not be selling themselves out for especially when it comes to medicine because a surprising number of segments on these shows are enthusiastic uncritical showcases for expensive treatments or devices featuring claims that are to put it charitably medically dubious like this product which made it onto a regular morning newscast in utah today we're talking about technology aimed to help men with a serious issue stephanie and dustin wolf the co-inventors of the world's first clinically tested home use shockwave device to treat electile dysfunction and cellulite it's called the rocket this is the rocket so the rocket works on the principle of low intensity sound wave therapy which is actually been around in europe for about 25 years it's very effective um it's safe and uh it's the technology is fda recognized okay first that vibrating taint missile looks utterly terrifying and while it has since been rebranded from the rockets to the phoenix i'm not sure put this bird that destroys itself in fire near your penis is really much of an upgrade but second what does fda recognized even mean there it definitely does not mean it's fda cleared much less approved and the fda actually told us the phoenix is registered with them as a therapeutic massager though not as a device to treat erectile dysfunction and at this point i legally have to tell you the manufacturer of the phoenix says they make no explicit claims about treating ed which is a little odd because their own website claims the phoenix offers proven technology to make your penis harder and that you can complete this innovative ed treatment in the privacy of your home all of which they presumably feel justifies its price tag of holy 879 but that is not the point here the point is if you are going to allow that product into the body of your local newscast you might want to have some very pointed questions ready and not end the segment like this of course if you want to get more information where they find it online guys oh they can go to getmyrocket.com there you go get that help you need for whatever ailment you've got right there yeah use the rocket for whatever ailment you've got especially if that ailment is having let's say around 879 too many dollars and the thing is that is far from the only weird medical product that's been presented uncritically during sponsored segments denver's mile high living featured a spa owner promoting this exciting new treatment monalisa touch is the first fda cleared laser to treat the vagina and in doing so it treats the symptoms of vaginal atrophy so the procedure itself is it painful no it's typically what you'll feel are mild vibrations i tease the next day you might feel like you have a sunburned vagina but it's just healing oh that's okay then it's just your typical everyday sunburned vagina and only caused by a laser so really just your typical everyday laser roasted genitalia which is just healing from the laser you deliberately burned it with it being the inside of your vagina your run-of-the-mill laser charred vagina and if using a laser as a medical pseudo dildo seems like a scary thing to do you have good instincts because over a year before that segment aired the fda issued a safety alert making it clear that they have not cleared or approved for marketing any energy-based devices to treat vaginal atrophy and applying energy-based therapies to the vagina may lead to vaginal burns scarring and recurring or chronic pain and the problem is segments with dicey medical claims are just everywhere recently the fda has warned about the use of unapproved stem cell therapies which they say can be harmful but you would not know that to watch some of these shows here is a segment from good morning texas featuring a doctor who's been disciplined multiple times by the state medical board for separate issues claiming his stem cell therapy can treat things like ms and parkinson's despite the fact that stem cells have never been approved to treat any neurological disorder and it's not just him here is a naturopathic doctor making similarly baseless claims on a station in arizona so what kind of conditions are you treating with this so we can treat so many different kinds of conditions we can do it the joints have been doing a lot of that we do a lot of systemic things as well including had a patient with crohn's disease recently had a patient with heart disease who was in severe heart failure both of them within a week of getting these stem cells are just feeling great and improved to almost normal wow yeah wow indeed that card there suggested he can treat parkinson's alzheimer's autism ms and als it seems the only thing his stem cells can't do is help that station proofread their list of conditions can stem cell therapy benefits because other than that got you they covered have and look while there is no way of knowing exactly how many people are watching these shows as they air that's not really the point as this marketing executive at nexstar explained to potential advertisers now here's the deal most people think okay so i go on the tv show i'm on tv great this is awesome and airs at four o'clock i go on and great and people sing me okay so this is cool i'm going to tell you right now when you actually go on and do that that isn't even the cake that's just the icing you know the cake is the video file at the end you're gonna have a four or five minute video file and you're gonna do what with it post it everywhere okay first of all what is that motion that is unnecessarily gross this isn't how you represent cake and icing this is how you bring a mash's ham to orgasm you give it the old wiggle and squeeze and then a twist and a snap oh what is it sorry george i'm sorry that one was genuinely an accident i was just trying to show people how to bring a mash's ham to orgasm that's not how you do it oh i guess that's good information to have the point is though that marketing executive is right the cake is the video file and companies will take that video and run with it remember that naturopathic doctor who claims stem cells are a treatment for alzheimer's and autism here is his website which proudly features the many times he was given an uncritical platform on trusted local tv and you might think viewers should be smart enough to approach anything on these shows with skepticism the thing is though many of these stations also swap figures between their newsroom and their sponsored content shows at abc 4 utah for instance suray chin is both the channel's chief medical correspondent and a host of the sponsored content show good things utah and it really does feel like a line is getting blurred there and look ideally stations wouldn't engage in this practice at all or at the very least their disclosures would be harder for their viewers to miss and they do significantly more work to make sure that if they are letting someone buy their way onto their channel and present something as real that it's not in fact total nonsense because right now it's far too easy to make a ridiculous product that makes outlandish claims and get it onto local tv and the reason i know that is we did we started a company called venus inventions and created something called the venus fail an absurd medical product based on technology that absolutely doesn't exist we set up this website and even hired an actress to brandigrate the out of the venus veil into shows it had no business being on did it work i don't know you tell me abc for utah i am so excited to talk with erica hernandez with the venus veil a revolutionary new product on the line what exactly is it i'm so intrigued i'm so glad you are intrigued so this is the venus veil it is the world's first sexual health blanket yep that was on abc 4 last friday and i would love to tell you that it was difficult to get on but it really wasn't and remember that's their chief medical correspondent and it seems striking that she didn't have any follow-ups on claims that we made about the veil that you would hope a medical correspondent would immediately take issue with the veil is being designed with the hope that it will precisely draw out the natural alkaline undercurrents of the vagina and initiate a low grade state of what we call micro death which sounds incredibly scary but that's actually just restarting that area's natural life cycle it's using this field of magnetogenetics i was talking about and also a technology that's been around for a really long time that was pioneered in germany about 80 years ago so this is full of cutting-edge technology but it just looks like a blanket yeah it does and that's because it is it is just a blanket also technology that was pioneered in germany about 80 years ago i would have some questions about that particular period in german history and i know that looks bad but let's be fair here it's just an isolated example there was no way another station was going to fall for this right absolutely no way is there cave you austin because you wouldn't have let us pay to directly follow your 10 pm local news this thursday would you there's no way that happened it includes some pretty interesting technology yes it does so the team behind the veil was inspired by the field of magnetogenetics but basically your blood is full of iron but it's dispersed in such a way that it isn't affected by normal magnets so the idea behind the veil is that with the right blend of proprietary magnetic fibers you can create a self-contained magnetic field that re-stimulates blood flow and gets you feeling like your normal self again very interesting is it is it interesting or is that obvious that definitely shouldn't have been on in the same hour of coverage as the ceasefire in the middle east a shortage of lifeguards in local public pools and an investigative piece on criminal justice and bail reform one of these things is not like the others and it's definitely our nazi era blanket but surely if you saw this blanket in person in a studio then you would know not to enthusiastically co-sign on the completely baseless claims being made right in front of you you would protect your viewers from that happening wouldn't you denver's mile high living this is meant to treat sexual conditions but a lot of people are really embarrassed to talk about their sexual health right so it was designed to be something that's really discreet and also really stylish so you can have it in your home and it really i mean could it look less like a medical product yeah no it doesn't look like that you know again it's one of those things i think a lot of people right now are looking to enhance their lives but they also don't want anything too invasive so this is something where again you're not needing a prescription or anything like that as well well thank you erica thanks so much for coming in today we appreciate it thank you so much for having me thanks for making it so easy yeah super easy yeah super easy you can even argue way too easy because the truth is none of this was nearly difficult enough to get onto tv and it wasn't even that expensive that cost just twenty eight hundred dollars this one cost 26.50 and this one only cost seventeen hundred and fifty dollars it was all shockingly affordable and sadly on some stations didn't even look that out of place and that is not good because as we have said for years now the integrity of local news is crucially important and there is real harm for everyone if that integrity is damaged so to the owners of these stations who are selling them out at a depressingly cheap price i have a simple question if i may quote the words of a very wise news anchor the are you doing that's our show thank you so much for watching if you want to see our venus veil segment in full the whole cake if you will you can go to venusinventions.com good night you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 5,533,615

Rating: 4.927259 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: sIi_QS1tdFM

Length: 21min 22sec (1282 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/VocationFumes]

He called out a few stations but this is done literally across the country, some stations started doing it as a source of revenue and now all of them do. Working in media you just learn how much a company will do for some $$$

[u/mawkishdave]

The best thing I ever did for my mental health was to stop watching the news.

[u/0drew0]

There's also a Mile High Living mention earlier in the video about some weird vagina laser treatment device.

The next day you might feel like you have a sunburned vagina, but it's just healing.

Yikes.

[u/YoBuckStopsHere]

Follow Up - KMGH-TV Denver 7 is reevaluating their sponsored content.

[u/feat_zoo]

I mean, mile high living isn't the news; its just a daytime TV show that's literally full of sponsored content and viral videos. It certainly cannot be compared to the actual local news

[u/allothernamestaken]

Mile High Living is not the local news. I think most viewers understand that it's basically an informercial.

[u/dgoertz]

Please not Denver…please not Denver…and…DAMN!

[u/funkdup69]

Isn't all news sponsored corporate content? I live here and never mistook this program for legitimate information.

[u/spam__likely]

Holy shit the only thing that shocked me was the price.