Controversial Tv Advertising
Essay Preview: Controversial Tv Advertising
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Many parents today have to screen what their children watch on television (TV), due to the amount of inappropriate TV advertising. Unfortunately, parents do use the TV as a babysitting tool in order to get household duties finished as well as to get alone time. A mother in California states, “I will agree to a certain amount of time for TV viewing and then get busy and distracted by other things. Before I know it, its been hours or so, but at least they have been out of my hair the whole time”. (Ralston, 2006, P.1).
Due to this sort of thing happening in families, children end up seeing things on TV that they should not see, without parents knowing. Mothers are more cautious about limiting the time children watch vs. fathers. Fathers seem to plant their children in from of the TV for several hours without even thinking twice about it. Even though parents are concerned about what children are watching, it is difficult to limit it. Think about all of the times children are away from home and watching something at a different house. Restricting television and enforcing rules can be very difficult if a person does not follow through with the rules. Recent survey states 50% of mothers feel relieved to know that other mothers are allowing their children to view more hours of TV than they should be. (Ralston, 2006). At the same time mothers are greatly concerned about the amount of viewing. As hard as it is to set reasonable limits on what and how much TV is watched, rules and guidelines in families should be enforced. (Rahlston, 2006).
Some of the concerns parents have about what children are viewing, is the amount of violence, sexual, or suggestive content and the amount of food advertising that is geared towards bad eating habits.
The amount of inappropriate as well as different types of innuendos advertisers use to sell their product is very high today.
The American Marketing Association defines marketing as the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organization objectives. The end result is to get the product sold. Assortments of stratagies are used, without the advertiser thinking of the effect it has on people, other than to buy it. (Ads by Google).
An example of a misleading or inappropriate type of advertisement can be anything from
bread claiming to have few calories, not explaining, the bread was sliced thinner. Or advertisement of baby formula encourages women to use formula instead of breast milk. (Ads by google).
Child obesity and diabetes is claimed to have increased rapidly. The Institute of Medicine is asking all food and beverage manufacturers to change their emphasis to promote healthy easting habits. The IOM wants congress to mandates changes towards better eating habits within the next two years. (Mayer, 2005). Advertisers like McDonalds have claimed to have added healthy items to their menus, such as apples and milk. Grocery manufacturers of America said Ðthey were disappointed that food changes they have made in the past have not been acknowledged.” (Mayer, 2000). This is a junk-food world today, due to the convenience of fast food and packaged meals ready to go. Advertisers know this and use children Ð- based themes such as cartoon characters as a method to get their product sold. If children grow up with these types of products, what will it do to the next generation of eating habits? Such things as fruits, vegetables, and juice or water can just as easily be advertised to re-direct healthy eating habits.
Another point of “negative” advertising is Violence. The amount of violence that is seen on TV comes mostly from prim-time shows. A small percentage of violence based viewing, is on TV commercials. The violence on TV (primetime) that is viewed is believed to be a large reason for the declining mortality and increased crime rate. In theory, advertisers do promote some of these prime-time shows, but do not want to associate violent content in order to sell their products. (Maguire, Sandage, & Weatherby, 2000).
John Lare once wrote “Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising” (Nudd,2005). This type of advertising gets the product sold to men. For women it is less likely to get sold. Women look at this in a different way. It is important for a woman to keep her image in a more beautiful and provocative way. The pressure that is put on women to stay young looking and thin is unbelievable today. Most ads or TV advertisements are geared with some sort of sexuality of woman. This type of advertising does work for the advertisers. Men are easily sold to when it comes to “something sexy or beautiful” and women want to look good, so the product most likely will get sold. Our children see this stuff everyday, why would they not think this is normal and want to keep up with it? As obesity is just as much a problem, so is bulimia and anorexia.
Advertising has some sort of an effect on everyone in one way or another. Recently I have