Indiantelevision.com Team

(24 December 2007 6:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Alcohol companies in the US made small progress between 2001 and 2006 in reducing youth exposure to their advertising.

A new study on advertising in magazines and on TV was released from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at Georgetown University.

Although alcohol industry trade associations adopted a stricter youth audience composition standard in 2003, historic increases in cable TV advertising by distilled spirits brands offset declines in youth exposure to alcohol advertising in magazines.

The drop in youth exposure over the five-year period in both media was 6.1 per cent. However, 46 per cent of youth exposure across both media in 2006 continued to come from placements in magazines or programming that youth ages 12 to 20 were more likely per capita to see than adults.

The National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, the US Surgeon General and 20 state attorneys general have all recommended eliminating this disproportionate exposure as well.

The CAMY monitoring report - "Youth Exposure to Alcohol Advertising on Television and in National Magazines, 2001 to 2006" - analysed 19,466 alcohol advertisements placed in national magazines and 1,693,594 alcohol advertisements placed on cable and broadcast network and local broadcast TV from 2001 to 2006.

CAMY executive director David Jernigan says, "Youth exposure to alcohol advertising in magazines and on television during this period tells two very different stories. Most of the progress made in magazines was undercut by increases in television advertising."

Key findings of the report include:

-- From 2001 to 2006, the number of alcohol advertisements placed in national magazines fell by 22 per cent (from 3,616 to 2,831). During the same period, the number of alcohol advertisements on TV grew by 33 per cent (from 225,619 to 299,475).

-- From 2001 to 2006, youth exposure to alcohol advertisements in national magazines fell by 50 per cent, while youth exposure to TV advertisements grew by 30 per cent.

-- Overall, youth exposure to alcohol advertising in the two media declined slightly (6.1 per cent).

-- Youth overexposure to alcohol advertising on TV remained virtually unchanged: in 2001, 37 per cent and in 2006, 36 per cent of youth alcohol advertising exposure came from advertising on programmes with disproportionate youth audiences. In magazines, 89 per cent of youth exposure in
2001 and 77 per cent in 2006 came from overexposing placements.

-- During each year since 2001, alcohol advertisements were placed on at least 13 of the 15 TV programmes with the largest teen audiences (13 of 15 programmes in 2001, 15 of 15 programmes in 2003, and 14 of 15 programmes in all other years, including 2006).

-- Distilled spirits companies increased their spending on TV more than 20-fold from 2001 to 2006, from over $7.1 million (5,702 advertisements) in 2001, to over $142.4 million (62,821 advertisements) in 2006.

Jernigan adds, "When the alcohol industry announced the 30 per cent youth audience standard in 2003, there was hope that youth exposure to alcohol advertisements would
decline across all media.

"Instead, the alcohol companies shifted their advertising dollars from magazines to television, where too many ads are still on programmes more likely to be seen by youth per capita than by adults, and young people are paying the price. As the US Surgeon General has recommended, ongoing monitoring of youth exposure to alcohol marketing is a necessary component of efforts to reduce underage drinking."

Alcohol is the number-one drug problem among youth, and underage alcohol use causes 5,000 deaths per year of persons under 21, according to the US Surgeon General. Long-term, federally-funded studies have shown that the more alcohol advertising youth are exposed to, the more likely they are to drink.

In 2006, Congress passed and President Bush signed into law the Sober Truth On Preventing Underage Drinking Act (or STOP Act) requiring, among other things, that the US Department of Health and Human Services report annually on the rates of exposure of youth to positive and negative messages about alcohol in the mass media. Although this reporting has been authourised by Congress, funding for it is yet to be appropriated.