Robert Kennedy Jr. seriously wants to ban Pharma ads on television

2 hours ago 4
ARTICLE AD

Robert Kennedy Jr. has not been confirmed by the Senate as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has been on the Hill in recent days ahead of a confirmation hearing which still hasn’t been scheduled – it’s normal for Cabinet-level nominees to make the rounds of senators’ offices for one-on-one meetings, and those meetings are going poorly from the sound of it. Kennedy is a complete lunatic and everyone knows that. Something else happened last week – more than 15,000 doctors signed a letter “urging senators to vote against confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr..” The doctors cited Kennedy’s lack of qualifications and they called him “actively dangerous.” Unfortunately, that’s a feature, not a bug for most Republicans. But this might actually change a few minds in MAGA-ville: apparently, Kennedy has been serious this whole time about banning Big Pharma from advertising on television. As in, no more Ozempic, Jardiance or Skyrizi ads littering up the airwaves. It’s not that I think this particular Kennedy plan is good or bad, I just think it’s interesting that this could be a larger issue which might deflate his nomination.

Just days before the 2024 presidential election, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the stage in Glendale, Arizona, at an event hosted by conservative pundit Tucker Carlson. Kennedy had endorsed Donald Trump in his quest to return to the White House and was delivering a stump speech with a particular focus on health care issues.

“One of the things I’m going to advise Donald Trump to do in order to correct the chronic disease epidemic is to ban pharmaceutical advertising on TV,” Kennedy told the crowd, which responded with a standing ovation. “There’s only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical advertising on the airwaves. One of them is New Zealand, and the other is us, and we have the highest disease rate, and we buy more drugs, and they’re more expensive than anywhere in the world.”

Trump, of course, won the election, and he subsequently announced his intent to nominate Kennedy to lead Health and Human Services in the new administration, with pharma advertising seemingly top of mind. It is a development not lost on media executives. One top TV ad sales executive says that their company is following the developments closely and that their team has been casually gaming out ways to respond should any sort of ban or limit go into effect. Trump has made targeting the media a recurring theme in his campaign, filing lawsuits against ABC News and CBS News and with incoming FCC chairman Brendan Carr seemingly interested in holding broadcast owners to account.

To target pharmaceutical ads on TV would be a major financial escalation in that fight. And while lawsuits or FCC inquiries are targeted, a blanket ban on pharma ads would wound both friend and foe. Steve Tomsic, CFO of Fox Corp., which owns Fox News and the Fox broadcast network, was asked about the possibility of a ban Dec. 9 during a UBS conference. “Is it a concern? We shouldn’t be flippant about it,” Tomsic said, adding that pharma advertising represented low single digits of the company’s overall revenue and that Fox was “prepared to be proven otherwise, but it is going to be unlikely to be a blanket ban of all pharma.”

Still, a low-single-digit impact to Fox would amount to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And the impact to the larger TV business would be considerable. Media measurement firm iSpot.tv says that the pharmaceutical industry will spend $5 billion-plus on national linear TV advertising this year. Billions more will be spent on digital and streaming ads.

In fact, the 10 biggest drugs alone count for more than $1 billion in annual spend, according to FiercePharma, with such brands as Ozempic and Jardiance spending north of $10 million a month on national TV ads alone and Skyrizi topping the charts with more than $30 million a month in TV ad spend.

[From THR]

Again, Trump and MAGAville are fine with Kennedy’s plans to reintroduce polio, measles and rubella to the American public. MAGAville loves all of the plans to kneecap vaccine schedules and promote the most bonkers conspiracies and pseudosciences. But would Trump actually sign off on anything which would hurt his best friend, the television? If Fox News executives call Trump and ask him to not take away their lucrative Pharma commercials, won’t he listen to them? Won’t all of the Republican senators listen to Pharma executives and TV executives? So the easiest solution is probably getting Kennedy to change his mind.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instagram.

Read Entire Article
  3. Robert Kennedy Jr. seriously wants to ban Pharma ads on television

Related

Kat Dennings Reflects on Her 'Sex & The City' Role at 14 Years Old

Kat Dennings Reflects on Her 'Sex & The City' Role at 14 Years Old

Rory Sykes: 5 Things About the Actor Who Died in the L.A. Fires

Rory Sykes: 5 Things About the Actor Who Died in the L.A. Fires

Here's What Mike Pence Said to Donald Trump at Jimmy Carter's Funeral

Here's What Mike Pence Said to Donald Trump at Jimmy Carter's Funeral

LEFT SIDEBAR AD

Hidden in mobile, Best for skyscrapers.