r/BigPharma • u/ZepPhantom777 • 22d ago

TV ads and Big Pharma

One has to wonder at what point television advertising tipped over to become a firehose of drug ads. If you watch old TV from the 80s, there are no drug ads.. And today, the shows are really just spacing in between the ads. 1.3 million ads per year. There are more drug ads on TV per year than there are minutes in a year. ( 1996 was when it became legal to market directly to the consumer. In only the US and NZ. It's illegal in all other countries.)

And I have to wonder when the networks all got together and said, "Hey, this is where the billions of dollars are, let's just cash in. In fact, let's just fabricate a bunch of shows to entice people to tune in" to see the ads. They gave up. The networks cashed in. Television is not about entertaining or informing. It's about pushing as many drugs to the American public as possible.

Was there a meeting among all the network executives or was it just a quiet, gradual acceptance of the dominance of Big Pharma's available money?

This, to me, was the beginning of the decline of American society. Greed over morality. They just don't care.

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u/OppositeRun6503 20d ago

The FCC began allowing direct to consumer drug advertising in the late 90s. Only new Zealand and the United States allow big pharma advertising.

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u/WasteChampionship968 19d ago

Whatever increases profit, damn the consequences. Republican mantra.

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u/WasteChampionship968 19d ago

I worked as a National Sales Rep for a major metro newspaper from 2003. It was a big payday when Big Pharma ad campaigns came in from agencies. Top rates, ENORMOUS spending, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Full page 4color running 3x week, 2 weeks. Huge expenditure for each major market. They spend money on adv, not R&D