John Oliver diagnoses your local news' product integration ailment with a fake Nazi sex blanket
Aux Features John Oliver
You really get the sense that John Oliver likes to break up Last Week Tonight’s endless examination of seemingly unsolvable global injustice by occasionally wasting some of HBO’s money. And by saying “wasting,” we of course mean, “inventively screwing with two-bit hucksters by beating them at their own predatorily grifting game.” That’s what Oliver and his LWT accomplices have apparently been up to all this past week leading up to his Sunday story about how sketchy paid advertisements have crept their way into your trusted local news broadcasts. You know, since Oliver took a healthy handful of “business daddy” HBO’s cash and purchased suspiciously available Texas, Colorado, and Utah newscast airtime to shill for what Oliver happily described as a “Nazi-era fuck blanket.”
But let us back up a bit. As Oliver notes, the FCC’s rules about so-called sponsored content on local stations are getting more blurred each year, with your hometown anchors and correspondents transitioning from actual news stories to thinly veiled, fleetingly labeled, uncritical, and unvetted pitches for whatever sketchy sellers (often of medical products) pony up enough cash. How sketchy? Well, what about the alarmingly large and invasive-looking “vibrating taint-missile” that promises its electronic ass-ramming technology will treat erectile dysfunction? Or the lady in Colorado who scoffs at the idea that her spa’s vagina-regenerating laser treatment (where, again, she shoots a laser into your vagina) will cause any side-effects other than a “mild sunburn.” Of the vagina. As Oliver explains, it’s worrisomely easy for these hucksters to pay their way onto local news shows where their self-scripted banter makes it sound an awful lot like your friendly neighborhood anchor is signing off of some spurious, pseudo-scientific nonsense.
How nonsensical? Well, how about a product called the “Venus Veil,” which promises to “draw out the natural alkaline undercurrents of the vagina” to “initiate a low grade state” of what its inventors call “microdeath?” As Oliver stated, with the canary-eating-cat grin you know spells serious comeuppance, no reputable local news station would ever, ever fall for something like that. Especially since the Venus Veil’s smiling pitchwoman assures would-be purchasers that the snuggly sex aid is based on the field of “magneto-genetics,” a field pioneered by German scientists some “80 years ago.” (Do the math. We’ll wait.)
Well, here’s to you, ABC4 Utah, KVUE Austin, and Denver’s folksy Mile High Living, all of whom allowed an Oliver-hired actress to smilingly hawk the Venus Veil and its “self-contained magnetic field that re-stimulates blood flow” to your down there area, right next to your actual news reports. Stressing the vital nature of local news in people’s lives and the health of our democracy, Oliver—while clearly having fun—decried how utterly, dangerously simple it was to get his “obvious bullshit” a prime spot in people’s living rooms. Of course, he had to hire that actress (who deserves some serious work out of this), and design a website (venusinventions.com), but, in the end, all it really took was a few thousand of HBO’s bucks to get ABC4's “chief medical correspondent” to nod along while Oliver’s operative smilingly extolled the medical benefits of draping a fuzzy blankie over your crotch and waiting for those German magnet waves to get things cooking.
41 Comments
Straight out of the Chris Morris school of helping people make dicks of themselves.
“Do you believe in the letter of the law?”
“Yes!”
“And which letter is that?”
“… F?”
Or vulvas.
I really need some context or the full story behind “The fuck are you doing?”
For a moment, I really thought she was asking that to the ship.
Her co-anchor apparently made a grab at her. When the actual show started a couple minutes later, she profusely apologized (for the language, not her reaction itself).
Laugh all you want, but my parents can’t get enough of those damn blankets! They used to complain that I didn’t call enough. Now they ask if I can call back later. And then they giggle. Giggle!
I bought one, same color as my goop candle, but it exploded too.
this reminds me of a joke from some old HBO comedy whose name escapes me where the main character was grossed out because he could hear his older parents singing “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands” during sex LOL
“Your blood is full of iron, but it’s dispersed in such a way that it isn’t affected by normal magnets”.I would certainly hope it isn’t! That said, wouldn’t the Venus Veil cause magnets to come hurtling at your junk if it works as well as she claims?
I’ve most recently lived in two cities that have Nexstar stations. Both have dedicated local shows that are basically hour-long advertising blocks with a few local good news stories tossed in. Unlike most of these types of shows I’ve seen, they don’t use the news staff. However, one of them does use one of the stations former newscasters teamed with a former sports reporter.The formats of both shows feature spots like Oliver highlighted, such as financial counseling and new “medical” products. There are also daily cooking segments from chefs at local eateries that are obviously aimed at drumming up business.I don’t see the harm as long as these shows don’t purport to be news. They are what they are; well-produced infomercials. I do think there should be a disclaimer at the start, just like with infomercials. As Oliver pointed out, the real danger is when actual news people are pressed into service to shill products during newscasts.
not to minimize the damage these shows cause, because these news programs do seem very happy to operate in that gray area of “is it news or a commercial?”, but aren’t these the types of programs that run at 1 PM on a Sunday, or 3 AM on a Tuesday, or as counter-programming when a local sporting event is blacked out? I just question how big an impact these shows actually have. It’s non-zero but how much non-zero is it?
Their (the companies) actual end game wasn’t so much the live broadcast, but to be able to load up their website with videos of them appearing on various news shows touting the benefits of their products. They described the live broadcast as the “icing” on the “cake” of legit-seeming videos they could then use for marketing.
As the video points out, these segments run either during or just after the local news, not late at night or on weekends.
The two stations I’m talking about are NBC-affiliated Nexstar properties. One runs its show Monday through Friday in the 11 a.m. time slot right after Today. The other runs a half hour of local news in that slot as a lead in to its daily show.To be honest, I have less heartburn with the first one, in that it’s not leading with news. Also, I’m just using the Nexstar stations as an example but most of the companies that own multiple stations are doing this now.
I’d get more upset about it but I think anyone watching hour-long infomercial/news hybrids on local channels in 2021 is probably so far out of the mainstream societal loop there’s not much you can do for them anyway.
Which they are, regularly, and this has been the case for decades. Local news is garbage. Even the weather is useless anymore. They’re not even remotely accurate when predicting tomorrow’s weather.
This shouldn’t really be a surprise. Just look at local newsletters – a whole bunch of advertising, from obviously-adverts to adverts-that-look-like-articles, to paid-actual-articles-about-local-companies.
What do you expect free local news to be funded by, if not by small-time advertisers?I don’t think I understand Oliver’s problem here. Yes, it’s easy to be allowed to advertise almost anything that isn’t undeniably dangerous or a copyright violation. That’s kind of how it’s meant to work: the business advertises its goods, you decide whether to buy them, and then decide whether to badmouth them to everyone you know, and hopefully the goods people don’t like will not be a profitable as the goods that people like. The alternative would be that somebody – the government or a large media corporation – would have to decide which items should be advertised to people, which is both a major rights issue and a huge opportunity for corruption.
While caveat emptor most definitely applies, under FCC rules they’re required to be upfront about paid programming. Being exposed to advertising is the price we pay for the programming we watch, at least what we see over the air (OTA) and basic cable. That doesn’t mean hucksters should have free reign.I actually don’t have a huge issue with small businesses paying for airtime, but the stations still need to disclose what’s going on. Much like The Force, advertising can have a strong influence on the weak-minded. While not every product that a station may be paid to promote is crap, there are enough of them out there that the FCC, even as weak as it is, is necessary.
As Oliver pointed out, the problem isn’t the broadcast at the time. Its what is done with the broadcast after. Its used to make a product look legitimate even though its not. For example, I found the “new story” of the blanket on ABC4’s website right after Oliver’s story. By 3am the site had pulled it. But if someone saw an add for a product, decided to search for more information, they would find things such as that article that would give the impression it was a real, working product that would perform whatever nonsense miracle they were claiming.Keep in mind, people DO fall for the Nigerian prince scams. Just because you can identify what is not real doesn’t mean others can. It also doesn’t make it ok regardless.
Good point.And are you saying that ALL the Nigerian princes asking for help are really scam artists?
“Do the math, we’ll wait”I didn’t need to cause you threw the word Nazi in the headline. SO THANKS FOR THE SPOILERS IN THE HEADLINE AGAIN.
People who spoil Nazi math problems are worse than Hitler.
People who complain about “spoilers” in news stories obviously never had to wait until after 11pm to find out what common household item could kill them.
after 7-8 years of pointing out ~30 problems per year with the US (ranging from not-insignificant to potentially catastrophic), and me wondering more and more why he doesn’t get fed up and go back to Britain (and I don’t mean that in a Cult 45, “love it or leave it” kind of way, but in the way I’ve been wanting to retire to Panama or wherever to get the hell away from this shithole country for the past ~4 years), it must be delicious to finally take the piss out of one of these problems. (It still wasn’t as good as the catheter commercial he paid for on Fox News to dis T***p.)
Because the UK now is basically what the US will be when it’s no longer the global hegemon.
Only with national free healthcare, and regulation for companies, and food health standards.
The Tories aren’t losing an election any time soon, plenty of time to dismantle all that.
Because trump got 2,800,000 and 7,000,000 FEWER votes but Brexit passed with a majority?
Hey, Fanta was created in Nazi Germany, and IT is (somewhat) drinkable
Sounds weird with more than zero-to-one people laughing.
Especially since the Venus Veil’s smiling pitchwoman assures would-be
purchasers that the snuggly sex aid is based on the field of
“magneto-genetics,” a field pioneered by German scientists some “80
years ago.” (Do the math. We’ll wait.) Meanwhile we’re still waiting for you to get that X-Men reference.
Oliver is right about local news being vital, but it’s really only local print news that matters on that front. Local TV news has long been at best fluff and at worst vile.
I thought the worst thing that could happen was sand in the vagina.
I absolutely loved this bit. It’s up there with the “Eat Shit Bob” musical number. The one criticism I had is that he didn’t point out that since they’re not regulated by the FCC, cable news parades in this bullshit with aplomb and absolutely no labeling whatsoever. I think there’s a CNN segment called “Tech Corner” or something, which is just a regular 5 minutes shilling the latest Apple bullshit you don’t need. It’s nakedly awful, but because cable networks have no FCC license, there’s nothing to stop them, which is arguably worse than the local news stuff, because cable news runs 24/7 and networks use these segments to fill in programming gaps everywhere.
That segment was so awkward it was hard to watch. Why is a late sunday night comedy show the best news source?
‘Cause ‘Murica, natch.
Gif from website, in case you were wondering how the blanket works:
The truly shocking thing was it cost less than $3,000 for each insert, one costing less than $1,900.
Well, here’s to you, ABC4 Utah, KVUE Austin, and Denver’s folksy Mile High LivingI’m curious did he target a bunch of stations and these are there the 3 that bit, or do you think he was 3 for 3? Creepy. I’m waiting for the follow up with the networks.
“re-stimulates blood flow” to your down there area, right next to your actual news reports”I don’t know about you, but I like to keep my news reports well clear of my “down there area”, for sanitation purposes.