Federal Communications Commission FCC 08-155
STATEMENT OF
COMMISSIONER JONATHAN S. ADELSTEIN
Re: Sponsorship Identification Rules and Embedded Advertising, MB Docket No. 08-90.
Todays Notice of Proposed Rulemaking addresses head-on a concern I have pushed for many 
years: the need to clarify our sponsorship identification rules.  It also addresses concerns at the heart of 
my Agenda to Protect American Children and Families,1 specifically whether our current rules governing 
commercials in childrens programming need to be updated to adequately protect children from 
embedded advertising.
Reality TV should mean informing viewers about who is secretly pitching to them in the TV 
shows they are watching.  The true reality is that news and entertainment alike are practically being 
turned into undisclosed commercials.  Many current practices fly in the face of viewers legal right to 
know who is pitching to them.
After more than three years since I originally called on the Commission to update our sponsorship 
identification rules and to clarify the application of these rules to childrens programming,2 I am pleased 
that we are finally seeking comment on what additional steps the Commission should take.  Just this 
month, I have spoken twice about the urgency to move this item forward and explained the need for the 
Commission to protect our children from marketers efforts to prey upon their unsuspecting minds.  
Despite longstanding majority support, including Chairman Martins commendable leadership, the release 
of this Notice has suffered from almost unprecedented delays.  
The Notice takes an important step in addressing the concerns that parents, experts, and I have 
been voicing for years about the unhealthy messages American media are feeding our kids.  Children 
under the age of eight simply do not recognize that ads are trying to persuade them and tend to accept 
them as true and unbiased.3 Given that the majority of TV ads targeted to kids are for food products,4 and 
that the ad industry spends more than $10 billion per year in marketing food to them,5 it is no surprise that 
studies have linked commercials to the dramatic increases in childhood obesity and associated health 
problems like diabetes.6 Because children are ill-equipped to identify advertising, especially when it is 
embedded in a program with their favorite character, 7 we need to review and update our sponsorship 
identification rules.  Those of us who are concerned about children need to show leadership, not foot-
dragging, in addressing these practices.
  
1 Remarks of Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein, Stuck in the Mud: Time to Move an Agenda to Protect 
Americas Children, June 11, 2008. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-282885A1.pdf
2 Remarks of Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein, Fresh is Not as Fresh as Frozen:" A Response to the 
Commercialization of American Media, May 25, 2005. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-
258962A1.pdf
3 See Dale Kunkel, Children and Television Advertising, Handbook of Children and the Media, ed. Dorothy G. 
Singer & Jerome L. Singer (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2001): 375-393.
4 Id.
5 Comm. On Food Mktg. & the Diets of Children & Youth, Inst. Of Med., Food Marketing to Children and Youth: 
Threat or Opportunity? 145 (J. Michael McGinnis et al. eds., The National Academies Press 2006), available at 
http://www.nap.edu/books/0309097134/html/R1.html.
6 See Kaiser Family Foundation, The Role of Media in Childhood Obesity (Menlo Park: Kaiser Family Foundation, 
2004), http://www.kff.org/entmedia/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/ getfile.cfm&PageID=32022, generated 
April 4, 2005.
7 See Angela J. Campbell, Food Marketing to Children and the Law. 39 LOY. L.A. L. REV. 447, 465 (2006). 
Federal Communications Commission FCC 08-155
I am also pleased that todays Notice has adopted the suggestion I made in 2005 to define what is 
meant by disclosure in our sponsorship identification rules.  Many current practices make a mockery of 
our regulatory requirement that consumers have a right to full and fair disclosure.8 If it takes a 
magnifying glass to see a tiny acknowledgement whizzing by the screen at the end of a show, that is 
evading the spirit of the law.  More clarification is clearly needed.  The main accomplishment of this 
Notice is that it seeks to establish specific guidelines addressing the nature of the disclosure, including 
font size of the sponsorship credits and the amount of time they are aired.  The need for updating the 
disclosure rules is critical.  Not only do we need to help parents protect their children from over-
commercialism, we need to ensure that all Americans have the tools necessary to separate the 
programming wheat from the advertising chaff. 
I would have liked to have gone further in asking more questions in the NPRM, rather than 
shunting them off to a Notice of Inquiry.  We should not be afraid to put all options on the table.   As 
Congressmen Markey and Waxman noted in their September 26, 2007 letter to the FCC regarding this 
proceeding, as embedded advertising expands, sponsorship identification law must evolve to ensure that 
broadcasters and cable operators comply in a meaningful way.  Because an NOI cannot lead directly to 
rule making, the result may be a piecemeal approach to reforming these rules.  
Embedded advertising is increasing at a staggering rate, and we must examine how to update the 
rules in a comprehensive fashion.  Product placement on broadcast TV rose at an annual rate of almost 40 
percent in the first quarter of 2008, with reality shows The Biggest Loser and American Idol each 
embedding over three thousand product placements during that time.9  Also, major networks have created 
client-facing divisions specifically focused on how best to embed advertisers messages and products into 
programming.  In the age of convergence, the line between promotional and editorial voices has been 
blurred.  Viewers engrossed in the story are not likely to apply critical thinking to identify advertising.  
Even if they do look for sponsorship ID, it is nearly impossible to detect them in the single, instantaneous 
period they roll by in the credits at the end of the program.  
Such inadequate disclosure is bad for content, democracy, and our childrens health.  When 
viewers cannot distinguish content from advertising, the market check on content quality fails, and we see 
a race to the bottom where television shows become program-length infomercials.  We have heard from 
the Writers Guild about this  writers are upset about being told to write story lines around 
advertisements.10 Further, when audiences are fooled into believing they are watching real news by video 
news releases and so-called news analysts who are paid off, their trust in the discourse shapers  the 
news broadcasters, TV writers, and DJs  suffers and so does the marketplace of ideas.11 The public 
deserves to know what it is watching, and democracy demands it.  This Notice makes real progress in 
helping ensure those goals are met.    
While it does not accomplish everything I would have liked, we are moving in the right direction 
by adopting this Notice to consider improvements to our sponsorship identification and children 
advertising rules. Accordingly, I approve this item. 
  
8 47 CFR 73.1212(e)
9 Amy Schatz, Product Placements Get FCC Scrutiny, WALL ST. J., June 23, 2008, at B3.
10 See Writers Guild of America, Are You Selling to Me?: Stealth Advertising in the Entertainment Industry (2005).
11 See Ellen P. Goodman, Stealth Marketing and Editorial Integrity. 85 TEX. L. REV. 83, 125 (2006).