Hidden Cigarette Commercials Targeted in Justice Dept. Complaint

Document Charges Manufacturers Deliberately Seek to Avoid TV Ad Ban

Potential Fines Could Amount to Billions of Dollars

A complaint filed today charges that the nation's major tobacco companies are deliberately seeking to avoid the ban on cigarette commercials by placing cigarette ads on billboards and other locations in sports stadiums just so they will be picked up and broadcast during television coverage of the events. Since these so-called "hidden commercials" may appear many dozens of times in the coverage of even one game, potential fines for violations over the years could well exceed tens of billions of dollars.

The complaint was filed with the Department of Justice by John Banzhaf, Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), a national antismoking organization. Previous complaints filed by Banzhaf have led to a ban on conventional cigarette commercials, no-smoking on domestic flights, an OSHA proposal for a total workplace smoking ban, tougher cigarette warnings, a prohibition on cigarette promotions within national parks, smoke detectors in airplane lavatories, and other legal and regulatory actions.

To demonstrate that cigarette manufacturers and other advertisers pay substantially more for billboard and other sign locations where their message will be picked up by TV cameras, the complaint cites reports of a commercial service which measures the number and amount of such "in-focus" exposure of brand names and logos to the nearest one-hundredth of a second. The reports also measure how many TV viewers see each in-focus exposure, and calculate the value of such exposure in terms of the equivalent cost of conventional paid commercials. Not surprisingly, the value of such hidden commercials for cigarettes often exceeds one million dollars for a single televised sports event.

The complaint also cites a previously-secret Justice Department ruling in 1982 concerning the Holmes-Cooney boxing match. That ruling held that "the use of materials, including ring posts or ring mats, on which the name of a cigarette is printed in a manner that makes it visible when the match is broadcast or transmitted" violates the Congressional prohibition on cigarette commercials. More recently, the Department took the same position with regard to Madison Square Garden. It obtained an injunction against "displaying, during any arena event that is or will be telecast in whole or substantial part, cigarette signage in any location that is regularly in a camera's focus during the telecast of such arena events."

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, May 31, 1995

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CALL: John Banzhaf (202) 659-4310

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