Published in Journal Watch Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 2010.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) is calling for a more-stringent control of alcohol advertising on cable television.

Although advertising alcoholic beverages to a television audience with many underage drinkers has been avoided since 2003, it is felt that even tighter guidelines and limits need to be put in place.

Based on the national Nielsen Media Research data from 2001 to 2006, it has been found that the increase of adolescent viewership and the screening of alcoholic advertisements rise disproportionally. With the figures showing that with a 1% rise in underage viewers, the incidence of ads featuring alcohol goes up by 7% for beer, 15% for spirits and a staggering 22% for alcopops. Only the airing of wine ads (-8%) decreases with adolescent viewership.

Ad incidences of spirits and alcopops are more strongly associated with female viewership than male viewership; each 1% increase in the percentage of females in the adolescent audience is associated with a 4% to 5% increase in alcoholic ads being screened.

Comment:
These findings suggest that producers of beer, spirits, and especially alcopops monitor the extent of youth viewership during cable television time slots to maximize ad exposure.

Recent surveys show that binge drinking of spirits and consumption of alcopops have increased more among girls than boys — trends reflected in the preferential targeting of ads for these products during shows with greater proportions of girls in the adolescent viewership.

95% of cable advertising time slots have youth viewership levels with an average age of between 12 and 20 years of age.— Alain Joffe, MD, MPH, FAAP

Published in Journal Watch Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 2010.

Citation(s):
Chung PJ et al. Association between adolescent viewership and alcohol advertising on cable television. Am J Public Health 2010

Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.