Playing the Death Market
KITMAN, MARVIN
ON TELEVISION Lest my enemies in television accuse me of ulterior motives in discussing the recent Federal Communications Commission (fcc) decision to seek an eventual ban on tv cigarette...
...What will happen if the tobacco industry is forced to pull out of television...
...The Yellow Hand's broker, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, recommended that we buy Reynolds at 42% since all tobacco stocks were at rock bottom after the Surgeon General's warning...
...To compete with the American Cancer Society, cigarette commercials should simply say: "Smoke Brand X—they satisfy your death wish...
...It is in realism, too, that the fcc will find the solution to this dilemma...
...The Yellow Hand, of course, wasn't the only group affected by the Fee decision...
...The inalienable right of every American to smoke himself to death was exercised and a rally occurred...
...ON TELEVISION Lest my enemies in television accuse me of ulterior motives in discussing the recent Federal Communications Commission (fcc) decision to seek an eventual ban on tv cigarette advertising, I would like to assure the reader that my interest in the subject is as high-minded as that of any other stockholder in the tobacco industry...
...If we are duplicating it, then the ama grant is a waste of stockholder's money...
...Honesty is the only policy for the cigarette companies...
...Real people also chew pencils and erasers, bend paper clips, or scratch their hair...
...The number of people with the nerves of steel who can appear on a discussion show without smoking is limited...
...The bulk of the television audience, ages five to 10, believes the Cancer Society messages because they sound true...
...First, the American Cancer Society commercials will disappear, since the equal time requirement will no longer apply...
...Aided by the kind of government publicity money can't buy, Reynolds went to 40, 42, 45, 48, and then 5\V2...
...The syndicate went into other promising death market situations, too: sugar substitutes that are supposed to cause cancer, pesticides, nylon stockings (sales went up after the escapades of the Boston Strangler) and, following the publication of Ralph Nader's book, automobiles...
...A fellow in Variety claimed they would be followed by Minnesota Fats (for hustlers) and New York Broads...
...And there are many other magazines that could still profit from Reynolds' largesse...
...Many people feel like smoking only when they see somebody else lighting up...
...To cite a classic example from the world of film, Robert Mitchum could never have become a star in a medium which did not allow an actor to blow smoke from his flared nostrils...
...Its corporate motto is: "You Always Hurt the One You Love...
...Every time investors picked up a copy of the Wall Street Journal, there seemed to be a story about some new R. J. Reynolds acquisition: one week a Hawaiian punch company, the next Chinese frozen foods...
...Investors lost confidence in the cigarette busines because of this diversification program, seemingly based on fear...
...Sometimes they get cramps or raid the refrigerator...
...My favorite was the spot for Virginia Slims, a cigarette designed exclusively for women...
...On the evening of February 16,1 counted 37 actors smoking on television, usually during moments of extreme dramatic tension...
...If we had wanted to cure cancer," the letter went on to explain, "we would have invested in the American Cancer Society...
...The good commercials will grow in stature over the years, much the way "Omnibus" has...
...Reynolds is inviting a minority stockholder's suit, for The Yellow Hand considers this another blunder...
...The only thing that kept our guilt-edged stock from going through the roof was the attitude of management...
...Subsequently, the market came to its senses on cigarettes...
...No matter how many times you tell these kids that "You can take Salem out of the country, but can't take the country out of Salem," it still sounds like a non-sequitur...
...There are great romantic figures who in real life don't turn to cigarettes in moments of tension...
...The best acting in many a tv series today occurs during the ritual of smoking...
...Everyone has heard of young revolutionaries who are refusing to fetch a cigarette for a parent, or going through drawers and throwing out whole cartons...
...They mean well...
...Cigarette commercials have never had much to say...
...It would be gratifying to my image if television heroes were shown biting their nails to relieve tension...
...The logic behind investing in this area is that the American consumer has proven he will continue to buy harmful products out of psychological needs...
...We are going to miss some television cigarette commercials...
...Then, it will be business as usual for the cigarette companies...
...The wide publicity given the report, I felt, would help tobacco stocks by making everybody cigarette conscious...
...Within a week, our one share of Reynolds common plunged to 38...
...What really makes us nervous is the Times report that the money was given to the ama research project 'without strings attached.' We have never given money to the Tobacco Research Council on such terms, and this is not the right time to start setting precedents...
...In time, I suppose, acting schools will teach young actors how to bite their nails, or whatever, and save television drama...
...But a "No Smoking" rule would make it hard for young actors to establish a name for themselves...
...It must have stunned Republicans that one of the initial concrete acts of the Nixon Administration was the meddling of a regulatory agency in the internal affairs of a private enterprise like broadcasting...
...But at this time I only want to discuss The Yellow Hand's tobacco holdings, for they shall be affected by the Fee's decision...
...My company, R. J. Reynolds of Winston-Salem, spent $48 million in television last year...
...Despite the soundness of my theory, I hedged a little and found two By Marvin Kitman Playing the Death Market partners with whom I formed a sydicate, called "The Yellow Hand...
...R. J. Reynolds could have performed a real public service by using its $48 million advertising budget to save a great American institution, the Saturday Evening Post...
...The more the ad men try to delude kids, the more they become radicalized...
...The only effective cigarette commercials on the air today are those of the American Cancer Society...
...The commissioners' broadened interpretation of fcc powers may kill television as we know it...
...This is where men profit from the neuroses of others...
...I simply wanted to make a killing in the segment of the securities business which might be called the "death-wish market...
...But I didn't buy into the company to influence Reynolds-sponsored shows more directly than I could have as a critic...
...We also sold short on good companies—Gerber products, school textbook publishers, etc...
...I began buying tobacco stock in 1964, a week after the release of the famed Surgeon General's report...
...Thus, allowing so much smoking on television is comparable to the cruelty of showing a picture of chocolate cake to somebody on a diet...
...On the basis of past experience with tobacco's top management, The Yellow Hand is convinced that at this very moment Reynolds' officials and their counterparts elsewhere in the industry are probably scheming to find ways to circumvent the expected ban on cigarette commercials...
...These free commercials are so commonplace on tv that after years of watching private eyes and Westerns, the average person, before or after killing somebody, automatically reaches for the weed...
...But the situation is hopeless in educational tv...
...We're sure you'll be as surprised as we were," The Yellow Hand wrote Reynolds' president, Bowman Gray, "to learn that R. J. Reynolds is one of the tobacco companies participating in this senseless scheme...
...The Surgeon General has already made this study...
...The American Cancer Society school of realism tells the viewer what actually happens to people who smoke...
...Everybody who watches television already knows cigarettes are bad for them...
...It didn't help either when the New York Times reported one morning that a group of cigarette companies had given $10 million to the American Medical Association (ama) to study the relationship of smoking to disease...
...It's like watching sex or violence...
...If it is injurious for people to watch cigarette commercials, as the fcc seems to have concluded four years after the Surgeon General's report, it is even more dangerous for the public to watch actors smoking...
...The resurrection of the old theme, "I'd walk a mile for Camel," reveals the desperation of copywriters...
...It would be no more damaging to the reader's health than all these liquor ads in Commentary...
...As a matter of fact, The Yellow Hand is planning to exert its influence with Reynolds to place a full-page Camel's ad next to this space...
...We naturally identify with the glamorous image of the heroes and villains...
...with all the restrictions on copy now, they are more vacuous than ever...
...If we are merely buying the subsidiary rights to his report, then $10 million is too much to pay...
...The Yellow Hand decided to take a position in R. J. Reynolds because their cigarettes, especially Camels, are harsher, definitely harsher...
Vol. 52 • March 1969 • No. 5
