November 30, 2005
The Changing Landscape of the American Media
Dr. Nancy Snyderman,
Vice President, Johnson & Johnson
Minutes of the 11th Meeting of the 64th Year
President Bill Haynes called the 11th meeting in the 64th year of The Princeton Old Guard to order at 10:15AM in The Friends Center at Princeton University.
There were approximately 100 members in attendance.
John Marks led the invocation.
William Barnard read the minutes of the November 16th meeting which featured a talk by R. T. (“Dick”) Button a World Olympic Champion Figure Skater and TV Commentator who spoke on "The Current State of World Figure Skating”
The President announced that the next meeting will be on December 7th at this same location, The Friends Center and that there would be a Hospitality Hour at 9:30 a. m. with the meeting starting at 10:15 AM. The speaker will be Perry Cook, Associate Professor in Computer Sciences, at Princeton University.
Rosemary O’Brien then introduced the speaker, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, a doctor and a surgeon, formerly a medical correspondent for ABC television and now a Vice President for Medical Affairs at Johnson and Johnson. The subject of her talk was Medicine and The Media, a very apt title considering her qualifications and experience.
She gave a very clear and comprehensible presentation of her opinions on these two subjects, Media and Medicine, without the aid of any slides or notes. She was very flattering to her audience whom she described as “a brilliant cross-section of society” who had not been brought up on watching television and who had retained their trim girth and achieved impressive longevity, something which the grandchildren of this audience will never achieve if they continue to rewire their neurons by eating fatty foods and watching television 40 hours per week, which is the American average.
Obesity she stated is one of the greatest social ills of the age. One out of 3 people born in this country in 2001 will be fat and there will be a high incidence of Type II diabetes in teenagers, especially if they are of Hispanic or African-American origin.
The reasons for this obesity are related to lack of exercise at school and watching television programming instead of running around the neighborhood.
The costs of this obesity are enormous. A country cannot remain economically competitive in the world markets without a healthy populace. Walmart spent $1.4 billion in 2001 on health insurance for their employees. General Motors spent $5.2 billion on benefits in 2004, which required them to add $1,500 to price of each car produced. The total cost to United States companies for obesity is estimated at $13 billion annually and this is 27% of total health care costs.
The media, which bears some responsibility for this situation, is changing because of the rapid advance of technology and the invention of new consumer devices which allow the consumer to be permanently wired to the media and to experience Direct to Consumer Advertising. The advertising tells us that we should look like a Baywatch Girl, who apparently possesses a slim type of feminine beauty, but the time spent watching causes us to grow more obese.
Such new devices include Portable DVD players, i-pods with video capability and cell phones with photo, video and gaming capability. The type of program content can be personally selected but unidirectional advertising feeds into all these devices and the viewers and listeners and users of these devices are encased in a cocoon and are unavailable for normal social intercourse.
Dr. Snyderman told us of an incident she witnessed at a very respectable restaurant in Mexico. A family of four, the parents and two children were sitting at an adjacent table. On the table was a portable DVD player showing a movie and the two children had earplugs in their ears presumably connected to their i-pods. No conversation, no family interaction.
Walk down Nassau Street she said. Everyone has a cell phone plastered to their ear and nobody shows eye contact or says "Hello," "Good Morning," etc.
So what do we have to do? We have to get rid of editorialization of the news and teach people to be global citizens and take an interest in global affairs. We have to regain the trust of corporations and pharmaceutical companies so that the advertising makes sense. We have to worry about staying healthy and being responsible consumers. We have to resolve what to do about the collision between technology and humanity. “Technology always wins” but we have to learn to control it.
The enormous interest in Dr. Snyderman’s talk was evidenced by the amount of discussion afterwards. There were 17 questions and this is a brief summary of most of the items raised:
1. Direct Consumer Advertising cuts out the middle-man – order your own replacement hip!
2. NYT article on cheerleaders as sales persons – sales people are always well coiffed.
3. US Health Care is a fractured system: Rationing of Health Care may be necessary – “there are worse things in life than dying“
4. Possibility of media informing the voters on health – Americans do not vote.
5. Fat is addictive and rewires the brain – personal responsibility to correct.
6. Contradiction between obesity and American image of slimness – true.
7. Lone voice crying in the wilderness – but pro bono clinics do exist.
8. What information do we need? Health and wellness programming.
9. Google: DCT advertising powerful – patient may know more than the doctor.
10. Cholesterol guidelines: research people at pharmaceutical companies know best but require government overseers.
11. What does Dr. Snyderman do and what is her job description? Teaches at Penn, tries to take care of the consumer and is starting a web site for women’s health. Women make 87% of the health decisions.
12. Drug Problem: “sit-down dinners” important and soccer practice prevents them.
13. Preventive Medicine: insurance companies should reimburse for preventive medicine but in a total body scan everybody has something wrong.
14. Universal Care: A Princeton doctor’s office had 30 HMO’s involved and there are 1,500 in the country. We need a new medical card, similar to Canada’s, containing all the patient information.
15.Use advertising dollars to guide the media? The media don’t like the pharmaceutical industry and vice versa.
Overall Summary: We are getting more obese because we are watching too much television. The situation is getting worse because of the new technological devices available. What we need is better consumer education and that is Dr. Snyderman’s goal.
Respectfully submitted,
Bruno J Walmsley
There were approximately 100 members in attendance.
John Marks led the invocation.
William Barnard read the minutes of the November 16th meeting which featured a talk by R. T. (“Dick”) Button a World Olympic Champion Figure Skater and TV Commentator who spoke on "The Current State of World Figure Skating”
The President announced that the next meeting will be on December 7th at this same location, The Friends Center and that there would be a Hospitality Hour at 9:30 a. m. with the meeting starting at 10:15 AM. The speaker will be Perry Cook, Associate Professor in Computer Sciences, at Princeton University.
Rosemary O’Brien then introduced the speaker, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, a doctor and a surgeon, formerly a medical correspondent for ABC television and now a Vice President for Medical Affairs at Johnson and Johnson. The subject of her talk was Medicine and The Media, a very apt title considering her qualifications and experience.
She gave a very clear and comprehensible presentation of her opinions on these two subjects, Media and Medicine, without the aid of any slides or notes. She was very flattering to her audience whom she described as “a brilliant cross-section of society” who had not been brought up on watching television and who had retained their trim girth and achieved impressive longevity, something which the grandchildren of this audience will never achieve if they continue to rewire their neurons by eating fatty foods and watching television 40 hours per week, which is the American average.
Obesity she stated is one of the greatest social ills of the age. One out of 3 people born in this country in 2001 will be fat and there will be a high incidence of Type II diabetes in teenagers, especially if they are of Hispanic or African-American origin.
The reasons for this obesity are related to lack of exercise at school and watching television programming instead of running around the neighborhood.
The costs of this obesity are enormous. A country cannot remain economically competitive in the world markets without a healthy populace. Walmart spent $1.4 billion in 2001 on health insurance for their employees. General Motors spent $5.2 billion on benefits in 2004, which required them to add $1,500 to price of each car produced. The total cost to United States companies for obesity is estimated at $13 billion annually and this is 27% of total health care costs.
The media, which bears some responsibility for this situation, is changing because of the rapid advance of technology and the invention of new consumer devices which allow the consumer to be permanently wired to the media and to experience Direct to Consumer Advertising. The advertising tells us that we should look like a Baywatch Girl, who apparently possesses a slim type of feminine beauty, but the time spent watching causes us to grow more obese.
Such new devices include Portable DVD players, i-pods with video capability and cell phones with photo, video and gaming capability. The type of program content can be personally selected but unidirectional advertising feeds into all these devices and the viewers and listeners and users of these devices are encased in a cocoon and are unavailable for normal social intercourse.
Dr. Snyderman told us of an incident she witnessed at a very respectable restaurant in Mexico. A family of four, the parents and two children were sitting at an adjacent table. On the table was a portable DVD player showing a movie and the two children had earplugs in their ears presumably connected to their i-pods. No conversation, no family interaction.
Walk down Nassau Street she said. Everyone has a cell phone plastered to their ear and nobody shows eye contact or says "Hello," "Good Morning," etc.
So what do we have to do? We have to get rid of editorialization of the news and teach people to be global citizens and take an interest in global affairs. We have to regain the trust of corporations and pharmaceutical companies so that the advertising makes sense. We have to worry about staying healthy and being responsible consumers. We have to resolve what to do about the collision between technology and humanity. “Technology always wins” but we have to learn to control it.
The enormous interest in Dr. Snyderman’s talk was evidenced by the amount of discussion afterwards. There were 17 questions and this is a brief summary of most of the items raised:
1. Direct Consumer Advertising cuts out the middle-man – order your own replacement hip!
2. NYT article on cheerleaders as sales persons – sales people are always well coiffed.
3. US Health Care is a fractured system: Rationing of Health Care may be necessary – “there are worse things in life than dying“
4. Possibility of media informing the voters on health – Americans do not vote.
5. Fat is addictive and rewires the brain – personal responsibility to correct.
6. Contradiction between obesity and American image of slimness – true.
7. Lone voice crying in the wilderness – but pro bono clinics do exist.
8. What information do we need? Health and wellness programming.
9. Google: DCT advertising powerful – patient may know more than the doctor.
10. Cholesterol guidelines: research people at pharmaceutical companies know best but require government overseers.
11. What does Dr. Snyderman do and what is her job description? Teaches at Penn, tries to take care of the consumer and is starting a web site for women’s health. Women make 87% of the health decisions.
12. Drug Problem: “sit-down dinners” important and soccer practice prevents them.
13. Preventive Medicine: insurance companies should reimburse for preventive medicine but in a total body scan everybody has something wrong.
14. Universal Care: A Princeton doctor’s office had 30 HMO’s involved and there are 1,500 in the country. We need a new medical card, similar to Canada’s, containing all the patient information.
15.Use advertising dollars to guide the media? The media don’t like the pharmaceutical industry and vice versa.
Overall Summary: We are getting more obese because we are watching too much television. The situation is getting worse because of the new technological devices available. What we need is better consumer education and that is Dr. Snyderman’s goal.
Respectfully submitted,
Bruno J Walmsley