industry estimates

Nickelodeon Resists Critics of Food Ads

And then they shifted their focus to Nickelodeon, Disney’s archrival and the country’s other major children’s programmer. Exactly when would it be following Disney’s lead?

The answer appears to be never — not only because doing so could hurt Nickelodeon’s bottom line, but because the children’s cable behemoth may have taken enough steps to blunt the attacks.

Despite continued pressure on Nickelodeon to restrict ads for products like Trix and Cocoa Puffs — four United States senators renewed the pleas in a letter to the company last week — the Viacom-owned network has remained defiant. Nutritional standards, it contends, must be decided by regulators and food companies, not Hollywood.

“As an entertainment company, Nickelodeon’s primary mission is to make the highest quality entertainment content in the world for kids,” the company said in a written response to the senators. “That is our expertise. We believe strongly that we must leave the science of nutrition to the experts.”

Money, of course, is a significant factor. Food advertising on Nickelodeon has fallen 45 percent since 2008, according to the company, partly because of its own efforts to cut back on ads for certain sugary drinks and fatty foods, and partly because of self-regulation by food companies.

But food remains Nickelodeon’s third biggest advertising category (behind movies and toys), accounting for roughly 18 percent of annual sales. At a recent meeting on Capitol Hill, according to legislative aides, Viacom lobbyists reiterated this point and emphasized that their children’s networks — Nick, Nick Jr. and TeenNick — are more reliant on advertising than Disney’s flagship Disney Channel, which accepts limited sponsorships but does not accept 30-second spots.

Advertisers spend roughly $950 million annually on television tailored to children under 12, according to industry estimates. Across all the children’s cable channels tracked by Nielsen, the number of food ads was up 16 percent in the first quarter of the year versus the same quarter a year earlier, far outpacing the increase in all advertising, which was 6 percent.

Nickelodeon, which declined to comment for this article, is dug in for other reasons. Its executives ardently believe that critics, in particular the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, have ignored its many efforts to cut down on junk food ads and promote healthy lifestyles to its viewers.

For years, for instance, Nickelodeon has dedicated 10 percent of its promotional airtime to health and wellness messaging. It has also restricted the licensing of characters like SpongeBob SquarePants on certain junk foods and sent millions of dollars to communities to buy equipment like swing sets, among other initiatives. Once a year, Nickelodeon suspends programming on all of its channels and Web sites for three hours as part of a program called Worldwide Day of Play.

Against that backdrop, analysts say, some critics are having a harder time painting Nickelodeon as an uncaring corporation peddling junk food to children.

“Nickelodeon is not above reproach by any means,” said Dade Hayes, executive editor at the trade publication Broadcasting Cable, and author of “Anytime Playdate: Inside the Preschool Entertainment Boom.” “But they certainly can’t be depicted as an evil Philip Morris-type cabal, either.”

Nevertheless, the pressure on Nickelodeon to take stronger measures has persisted. Last week, four Democratic senators — Richard Blumenthal, Richard J. Durbin, Tom Harkin and John D. Rockefeller IV— prodded by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, asked Nickelodeon in a letter to “promptly take similar action” to Disney and “implement strong nutrition standards.”

But it was hardly a fire-breathing missive. “We applaud the initiatives that Nickelodeon has taken to promote healthy lifestyles for children,” the letter said.

Senator Blumenthal said the letter’s gentle tone was intentional. “We want to reason with them,” he said. “We want this to be voluntary, even enthusiastic on their part.”

Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, conceded that the volume of food ads on Nickelodeon had gone down.

“Things are moving in the right direction,” she said. “They’re just moving way too slowly.” A study by the center last year found that 69 percent of the food ads on Nickelodeon were for foods deemed unhealthy by the center. In 2005, it was 90 percent.

She dismissed Nickelodeon’s assertion that entertainment companies — particularly ones that do not serve food at theme parks and on cruise ships — have no business deciding nutritional standards.

“They can’t tell that Airheads candy are unhealthy without having a Ph.D. in nutrition?” she asked.

“We’re not expecting perfect standards, but we’re expecting some standards,” she added.

Ms. Wootan has shown no interest in letting up, even if some of her rhetoric has seemed excessive at times. In March, for instance, she put out a news release that charged Nickelodeon with “recklessly throwing gasoline on the fire” when it comes to childhood obesity.

At the same time, her organization, in partnership with other advocacy groups, took out a full-page ad in The Hollywood Reporter in the form of an Old West wanted poster. It featured mug shots of a slovenly SpongeBob SquarePants and included the words “Approach with caution! SpongeBob may be armed with nutritionally dangerous foods.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/business/media/nickelodeon-resists-critics-of-food-ads.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Drilling Down: Behind Veneer, Doubt on Future of Natural Gas

“The potential for natural gas is enormous,” President Obama said in a speech this year, having cited it as an issue on which Democrats and Republicans can agree.

The Department of Energy boasts in news releases about helping jump-start the boom in drilling by financing some research that made it possible to tap the gas trapped in shale formations deep underground.

In its annual forecasting reports, the United States Energy Information Administration, a division of the Energy Department, has steadily increased its estimates of domestic supplies of natural gas, and investors and the oil and gas industry have repeated them widely to make their case about a prosperous future.

But not everyone in the Energy Information Administration agrees. In scores of internal e-mails and documents, officials within the Energy Information Administration, or E.I.A., voice skepticism about the shale gas industry.

One official says the shale industry may be “set up for failure.” “It is quite likely that many of these companies will go bankrupt,” a senior adviser to the Energy Information Administration administrator predicts. Several officials echo concerns raised during previous bubbles, in housing and in technology stocks, for example, that ended in a bust.

Energy Information Administration employees also explain in e-mails and documents, copies of which were obtained by The New York Times, that industry estimates might overstate the amount of gas that companies can affordably get out of the ground.

They discuss the uncertainties about how long the wells will be productive as well as the high prices some companies paid during the land rush to lease mineral rights. They also raise concerns about the unpredictability of shale gas drilling.

One senior Energy Information Administration official describes an “irrational exuberance” around shale gas. An internal Energy Information Administration document says companies have exaggerated “the appearance of shale gas well profitability,” are highlighting the performance of only their best wells and may be using overly optimistic models for projecting the wells’ productivity over the next several decades.

While there are environmental and economic benefits to natural gas compared with other fossil fuels, its widespread popularity as an energy source is relatively new. As a result, it has not received the same level of scrutiny, according to some environmentalists and energy economists.

The Energy Information Administration e-mails indicate that some of these difficult questions are being raised.

“Am I just totally crazy, or does it seem like everyone and their mothers are endorsing shale gas without getting a really good understanding of the economics at the business level?” an energy analyst at the Energy Information Administration wrote in an April 27 e-mail to a colleague.

Another e-mail expresses similar doubts. “I agree with your concerns regarding the euphoria for shale gas and oil,” wrote a senior official in the forecasting division of the Energy Information Administration in an April 13 e-mail to a colleague at the administration.

“We might be in a ‘gold rush’ wherein a few folks have developed ‘monster’ wells,” he wrote, “so everyone assumes that all the wells will be ‘monsters.’ ”

The Energy Information Administration’s annual reports are widely followed by investors, companies and policy makers because they are considered scientifically rigorous and independent from industry. They also inform legislators’ initiatives. Congress, for example, has been considering major subsidies to promote vehicles fueled by natural gas and cutting taxes for the industry.

In any organization as big as the Energy Information Administration, with its 370 or so employees, there inevitably will be differences of opinion, particularly in private e-mails shared among colleagues. A spokesman for the agency said that it stands by its reports, and that it has been clear about the uncertainties of shale gas production.

“One guiding principle that we employ is, ‘look at the data,’ ” said Michael Schaal, director of the Office of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels Analysis within the Energy Information Administration. “It is clear the data shows that shale gas has become a significant source of domestic natural gas supply.”

But the doubts and concerns expressed in the e-mails and correspondence obtained by The Times are noteworthy because they are shared by many employees, some of them in senior roles. The documents and e-mails, which were provided to The Times by industry consultants, federal energy officials and Congressional researchers, show skepticism about shale gas economics, sometimes even from senior agency officials.

The e-mails were provided by several people to The Times under the condition that the names of those sending and receiving them would not be used.

Some of the e-mails suggest frustrations among the staff members in their attempt to push for a more accurate discussion of shale gas. One federal analyst, describing an Energy Information Administration publication on shale gas, complained that the administration shared the industry’s optimism. “It seems that science is pointing in one direction and industry PR is pointing in another,” wrote the analyst about shale gas drilling in an e-mail. “We still have to present the middle, even if the middle neglects to point out the strengths of scientific evidence over PR.”

Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Atlanta. Kitty Bennett contributed research.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=ebee740854162e71479e99b11fbba949

Nickelodeon Resists Critics of Food Ads

Drilling Down: Behind Veneer, Doubt on Future of Natural Gas

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