Complaint Review: Educational Alliance LLC

My boss just sent me an email about an opportunity that he wanted to schedule a meeting to discuss. Here are some excerpts.

"We are currently in the process of vetting story lines and potential interviewee’s/thought leaders for the industry topic. Our series airs as educational programming for Public Television and as educational news breaks for Bravo, Lifetime, Oxygen, Fox News, Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel as well as other major networks throughout North America."

 "In Depth is uniquely designed as educational content for Public Television in all 50 states."

I decided to look into this and what I have found really surprised me!

In Depth with Laurence Fishburne (https://www.indepthlaurencefishburne.com/) was implying that we would get national exposure and national interest which is compelling to our company that is currently only in one state. With some research, I started finding evidence against that thought.

This is a response to a similar offer from 2010: "They are selling something that they generally cannot deliver," says Garry Denny, program director of Wisconsin Public Television and a past president of the professional association of programming officials for PBS member stations. "In fact, they are probably not carried by any public television station around the country." Officials at PBS and at PBS member stations in California, Colorado, Kentucky, New York, South Carolina and Virginia were all aware of the Hugh Downs spots. Yet not one knew of a concrete instance in which the spots featuring Downs appeared on their stations or those of others. PBS and its member stations say they adhere to guidelines banning marketing programming paid for by subjects of the programs. (https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126056182&sc=emaf)

And...oh my... from 2003: But groups and companies that WJMK asked to pay for the videos disagree with Mr. Kielar's description. ''They were selling PBS and they were selling Morley Safer,'' said Jeff Cronin, spokesman for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. But several stations said they had declined to air them because of their promotional nature. Steven Weisberg, program director at WLRN in Miami, said the station did not run the videos because the content was paid for by the companies that were profiled. (https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/07/business/a-respected-face-but-is-it-news-or-an-ad.html)

So, of course, here is the most recent I could find: But several of the health care companies who spoke with STAT said their experiences didn’t live up to their hopes. Some, like Kalos, aren’t sure who saw the public television segments. Others said they didn’t see any spikes in traffic to their websites, or any sales come their way from people who had seen the segments. (https://www.statnews.com/2019/05/09/celebrity-backed-shows-bold-pitches/)

I don't feel like this is getting any attention. I mean the most recent article is almost a year old!

This company (under many different names) is suggesting that “[the video] was gonna go out into the PBS community, and we [were] gonna get all of this visibility, and millions of people were gonna see it.” When we go through the information on their site, they even say "Your email campaign communicates directly with your targeted audience of up to 1,000,000 consumers" and "These national spots reach over 84 million households nationwide and only air in peak and prime-time slots." That has simply not been the case. (https://indepthlaurencefishburne.com/invite/)(Password is television)

Our company is being asked for the underwriting of $23,500 and a travel fee of $3,500. We would basically be getting a really expensive 5-6 minute video (that does not have Laurence Fishburne in it at all) that probably would not be broadcasted at all.

I have done hours of research on this. I really hope someone brings the issue the attention it needs so some businesses are warned ahead of time.