John Oliver Dupes Several Local News Stations into Promoting a Fake and ‘Absurd’ Sexual Wellness Product
John Oliver, highlighting the dangers of allowing sponsored content on news broadcasts, duped several local stations into promoting a fake and worthless “sexual wellness blanket.”
“We started a company called Venus Inventions, and created something called the Venus Veil, an absurd medical product based on technology that absolutely does not exist,” Oliver said, explaining that they even set up a website and hired an actress to promote the product on several programs.
Well, move over Gwyneth Paltrow, as Oliver successfully tricked three local stations, which were all ABC affiliates, into airing a sponsored content for the Venus Veil.
While the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has laws requiring stations to announce when content is sponsored, Oliver explained that local stations have started to promote products during the broadcast itself.
“You might think viewers should be smart enough to approach anything on these shows with skepticism,” he added. “The thing is, though, many of these stations also swap figures between their newsroom and their sponsored-content shows.”
Oliver also revealed that it was relatively inexpensive to get Venus Veil on air — KVUE in Austin, Texas and KMGH-TV in Denver, Colorado both required less than $3,000 while KTVX in Salt Lake City, Utah charged $1,750 for the promotion.
Sitting down with Gina Belich, Denver7’s host of Mile High Living, the actress Oliver hired got away with claiming the Venus Veil blanket used “magnetogenetics” and “technology pioneered in Germany 80 years ago.”
“How this works is off restimulating blood flow, which people have probably heard before in terms of sexual health. But, for this, your blood is full of iron but it’s dispersed in a way that it isn’t affected by normal magnets,” claimed the actress with no push back from Belich. “So the idea behind the veil is with the right blend of proprietary magnet fibers, you can create a self magnetic field that restimulates blood flow and gets you feeling like your 20-year-old self again.”
“So to the owners of these stations who are selling them out at a depressingly cheap price, I have a simple question,” Oliver concluded. “If I may quote the words of a very wise news anchor: The fuck are you doing?”
Watch above, via YouTube and KMGH-TV.
