Entry 48 - PSA History 4

In PSA History, the fairness doctrine was introduced as a way to balance things out in concerns to advertising. From what I read in the article, 1 anti for every 3 pros would not seem like an efficient practice, but history proved otherwise.

Enter the Fairness Doctrine
One demonstration of PSA effectiveness came in 1969. Two years earlier, a federal court upheld the FCC's application of the Fairness Doctrine to cigarette advertising on radio and television, and ordered stations to broadcast "a significant amount of time" for anti-smoking messages.
This effectively meant one PSA for every three tobacco commercials. The PSAs proved so effective that smoking rates began to decline for the first time in history. Tobacco industry withdrew all cigarette advertising, and Congress made such advertising illegal after 1971. In further support of the success of the PSAs, with the passage of the law preventing cigarette ads, the bulk of the anti-smoking messages disappeared as well, and cigarette consumption rose again for a while. On balance, however, public health professionals credit the PSAs with having saved many millions of lives by initiating the decline in American smoking. ¹¹
Perhaps the most famous anti-smoking PSA was done by Yul Brenner before his death in 1985 from lung cancer. Nine months before he passed away, he gave an interview on Good Morning America. In the interview he mentioned wishing to make an anti-smoking commercial. After his death part of the interview was turned into a PSA by the American Cancer Society and left a lasting impression on everyone who ever saw it.
Later “The Truth” campaign was launched which producers claim is the largest national youth-focused anti-tobacco education campaign ever conceived.
It is designed to engage teens by exposing Big Tobacco's marketing and manufacturing practices, as well as highlighting the toll of tobacco in relevant and innovative ways. http://www.protectthetruth.org/truthcampaign.htm
Another famous anti-smoking campaign was the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/ which used paid print ads and earned media as the primary media vehicles to point out the dangers of smoking among the young.