Big Pharma pays off news and entertainment media with commercials. They advertise obscure drugs for rare problems - obviously they don’t need hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising for some of the crap we see.
In exchange they get the souls of media executives and favorable media treatment.
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I think you’re spot on, and its a major conflict of interest.
“They advertise obscure drugs for rare problems”
This is a brilliant observation that, in retrospect, describes almost every pharma ad I’ve ever seen.
The visuals deserve equal mockery :).
Change a few details with the drug/symptoms, and nearly every ad is identical: Silent video of a mixed race/ethnicity couple sublimely completing some banal task (say, hanging laundry on a clothesline), with a camera panning across said couple as the sun rises over a wheat field; a silver fox couple smiling as they slowly trot in a ballroom; a plaid-over-shirted “mr normal” picking up a box in the garage on a warm summer Saturday, mother/daughter snuggling on an idyllic living room couch, a gray-haired 85 year old retiree restored to full confidence in their social circle.... — none of which ever have anything to do with the drug.