Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I don't know, as a non-marketing person, (aka consumer), I feel that I am bombarded with ad-like information and it bugs me.

I'd imagine it's a mix: sometimes the reviews are fair; sometimes the sponsor products are subconsciously rated better by the reviewers; and sometimes the editors use their authority to "bump up" sponsor products, such as by discarding reviewer reports which are "unclear". It's even possible that occasionally they deliberately ding a sponsor product just to demonstrate their independence. The problem is that we, as readers, can't necessarily tell the good reviews from the bad ones.

FWIW, I never had a lot of respect for CI's product reviews in general, particularly their reviews of foodstuffs, even before they had issues with sponsor bias.



But that's not what they're doing. They're running a promotion, which includes signing up the participants for advertising campaigns which are then run completely independently of ATK. At least, that's what the wording on the application form suggests. Maybe that's still a "sponsorship" in the advertising sense; I tend to think of the work in a nonprofit context, which is different.

Darcie,

It's possible that advertising rules are different for California/NY nonprofits and I'm actually quoting state rules rather than national ones. I know that when I was with the Opera, for example, it was legal for us to exchange membership lists with another nonprofit, but not with a for-profit company.

Has ATK ever represented themselves as nonprofit? The TV shows nonwithstanding, they act like a for-profit publishing company except for the ads..

I think the ATK that does the shows is a different ATK then the publishing company. Last I read, though it was quite some time ago and before BCP changed its name to ATK, it was wholly independent and, in fact, BCP couldn't give it any money to avoid some pitfalls; likely they did not want to be come underwriters, because if they did they would likely end up failing the commercialism test (see PBS's guidelines). At that time I think the ATK corp doing the shows was a not-for-profit.

Lots has happened since then, including BCP being renamed ATK, which has made ATK into machine. I don't know if they business arrangements still stand or not, but PBS"s guidelines for programs haven't changed significantly I think, so some kind of weird arrangement likely remains in place.

America’s Test Kitchen may be non-commercial as far as its relationship with Public Television goes, but I have never heard any claim that it is non-profit.

Relationships with underwriters and sponsors has always been confusing with claims of impropriety and illegality leveled several times in the past-mostly by people who do not claim any special understanding of the rules that govern such relationships.

As far as I know, the only claim I have seen about advertising is that it does not appear in the pages of Cook’s Illustrated, Cook’s Country or their online counterparts.

Jim, All:

No, they're not non-profit, but they would like people to believe them to be as impartial as Consumer Reports, which is non-profit. And is, I argue, the only way that a publication can be truly impartial about ratings and reviews.

When Cook's started, one of its main missions, per Kimball, was that "accepting no advertising" meant that they would be completely uninfluenced by ad money and that readers could trust their reviews. If you recall, this even led to them dropping their cookbook reviews, because they felt that they couldn't be impartial once they started publishing their own cookbooks.

From the perspective of influence on their reviews, ratings, and endorsements of cooking products, there is no difference between accepting advertising and accepting a sponsorship.

Exactly! $ is $!

A rose by any other name...

Although I do not believe the CI/ATK editors consciously hit sponsors (specifically) failures or bump their ratings, I actually think $ is not $. I think sponsorship is actually worse then ads; you have less diversity of income, and your relationship is closer, and IMO much more likely to introduce bias.

I think CI's taste tests are bad because they don't share my goals, they only use (more or less) nationally available goods (*), and they are doing an averaged tasting, sure to tend towards the lowest common denominator. Those I suspect are far far strong reasons why we don't tend to agree with their conclusions; not due to some nefarious back room dealing and wheeling.

Their equipment tests seem reasonably reliable, but you have to consider the audience. For example, I have come to love my Du Buyer pans very very much and certainly will never buy another AC fry pan; they are both cheaper and, IMO, quite a bit better. But they have significant care and use restrictions, making them a poor choice for the CI/ATK reader *at large*. Equipment reviews of any sort will always suffer from audience limitations.

(*) The nationally available limitation is actually a double whammy, and a huge one. To get to that status, your food has to be appeal (nay, be acceptable) to a very large number of people. It has to be inexpensive, good shelf life, etc. It is almost certain to have less character then a regional favorite.

Ok...influence is influence ... driven by $$.

Got my first sponsor's email today from KAF (discounts and coupons). I'm keeping them all in a sub-folder for my emails from CI to see how many are generated by my submission form for the contest. I also did not renew my online CI to test how long before they start missing my $ (they'd never miss my influence... )