I don’t take kindly to the Hawaiian Electric advertisement that’s been playing the past week or so, formatted as a news interview with HECO executive Robbie Alm. Alm is being interviewed by former news anchor Jade Moon, now a Hawaiian Electric spokesperson, and the ad has been running during evening news broadcasts. It probably also runs at other times, but we watch the news and that’s when we’ve seen it.
Viewers are also referred to the the company’s web site where the full interview is available.
In the brief excerpt being broadcast, Alm defends record high electric bills as simply the product of global competition for fuel in the wake of the Japan earthquake and tsunami, which has resulted in a turn away from nuclear power plants in Japan and elsewhere. He follows this with a plea for quick approval of the company’s renewable energy projects, while viewers might not know that many of those initiatives have been collapsing under the weight of their own internal problems.
To the casual viewer, the interview could easily be understood to be legitimate news content from the news team rather than a carefully controlled advertising message. You had to be watching pretty carefully to see any mention that the interview was prepared and packaged by Hawaiian Electric and not by your favorite news source. It seems to me that both the station and the company have responsibility to make the distinction between news and advertising clear to viewers.
Of course, it’s just part of a growing problem of public relations and advertising blending into news, or is it the other way around?
In any case, I’m unhappy to see Hawaii’s regulated energy monopoly using this technique. I wonder–is this kind of advertising paid with shareholders’ money or ratepayers money?
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Network and cable news can also be mistaken “legitimate news content.”
Your concerns are well founded. Also disturbing is HECO touting solar energy in its “Newsverdisement” while at the same time placing a cap of 15 percent of any neighborhood that can use “net metering” with Solar PV panels.
Robert Robbie Alm and Jade Moon must think we have “STUPID” written all over our foreheads.
Maybe we are, to allow HECO as the only distributor of Electricity.
I guess whatever remains the t.v. station’s professionalism with regard to news doesn’t get in the way of their funding needs (i.e. greed).
…and HECO must be in desperation with their “pee are.”
Sure then we have retaliation from Hawaii Electric!!!
Big Wind, Big Cable: To Stampede Legislature, HECO Trumpets High Rates http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/5728/Big-Wind-Big-Cable-To-Stampede-Legislature-HECO-Trumpets-High-Rates.aspx
That ad has me howling too. And somebody needs to tell Robbie not to quit his day job for that acting career. To work, faux concern should lightly etch the presentation, not drip from every gesture like rancid jam.
Of course then I see a bill (SB772) coming up which will extend huge ginormous tax credits, originally confined to ethanol producers, to the Aina Koa Pono folks, the solar folks, the bio-green-anything producers. See for yourself:
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2012/bills/SB772_HD2_.htm
Couldn’t agree more. Thanks for the post, Ian. (And happy new year!)
The ads are paid for from shareholder funds. And to Kimo’s concern: There is no cap. 15% of any kind of distributed generation on a circuit is a trigger to consider IF an interconnection study is needed. In many cases it is not. In others the study shows what can be done to add more DG, usually solar power, to the circuit. This trigger is in effect in other states, including California, but we we are in studies with national labs to see how we can add more DG even on circuits that have a lot already. Only 31 circuits of 465 on Oahu are at or near 15 percent. Lots of room for more solar, and solar water heating does not impact the circuit so there is not even a trigger for that kind of soalr power.
Why require an interconnection study? Because too much “as-available” un-monitored DG on a circuit damage reliability not just for the DG customer but all customers on the circuit. The PUC has made it clear that Hawaiian ELectric is solely responsible for reliability, not the solar vendors or Kimo. 20-30 years ago unreliable service meant coming home to find the clock on the VCR blinking. Today, every home and business has equipment that needs reliable service, and our customers demand and deserve the most reliabie service we can deliver.
Peter Rosegg, Hawaiian Electric spokesman
Could not agree with you more, Ian, on the wolf in sheep’s clothing. I was offended by the HECO stuff on TV–all of it geared for the uninformed, which most of us are, due to lack of actual transparency (available now to a few insiders only). As for running ads that look like news or capitalize on news reporting, I recall a TV news station (KHON?) running ads featuring at the time UH football coach Dick Tomey selling insurance for a company either before or after or in the middle of the news station’s reporting on the latest UH football game, showing Tomey coaching the team. How shameless (or greedy) can you get? And yet all of these folks portray themselves as the honest servants of the community–the hypocrisy is stifling. I suppose that, from a government standpoint (we the people, with no taxation or other funny business without representation–implying transparency and sincere representation), utility companies were meant to be run with close scrutiny for the benefit of those who have to use them. The faux sham interview with the typical sham Alm calm and matter-of-fact “concern” (no Oscars here) and trying to give the impression all is above board is a little hard to take. HECO appears to be one of those entities reserved for top government appointees when we get a new mayor or governor, not to mention the hiring of friends and their friends. And while Rosegg may be accurate in the comments he makes, the people are not getting the whole story about HECO in the main. And the Rosegg move from an editorial writer for the Honolulu Advertiser to Cayetano’s office to HECO should be enough to give anyone pause for concern about much of the traditional media. The media, the watch-dog “fourth” branch of government, gives one pause for concern when its reporters go to work for government with the confidential information they obtained while at their news companies. (Whistleblowers beware.) Sure, people need to make a living (I can just imagine the large, inflated compensation these humble folk pocket supposedly working for our best interests), but what is going on is not the way things should or were meant to be. Centralized control and large incomes (from other people’s money) appears to be the name of the game. It is nice to know that there are people who will not do these things.
This is why I am moving to solar. I am tired of the ridiculous reasons for why my rates keep going up. Whoever advised HECO on this series (yes this is the first of 4) of spots should be fired. This is the surest way for any big company with a shakey reputation to lose what is left of their reputation.
The thing that bother me is that they keep trying to justify this as becuase of “record fuel costs”. Not true. They must think we have short term memory. Check out http://www.oil-price.net. In 2007, crude oil was above $125. About 25% high than it is now. So that’s not the explanation.
I suspect there costs are quite a bit higher now than they were becuase of all the renewable energy deals they are doing where they essentially agree to pay above markets rates for alternative energy becuase its no money out their pocket, they just pass it along the suckers, a.k.a, ‘rate payers’.
This is just the effect whole lot of them (HECO, the legislature, the PUC) being very generous with OPM.
While I am at it, this distinction between ‘rate payers’ money and shareholders money is distinction without a difference. Where do the shareholders get their money ? From the rate payers. You can’t take water out of half a glass. Or did you guys do a special stock offering I wasn’t aware of an put that money in a special account just for this ?
As I have commented before, HECO’s No. 1 goal:
Pay stockholder dividends of more than $117 MILLION A YEAR.
Why? Because it can.
Rich get richer, yada yada yada ………
Mahalo to those who don’t fall for the ads.
While it seems the main complaint is about companies making too much profit, that is not my main focus. I think the bigger issue is the idea that they think we are all so stupid to believe we can be manipulated by this supposed news interview. I stumbled upon this “interview” while channel surfing and couldn’t help noticing Jade Moon’s constant, pained look of concern which looked so phony.
Shame on you Jade.
I am often cautioned against commenting (even on a moderated blog like Ian’s) as anything written can be misunderstood (willfully or otherwise) by someone without the grace to use a full name.
Still, here is my last word.
1) I can tell you the TV ads were not intended to deceive anyone into believing they were news reports. The format was chosen to impart information in a straight-forward, non-slick way. It does not employ the visual and aural clues that identify TV news. Worrying that people may be fooled, it seems to me, reflects a low opinion of the public. They are, by and large, more clever than that.
2) As to “concern when its (MSM’s) reporters go to work for government with the confidential information they obtained while at their news companies.” Seriously? What secrets do you imagine those might be? A person going from government or the private sector to the media might cause a former employer to worry, I guess. But the other way around? Really? At bottom, the remark implies no one (but the writer, perhaps) has any honor or integrity enough to keep one employer’s confidences upon going to another employer. And how do you blame the newspaper for what I do after I leave? If I robbed a gas station after quitting the paper, would they be responsible for that?
3) If the writer can tell me where this “large, inflated compensation” is being paid, I might apply there. Jobs like mine are compensated based on equivalent salaries in the market place. And government or regulated industry jobs (at least for my skills) are probably at the low end of the range compared to many communication professionals (what you would probably call “flacks”) in the purely private sector.
4) Kathleen, good for you! Whether you mean solar water heating or solar photovoltaic, good for your for helping reduce our oil dependence. If these TV ads drove you to go solar, we must run more such ads. You are acting wisely on the information we are trying to impart, like it or not.
5) Gene, you are right that crude oil prices were briefly higher. The ads however talk about low sulfur fuel oil. Prices are at a record high and likely to stay that way due to unforeseeable events and foreseeable trends in Asia Pacific. The Star Advertiser story about the ad campaign quoted Facts Global Energy, an international consulting company run by Fereidun Fesharaki, a PhD in energy economics who has worked at the East West Center and is paid a bucket of money for his analysis of the world oil market. You don’t have to believe him either, of course. But we really don’t make this stuff up.
6) Let me try to explain the difference between ratepayer money and shareholder money. Shareholders buy stock in the expectation of a return on their investment. About 20,000 people in Hawaii plus institutions and individuals elsewhere own stock. The company takes payments from customers and in essence divides it into two stacks. One is to run the company, pay my big salary, buy equipment, etc. and to pay interest and principal on money borrowed. We call that pile ratepayer funds. The other pile is what will pay dividends to shareholders. The ads are paid from that second pile. So when we say the ads are paid with shareholder funds, it means money that would otherwise go to shareholders is, with approval of the shareholders representatives (the board of directors), spent to pay for things considered important, like explaining to customers why bills are high and going to stay high for some time and (in future ads) what we are doing and they can do about it.
Just for the record, the utility is not guaranteed a profit, as some believe. The PUC sets rates the company may charge (fuel and purchased power costs are passed through with no mark up or profit) and sets a cap, the maximum the utility may earn. Whether it earns up to that cap depends on how efficiently the utility is run. The best thing for the utility is for the community to be prosperous and the worst thing for the community is to have a financially strapped utility, unable to sell its stock or borrow money.
And it is my last word of commentary on this blog. Thanks
PS I am commenting only for myself here, not for the company.
Thank you.
I’m hope that others give Peter’s clear explanations due weight.
And a happy new year to you, Peter!
And let me add that the attacks on Robbie Alm are despicable. He is a good guy who is trying to do a good job for his clients. I have worked with him in number of settings. He is calm because he
has nothing to hide. What you see is what you get with Robbie. He is not trying to con you, and he will try to understand where you are coming from and see if he can reach a common understanding with you.