Medill News Service - Published: Dec. 10, 2001

Invention exclusive criticized

By Patrick Cooper
Medill News Service

Good morning, America. Good morning, Segway. Good morning, corporate tie-ins?

After a year of hype and secrecy, inventor Dean Kamen debuted his latest creation, a motorized, self-balancing scooter, on ABC's "Good Morning America" show on Dec. 3. Kamen unveiled the "Segway Human Transporter" on "GMA" as part of an exclusive agreement, providing a boost in an ongoing ratings battle against NBC's "The Today Show."

But was there a mouse in the house? Walt Disney Corp. owns ABC and "GMA." Disney also sponsors another of Kamen's major endeavors. The connection has raised some controversy about the Segway exclusive.

Since 1996, Disney has provided space at its EPCOT theme park in Orlando, Fla., for the championship round of Kamen's annual robot-building competition for students. Prior to being held there, the championships were held at various New Hampshire high schools.

A top media analyst believes the Disney connection influenced the television exclusive, in the network's interests of gaining in the ratings against "The Today Show," but ABC denies any such link.

Segway was kept shrouded in secrecy before its debut, to the chagrin of some media outlets. Kamen gave "GMA," the New York Times and Time Magazine the exclusive on the story after they agreed not to release any information before Dec. 3.

The Associated Press was offered the story as well, but a staffer has written that the wire service turned down the offer because of the secrecy condition. Accepting the deal would have prevented the Associated Press from publishing the story until an hour before the "GMA" broadcast.

ABC's morning show has consistently rated second to the "Today Show" among television viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research, but has come on strong in the last year, reaping the biggest gains from a nationwide increase in morning show viewership.

Nevertheless, one prominent media critic notes that "GMA" is still not top-rated and leans heavily on Disney corporate ties, weakening their broadcasts.

"That would explain why the number two-rated show got that exclusive," says Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The Project is a Washington-based research group and part of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

"What you have there is a kind of mutual self-serving relationship," Rosenstiel said. "Kamen is a marketing genius as well as an inventing genius. There's a lot of mystery about this invention.

"He uses Good Morning America to promote the invention, that may ultimately be of some questionable utility. And ABC uses Kamen to get more eyeballs for the show," Rosenstiel said.

In an interview, an ABC spokeswoman said no corporate connection existed. "We had expressed interest in this story for a very long time," she said. "They had expressed an interest in us as well."

Segway press representatives did not return phone calls.

Kamen founded the nonprofit organization For Inspiration and Recognition of Science Technology (FIRST) in 1989 to excite kids about engineering and to help them get into the field. The FIRST robotics competition began in 1992.

FIRST Financial Director Terry Durkin disputed any connection between his organization and Segway, other than Kamen's involvement in both. "They are very separate entities, completely," he said.

Disney has been a FIRST sponsor for five years, but the corporation is just "one of dozens upon dozens of sponsors," Durkin said. Saying only that Disney World has hosted the robotics championships, he declined to go into greater detail on the extent or financial value of Disney's sponsorship.

On the "GMA" television debut, anchors Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson gushed about the Segway as they rode the scooters for the cameras and a large crowd gathered in New York's Bryant Park. "It's just great," Sawyer shouted as she rode.

She crashed her Segway into Kamen when she attempted to throw her arms in front of her and a leg behind her, like an Olympic figure skater.

That was Monday, Dec. 3. On Wednesday, "GMA" brought back Kamen and Segway's chief engineer. On Thursday, Kamen appeared on the Sawyer- and Gibson-hosted Primetime news magazine on ABC, as the inventor took the "Primetime Q&A" in the show's closing segment.

"Greatest invention?" the announcer asked as one of the questions. "I'd like to think the Segway (Human Transporter) is going to make the top 10," Kamen replied.

The invention received substantial attention on ABC's Web sites as well. In the days following the debut, the front page of ABCNews.com and the "GMA" site still had many links to Segway information.

The coverage fit a trend that Rosenstiel and other media analysts have criticized for years. Across the networks, all of the morning shows are simply "peddling stuff," including their corporate partners, Rosenstiel said.

His organization compared two weeks of morning news shows from this June to two weeks in October, looking at the effects of Sept. 11. The mid-November report on their research found a few positive changes in the "GMA," "Today Show" and CBS "Early Show" broadcasts, but concluded that the shows remained lacking.

The morning shows before Sept. 11 were "to put it perhaps a little bluntly ... a kind of sophisticated infomercial," the report concluded.

While hard news coverage has increased since the attacks, PEJ researchers also found that the morning shows promoted the products of their parent companies more than those of an other companies--and often failed to mention their corporate connections.

ABC plugged Disney products during 21.1 percent of their promotional time. CBS promoted Viacom products during 26.8 percent o this time, and NBC promoted NBC/General Electric products 11.6 percent of this time.

When presenting news stories about their corporations' products, the morning show staffs only disclosed connections 40 percent of the time. PEJ officials said this number was even an inflated one, the result of the promotion of networks' new fall lineups, in which the disclosure was obvious.

Echoing his group's assertion before the terrorist attacks, Rosenstiel called the shows, still, "quasi-infomercials."