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by Dan Eramian
BIO Board members and CEOs were "headliners" on BIO TV this year at the June Annual Meeting in San Francisco, with overall television coverage resulting in North America, Europe and the Far East. Networks reported the cumulative viewing and listening audience to be more than 70 million people.
Jim Mullen of Biogen, J.J. Bienaimé of Genencor International Inc.; Susan Desmond-Hellmann of Genentech; Frank Baldino of Cephalon; Henri Termeer of Genzyme; and BIO Chairman Richard Pops of Alkermes all did live interviews with CNBC anchors in New York from BIO TV Studios. All discussed their companies, products and the state of the industry during the four-day BIO 2004 Meeting.
The BIO TV studios were also used by national talk show host Charlie Rose to videotape anchor segments of his program including former Secretary of State George Schultz, via satellite back to New York. Those segments were seen on his program on three consecutive nights.
In its second year of operations, BIO's TV and radio facilities allowed local, national and international networks the opportunity and the facilities to broadcast live without the expense of bringing in their own broadcasting equipment. Besides CNBC, other networks which broadcast live included:
- U.S. National: National Public Radio, Bloomberg News, Nightly Business Reports (PBS), MSNBC and CNBC
- Australia/Asia: NHK, Australia Channel Ten and Singapore TV
- EU: Reuters
Local San Francisco broadcasters, such as KRON-TV, KGO Radio and TV, KPIX and others, used our BIO TV studios and uplink facilities to feed many positive stories about biotechnology back to their stations, away from the scenery of the few protestors.
Other radio stations included USA Radio Network and Voice of America.
Satellite Media Tours
BIO TV also allows BIO to broadcast industry stories and themes through satellite media tours (SMT). We broadcast four SMTs during our San Francisco sojourn, which went live in 53 U.S. cities (15 of the top 20 markets) and 130 countries.
The four SMTs covered biotech cooking products that promote healthy diets, Alzheimers and Parkinson's-new biotech research into these diseases, women's health and biotech research and development of new targeted products, and biotechnology discoveries to improve women's health.
Guests included Chef Robert Del Grande, Howard Fillit, president of the Institute for Study of Aging; Dr. William Langston, founder of the Parkinson's Institute; Patti Labelle, singer, activist and diabetes patient; and Dr. Randall Maxey, president, National Medical Association.
BIO TV also helped blunt negative television images of protestors and helped get out countering positive biotech messages using farmers from developing nations, former Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore and local patients who have benefited from biotech drugs.
Dan Eramian is BIO's vice president of communications.
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