Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and clicking through MediaPost, when I came across this story in Richard Whitman’s MEDIApsssst column.

New PETA Ads Expose How Product R&D Causes Extreme Animal Suffering

PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] is out with new ads showing in graphic detail how animals suffer as the result of lab experiments by companies testing new products.

Because experiments on monkeys are so gruesome that no TV station would air them, PETA used CGI to create a new TV spot that reveals who pays the biggest price for pharmaceutical drugs tested on animals. The ads clearly make their point, and many outlets still refuse to air them even though no animals were used in the production effort.

According to PETA, TV stations refusing to run the animated video ads still call them “too graphic” and cite probable “viewer complaints.”

What do you think, Doc – is this just one more example of the animal rights group being too extreme for its own good?

– RePETA

Dear RP,

Plug PETA tactics counterproductive into the Googletron and you get results like these.

According to its latest press release, though, that’s the kind of response the PETA peeps now hope to avoid – to little avail, as it turns out.

‘Too Graphic’: TV Stations Block Tame PETA CGI Spot Aimed at Monkey Laboratories

Because experiments on monkeys are so gruesome that no TV station could possibly air them, PETA used CGI to create a new TV spot that reveals—without showing any real animals, gore, or blood—who pays the real price for pharmaceutical drugs tested on animals. But many TV stations are still refusing to run even this PG-rated, animated video, calling it “too graphic” and “triggering” and citing probable “viewer complaints.”

In the 15-second spot, a “customer” wants to know how much a prescription will cost—and a computer-generated monkey, tattooed with an ID number and wheezing through a breathing tube, has the answer: “Too much.” The video is part of a new series from PETA that also takes on the hefty price animals pay for cheese and cashmere. These two ads are slated to run widely on TV and movie screens throughout the holiday season.

First, judge for yourself whether this pharmaceutical testing spot is “too graphic.”

The Doc’s diagnosis? Pretty tame indeed, given a current mediascape that routinely features bloodthirsty video games, Elon Musk’s demented X-Man cosplay, and constant casual cruelty across all social platforms. Then again, you can’t tell by looking that the monkey is CGI-generated. Ditto for the goat in this cashmere spot.

As for PETA’s assertion that the ads “are slated to run widely on TV and movie screens throughout the holiday season,” let’s go back to Richard Whitman’s MediaPost piece.

PETA says the monkey ad was rejected by multiple TV stations in Indianapolis, Reno and Sacramento.

Only a few individual stations agreed to run the ad in San Diego, Madison, Wisconsin and San Antonio, the latter two near federally funded primate research centers. Also some local stations via Comcast in the Hartford, metro area aired it in time for the Harvard-Yale football game last weekend.

More stations agreed to air the videos in which a computer-generated calf chained up behind a shop’s register and swarming with flies reveals that a wedge of cheese costs “too much.” The group investigated Daisy Farms production methods.

That ad and the cashmere spot “are running on area networks in Charleston, South Carolina, Colorado Springs and Sacramento. Additionally, the calf video will be seen at movie theaters in Sacramento and San Antonio. Altogether, PETA’s ‘Too Much’ videos will air nearly 13,000 times on screens across the country.”

So that’s not nothing. But it’s pretty clear that PETA-bred messages will continue to be muffled, no matter how tame the mistreated animals might be.