Misleading Advertising by ABC on The Bachelorette

ABC revived the spinoff romantic reality show of The Bachelor this season featuring the jilted "almost-bride" from an earlier season of The Bachelor: Deanna Pappas.

Poor Deanna was virtually left at the "altar" in the last episode. Just when she thought she could get a marriage proposal, she was dumped. Deanna was shocked as were most viewers. Now the tables have been reversed so that she decides who stays and who goes home.

For last night's episode, about the third into the series of weekly broadcasts, ABC repeatedly advertised one important part of the show, both at the beginning and a few times before it broke to commercials, i.e., what was "coming up."

One of the bachelors had a secret that he was going to share with Deanna for the first time. It had the potential to ruin his chances with her.

Jason, an account executive from Cleveland, OH, got along very well with Deanna in their previous one-on-one meetings. They had important things in common, but Jason never told the never-married bachelorette that he had a young son, Ty.

The ABC advertisement showed Jason breaking the news to Deanna and her reaction of shock which had the look of distrust, too. The clear impression of the ad was that it could lead to Deanna dismissing him from the competition.

But when the actual part of the show was finally aired in full, it became perfectly clear ABC edited the piece to mislead its viewers. Deanna's actual reaction to first finding out Jason had a son was not the reaction ABC showed in the ad. The ad was from a different point in the conversation!

And in fact there was nothing negative in her feelings about it at the time or later. At the end of the show Deanna presented him with a gift--a star named after his son so he would know she was cool about it.

Why does ABC have to use misleading advertising for a reality show? How many viewers stayed to watch the commercials after its false advertising? It was the main hook for the episode, the "must-see moment." How much money does ABC get from those TV commercials during The Bachelorette that makes it want to mislead the public?

Of course it's not the worst kind of false advertising, but it was clearly below the standards of what the ABC brand is known to represent. (ABC had first used the false ad at the end of the previous week to get viewers to watch this week.)