• Time, Thursday, February 5, 2009 9:45 AM

Drug companies, as well as the television stations and magazines that subsist on drug ad dollars, are concerned about the future of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads. The U.S. is one of only two countries that permit them (New Zealand is the other). President Obama has vowed to fight Big Pharma to lower drug costs and the Democratic Congress includes several anti-DTC advocates.

But the worries may be overblown. The DTC issue is unlikely to be dealt with until weeks or months after Obama names a nominee for FDA commissioner. Plus, some of DTC's most vocal critics in Congress aren't calling for an all-out advertising ban, but rather a two-year ban on new-drug marketing.

Analyst Eric Schmidt, says drug companies have already started scaling back their marketing budgets, and they are putting their advertising into more established brands. Pharma companies spent about $4.7 billion in magazine and TV advertising in 2008, a 10.7% drop from 2007, per TNS. About 15% of DTC ads are for drugs that are less than a year old.

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