TVSquad

Ah, product placement. It's a subject that's come up before. We have an award for it, and even as far back as those care free days of 2005, Karina was writing about the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild Of America protesting it. The telling quote from that piece, "Our writers are being told to perform the function of ad copywriter, but to disguise this as storytelling." And isn't that where most of us have always drawn the line in the sand? The placing of products into sets was kind of an understood cost of doing business, but having the writers change scripts to incorporate them was a whole other ball of (Turtle) wax. Unfortunately, those (Foster Farms) chickens have come home to roost.

A few days ago I happened to catch an episode of the NBC soap opera Days of our Lives that my wife was watching. Hey, don't look at me that way! My wife is a fan of the show. Oh, sure, I used to watch it during the Shane/Kimberly/ Patch/Kayla/Frankie/Jennifer heydays of the late 80's, but it doesn't do anything for me now. Really, I'm serious!

Anyway, the scene I walked in on was one between Chelsea Brady and Nick Fallon (I got those names from my wife, I swear!). It seemed that Chelsea was depressed about one thing or another and Nick had the solution to cheer her up. They went to a nearby computer, where Nick began to pull up pictures, on the Wallgreens photo site, of the couple during happier times. When Chelsea asked how he did this (because she is obviously technically non-savvy) Nick responded that he just uploaded the pictures to the Walgreens.com and, I believe, he added some end tagline like 'It's just so simple.'

Holy. Freakin. Crap.

Guess which company had the most successful product placement on television in 2007? Nope, it's not Apple Computer, which would have been my first guess.

It's actually Tyson Foods. They got the top nod from IAG Research after donating thousands of pounds of meat to a family on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Their brand-opinion index rating was 394. This score represented the most effective integration on TV in 2007. (I have no idea how they accurately measure something like that.)

NBC is really thinking of new advertising strategies, eh?

First they have all the product placement and product placement plots on shows like 30 Rock, The Office, and Studio 60, and now they've reached a deal with Philips Electronics for the company to be the lone sponsor of next Monday's edition of NBC Nightly News. It's part of a $2 million deal the network did with Philips, and will include other cable shows and their weather network.

Of course, one sponsor has been done several times before, even this season. Smith had an episode that was completely sponsored by The Departed, the recent Martin Scorcese crime flick. It was presented with fewer commercial interruption, or however they phrase it. The NBC Nightly News will be presented the same way. Instead of having fourteen commercials during the 30 minute show there will be three, all by Philips.

Reminds me of the days when one company would sponsor a show. The Colgate Comedy Hour or Milk of Magnesia sponsoring the game shows in the 50s. All that was stopped when the sponsors started having too much input into how the shows were done, but I wonder if were inching towards something similar now.

(S01E09) OK, now this is getting a little strange. This is the fourth episode of an NBC show (the others were two episodes of 30 Rock and an episode of The Office) where product placement was mentioned. In this, because of a blow the company is going to take on the Macau deal, Jordan says that 15 people are going to have to be let go from the show. Jokingly, Matt and Danny bring up product placement, but Jordan thinks it's something they should seriously consider.

The hell? Is NBC trying to convince us that product placement is here, it's good, and we should get used to it?