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Group Asks Gov't to Crack Down on Product Placement
Buck Mulligan writes "The rise of commercial-skipping Tivo has resulted in greater reliance on "product placement," and Commercial Alert has filed a petition (pdf) with the Federal Trade Commission urging the agency to crack down on the practice. Gary Ruskin of Commercial Alert writes: "The interweaving of advertising and programming has become so routine that television networks now are selling to advertisers a measure of control over aspects of their programming. Some programs are so packed with product placements that they are approaching the appearance of infomercials. The head of a company that obtained repeated product placements actually called one such program 'a great infomercial.' Yet these programs typically lack the disclosure required of infomercials to uphold honesty and fair dealing.""
Kill their ratings and it will stop. Simple. Besides, it has Paul Anka's guarantee.
When all else fails, run.
Why should companies be prevented by the government from doing product placement? Now, if a program sucks because of product placement, people will stop watching the program, and the company that makes the product will stop doing the product placement. Let the market control how shitty TV programs are and stop bringing government into every damn thing.
I heard howard interview a b-movie actress who said that she gets paid by advertisers to drop a product name on interview shows (eg: The tonight show).
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
This is one thing I strongly disagree with. The government should not step in and tell us wether or not we can place certain products or use certain 'props' in tv shows, movies, or anything else.. If people hate the advertising that goes with tv programming, then they should boycott it all together or complain to the people who create the shows. Having the government regulate it is definitely restricting our civil rights.
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
Yes, as I sit here reading with my ice cold, refreshing Coca-Cola, I think that you are correct. The only way to get this to stop is by signing the Adobe Acrobat PDF petition.
I know it sounds wierd... but people need to realize that watching TV is not a right. And the producers of programs need to be compensated for their production.
Do you want the governemnt to get larger and create more regulation? Do you want free TV? If so then expect commericals. Expect product placement. If you don't then purchase your TV channels. Or just turn the silly thing off.
Read a book. Perferably a classic... but that's another topic.
Ted
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
I just heard: the Mattel and Mars Bar Chocobot Hour just got cancelled.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I use my TIVO(c) DVR and I can fast forward through any of those annoying commercials. Did I mention that I love my IKEA(c) bed? It's so comfortable.
Now, let me finish typing this on my APPLE(c) Powerbook G4.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
I don't know about television, but there is little question that the only possible response to movie piracy is product placement. With product placement, you might even encourage people to pirate movies.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I was watching ER, and they had three of their products in promenetly displayed near some binders at the check-in nursing station thing. Why would a nurses station need to have software such as ArcServIT, BrightStor, UniCenter, etc.. all nicely lined up next to the monitor of their PC? It's just so odd, and does not fit in with the audience at all. These are Enterprise software suites that cost thousands of dollars.
Additionally, I saw the very same CA lineup in "Just Shoot Me", behind the CEO's desk, next to pictures of his family, and stuff. It would make so much more sense if the product placements were appropriate to the audience.
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
As I sit down in front of my Dell monitor drinking Mountain Dew Code Red ("A taste as real as the streets"), I can't help but wonder the depths to which product placement has affected us. After all, wasn't it in "The Matrix" - Catch The Matrix Revolutions only in theaters this November where we are encouraged to "free our minds"? I can't believe that TiVo - TV Your Way is being blamed for a decline in traditional advertising on networks like Fox -- check out their new Monday night line-up!.
I think people need to mellow out with a Guinness Draught - drink straight from the bottle and just learn to enjoy the ride. After all, if you really wanted to enjoy some independent thought, you wouldn't watch Philips High-Definition Plasma Screen - higher-resolution than reality.
For more information, click here.
TiVo doesn't "skip commercials" any more than a VCR does. Either one requires the viewer to fast-play while watching the screen and then press a button when it reaches the part of the recording you want to watch. TiVo performs the job less clunkily than a VCR (the advantage of disk storage over tape), but that's it. (I believe ReplayTV is the one that actually has a commercial-skipping feature.)
I seriously doubt Tivos with their puny penetration have anything to do with it. They should blame it on something called the remote control. That and increasing competition for advertising giving greater power to those that hold the money.
I honestly have not seen really obnoxious examples of product placement but then I don't watch much network tv.
Today, I was watching something called the "Home Shopping Network", and the amount of product placement was truely appalling! Really! The government needs to do something about this!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
...why are we blaming TiVo for increasing product placement? Seems to me you could just as easily blame the Internet (before I got a TiVo, I would web-surf during the ads) or the remote control (before that, I channel-surfed).
Or, more pointedly, you could blame the networks. Same people who bring you corner logos (now opaque, full-color, moving pictures, on all the time) and promos during the end credits (no longer content to talk over them, now they squish them off to an unreadable size and speed and insert a 75%-screen-coverage full-video promo spot) and even during the show (superimposed crawls, anyone?).
They can all lick my center of gravity.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
What kind of title is this really? To use something not even written properly is digraceful I mean what teh fsck? [source listed on pdf]
Hollywood needs to stop promoting smoking worldwide
What ever happened to freedom of choice? Philip Morris co isn't forcing anyone to smoke, nor is Hollywood. People make their own decisions and not some advertiser.
The tobacco industry recruits and retains smokers by associating its products with excitement, sex, wealth, rebellion, and independence. Films are a powerful way to make this connection---and, as a paper in this week's issue of Tobacco Control shows,1 they succeed.
Retains smokers with sex, wealth, rebellion? Shit where is my money, and sex? I smoke because I choose to, and I know the consequences of my actions. I am not being misled by anyone but myself for smoking. These lobby groups distort facts, and this request is ridiculous. Personally I think this group should have specified a "specific" company, as their current demand can affect anyone advertising. Say someone on Friends drinking Pepsi, get realistic what would they expect a cloudy dot around anything with a label? Oh Please, Patriot Act for advertising now. Shoddy article, unrealistic demand.
MoFscker
When I was ([post sponsored by Politrix) writing this I was thinking ([Sponsor) thinking about how much money ([Symantec) product placements generate. Maybe ([Pepsi) Slashdot should look into this for ([RSA) revenue generation?
MoFscker
When you can't tell the differnce between advertising and the show.
Basically, they want to be sure that the shows don't violate truth in advertising.
Or that som news show doesn't do an article on the health benefits od (insert paid product ad here)
or worse, take money from company A to report the bad dealings at the competitor.
They people in charge of this are drawing the line. If you don't like it, get active and try to change it. I suspect the line will be perfectly acceptable to most reasonable people.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Aren't there only a couple hundred thousand (or so) PVRs in use? Neither ReplayTV nor Tivo has been wildly successful.
Of course you can take mine when you pry it from my cold, dead etc....
Do you ever watch Entertainment Tonight? Who do you think pays for that show... could it be... movie studios?
Seriously, it's one big infomercial, only you don't notice because "entertainment news" is a genre that predates our notions of product placement.
Banning this sort of commercial speech would mean the end of television as we know it in the U.S., because most shows (especially game shows and "reality" programs) rely to some degree on the income generated by loan-outs, trade-outs, and outright sponsorship. In other words, not gonna happen.
FYI, the seven words are shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. (George Carlin actually made up that list; there's quite a lot of others you couldn't say then and still can't say now.) At any rate, none of those words are allowable on American broadcast television, even now, in late 2003. You'll hear them on (some) cable channels, but not on the networks. (There may have been occasional exceptions, but I doubt many.)
There's not a lot of cussing on broadcast TV, which is presumably what you're referring to. At worst, it's the low-level swear words: damn, hell, ass. You think words like that are offensive? Or that they're any more prevalent than they are in real life? God* help you.
* There is no God.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
The problem in advertising today is that the market is saturated. Every vertical and horizontal surface, every book, every magazine, TV show, radio show, tape, dvd, CD insert, restaurant menu, bathroom, cereal box, and milk jug in America is covered with one form of advertisement or another. It's become so much static to most people that the best the most advertisers can hope for is that they flood enough of their trademark or buzzword out there that we'll be imprinted with it and familiar with it enough to maybe buy it if we're in the position to do so.
Most companies now spend more in marketing and advertising than they do on research and development. Sometimes like within the pharmaceutical companies it's dispraportionate to say the least (think millions vs. billions). All the while they are ignoring the signs that the consumers they are trying to reach are just overwhelmed, tired, and burnt out. The consumers don't want to get another SMS message about Viagra, they've seen everyone and their brother push 10-10-blah blah blah, they could care less about penis enlargement, they got the oxy-clean and it sucked... and on and on and on. They're tired of getting burned by products that are nothing like they are represented to be and they're tired of seeing advertisements that say absolutely NOTHING about the product (livitra!!!!) They're tired of 1/6 of their screen being taken up by ads during the broadcast and then 22 minutes of an hour long show being commercials. They're frustrated with not being able to watch ANY show without seeing some dumbass branding icon covering a corner of the screen.
And what do the advertisers and networks do in response to this burn out - attempt to stoke the fires by finding NEW ways to reach the customer. HELLO!!! IS ANYONE OUT THERE? IS ANYONE LISTENING?!? YOU'RE SCARING AWAY CUSTOMERS NOT DRAWING THEM IN. They're checking out, they're ditching their TV's, they're watching only DVD's, reading books, hiking. They don't want more ads, they want entertainment, and they sure as hell don't want ads weakly disguised as entertainment, newstainment, infotainment, or any other "snazzy" new term.
So when the industry won't listen and won't learn and won't even attempt to come to the level of the consumer then what choice does the consumer have? Government regulation! Yes it's sad but true. See companies continue to profit not because of growth or new business but by making lower quality products, selling at higher prices, and outsourcing everything imaginable. Then when sales can no longer produce any profit and all of the costs have been cut there are three choices buy out, sell out, sue (rinse and repeat).
Once they take one of these strategies it becomes an endless cycle. They get a few years maybe of more of the same cost cutting out sourcing, growth through acquisition, money from investors who think they see a profit. Then a few years down the line they spin off the businesses again, promise new and better products and start the cycle over.
We see it right now. The RIAA companies have merged so many times that theres hardly anyone left, costs are high despite cost cutting measures, sales are low despite massive marketing efforts. The only out increase advertising and SUE the consumer. 'Of course it's the consumers fault that profits are down and if they just couldn't skip over our advertisements or block them out then they'd have to pay'.
Look at the entertainment market today. You have perfectly good shows being cancelled because advertisers don't know how to market to that group of a million people. They can't figure out what product this demographic or that demographic will respond to so when their spots fail to bring in any new sales they drop it and great shows go away. And who loses - the consumer.
So tell me what are the options? Dropping out doesn't seem to have made TV any better. Most people I know watch maybe a hour or two a week and TV continues to get worse. Movies are crap with few exceptions, music is garbage, I can't pick up a magazine or a newspaper without being frustrated by the amount of ads. How EXACTLY do we get through to the companies that they need to knock it off with all of the damn advertising (aside from direct government regulation).
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Characters in TV shows and movies have to use various items as props. Sometimes these are chosen with business motivations in mind. As a viewer, I'm okay with this, as long as it does not detract from the show.
For instance, Halle Berry has a Ford Thunderbird in the latest 007 film. That's fine. But if Bond had borrowed it for a gratuitous car chase, all the while commenting on its superb handling and acceleration, that would certainly have ruined the movie. Stick a product in in a context where one might realistically encounter it. Don't comment on it, extol its virtues, or zoom in for a close up of it.
Trying too hard to avoid product placement can be just as distracting. A can labelled "COLA" and with a not-quite-Coke design looks fake. Pixellating out the names of products and stores as if they were nudity is annoying.
Basically, I don't care whether the hero reaches for a Dasani or an Aquafina as long as it's unobtrusive, realistic for the character, non-distracting, and so on. If the audience consciously notices the item as being plugged, the advertising was too conspicuous.
Maybe it's because the TV programs are fiction.
I have to agree with the original post. I don't see the big deal here. If you don't want to see ads, turn off the tube. If you don't want to see product placements in your TV series, watch different TV series. Or don't watch the TV at all.
Consider this: I pretty much just watch football on TV, which is nothing but product placements -- not just for the various equipment manufacturers and beer companies, but also for the teams themselves. There are no disclaimers necessary, because if the equipment is bad, I'll get a good chance to see it for myself.
If we don't stop this now, then the line between a product placment sitcom and an infomercial becomse a blur. It will be a way for all infomercial creators to get around legistlation meant to protect users against fraud.
"We weren't actually saying that it would not cause harm to eat our product, it was a fictional sitcom"
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
For the next time some hippy says "information wants to be free." Well clearly only some information according to the slashbots. If information wants to be free, so be it. If someone is showing you that, in their humble opinion, pepsi is a delicious beverage far superior to other national brands, so be it. If someone is demonstrating that, in their humble opinion, a honda is a mighty fine automobile to drive, so be it.
Oh government, save us from Fox Mulder getting a haircut at supercuts. Look at that basketball player! He's clearly wearing nike shoes! But don't you dare say whose copyright we can and cannot infringe.
From FTC.gov
What truth-in-advertising rules apply to advertisers?
Under the Federal Trade Commission Act:
advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive;
advertisers must have evidence to back up their claims; and
advertisements cannot be unfair.
Additional laws apply to ads for specialized products like consumer leases, credit, 900 telephone numbers, and products sold through mail order or telephone sales. And every state has consumer protection laws that govern ads running in that state.
Wow no mention of to what types of advertisements this applies. So I bet it already covers product placement.
Oh Holy Government, deliver us from everyone who sells products. Most Benevolent Government, I cannot get myself to turn the TV off, so please, in thine mercy, clense the airwaves of any chance for profit. I mean, jobs are soooooooo overrated.
So is information free, or not?
For that matter, the United States is more left-wing than France, since we spend in taxes FAR more per capita than France or Britain on health care and social insurance. There is a huge misconception that the United States does not have socialized medicine. We have the most well-funded social health system in the world. We also have the most backwards, ill-designed, ineffective system whereby the government forces providers to provide the most costly emergency services, yet allows them to deny less expensive preventive services, centralizes funding, then decentralizes distribution through the states, which then dole out to both public and private providers adding a beyond byzantine amount of administrative overhead and consumer confusion. Canadians and Britons pay far less in taxes, yet have universal coverage that is more effective and costs them far less.
Don't start harping about how they all die in the hallways -- that is FAR more of an American problem where over 40% of people get their medical service in the Emergency Room when the condition has become life-threatening, thus costing you the taxpayer tens to hundreds of times more than it should have and causing trauma centers to pile up with patients.
It has nothing to do with running "a nanny state" and everything to do with basic concepts of public health like preventing epidemics. Like it or not, it IS in YOUR interest to ensure that your seemingly unwashed, irresponsible neighbors have health care so they won't accidentally kill you when they sneeze.