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TiVo Causes Increase in Product Placement
ndansmith writes "Wired has got an article on how TiVo and other 'ad-skipping technologies' have caused an upsurge in product placements on network television shows. The 84% increase in product placements on TV over the last year has drawn protests from both the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. An example from the article: 'In a recent episode of the NBC series Medium, writers had to work the movie Memoirs of a Geisha into the dialogue three times because of a deal the network made with Sony earlier in the season. They even had the characters go on a date to an early screening of the movie and bump into friends who had just viewed Geisha to tell them how good it was.' Readers may also remember a controversial Cisco Systems product placement on Fox's 24."
http://www.cisco.com/now/24/indexIPcommunications. html
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I want my! I want my! I want my Eee PC!
You don't seem to have a very good grasp on how this system works. The money that you pay each month to the cable company goes to the cable company in return for offering the service—not to the stations. The stations, meanwhile, make (nearly) all their money on advertising. Thus the amount of ads has nothing to do with your cable bill.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
I watched a Korean drama with a friend and I swear the only purpose of the show was to sell the sound track and promote the artists. Every single episode there were 5 songs that would always have to be played no matter what.
I meant to say paid placement is sneaky, not infomercials.
It was an Audi, not a Mercedes.
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In the U.S. they've been doing that for years. The producers have to blur them for two reasons.
1. The companies buying commercial time (at a later date) may not like having a competitor getting free air time during the show.
2. The companies that didn't pay for the product placement can actually sue the show if they don't like how their product is being used/displayed during the show and/or what show their product is being shown on.
As a bonus, you know whenever your Tivo upgrades because you have to turn it on again.
Over here in the UK the mobile phone company orange runs movie ads in cinemas.
The basic plot of which is a bunch of marketing types from orange proceed to ruin a movie, with product placement, ringtone tie-ins and general marketing bollocks.
The punch line being "don't let a mobile ruin your movie"; A public service announcement to turn off mobile phones in the cinemas.
Although these are satirical ads, you just know that the writers are basing the marketing droids on real people/events.
Most people who when they see great art get a touch of enlightenment, a few weasles however want to use it as a method of selling you stuff!
"they have planned"? Ok, it would make sense, but who says they've planned this?
I just now went to google and used the phrase "mexico company dvd product placement" and the first link includes the following:
"For clients without need for U.S. exposure, Publicidad En Cines is able to offer DVD product placement and cross promotion for the Mexican release of a film and DVD."
This has been worked on for quite a while. You'll find many more articles using google.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
This is doable in movies, but a television studio recording is typically too expensive for taping/filming alternate scenes. And I think the advertisment of the alts would make people buy the DVDs even more, instead of watching the broadcast.
They don't film a whole show in one take. The huge amounts of blooper/deleted/cut scenes on DVD format of TV shows show this fact very well.
With the $400,000+ per 30 seconds of advertising that some shows get that will assuredly go to DVD and make money, the studios can easily get 2 good takes of each scene and not stress about it too much.
The loss of money isn't mostly the retakes, it's the massive amount of shows that don't bring in a lot of revenue that are the problem.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
Given that my cable here in Britain costs about the same as yours in America, but shows far less adverts, it's not cheaper at all. Here we have laws limiting the time advert breaks can last, and the advert-free BBC providing an alternative if the commerical channels push the limits. Advertisers here have simply learnt that having their advert shown 5 times out of 100 adverts a day is better for them than having it shown 40 times out of 1000, and they would rather have a 5% share of eyeballs than a 4%. The scarcity of advertising slots here has simply pushed the price up, the revenue to the cable/broadcast companies is exactly the same.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Television's primary product for sale is not the junk featured in ads, it's YOUR eyeballs. Where do networks get their primary source of revenue? From selling your eyeballs upstream to corporations. The TV shows are just crummy hooks to get your eyeballs for a little while. Is there some level of art, acting, or writing involved? Sure, a little. But the VAST majority of TV programming is happy, blinky stuff to keep you hooked for just a few more minutes.
I admit that I like plugging in for a little brain-nap myself, but don't forget there ARE other forms of entertainment. I mean, let's not elevate the so-called art of television to some level that we think they're above blatent product placement.
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
Even without Tivo, we've gotten to the point where we just tape everything on the VCR and watch it later. Usually, I'd rather watch tv on the weekends, but most of the shows I watch are during the week. So I just tape them and watch them later. This has been possible for 20 years. I don't know why it hasn't been a problem before. I think that tv shows are just looking for an excuse to put out more ads. I mean, I don't know "that many" people with tivos. certainly not a big percentage compared to those who tape shows and watch them later on their vcr.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Apparently, 1 hour US shows are about 44 minutes.
Half hour shows are about 22 minutes.
Approximately 16 minutes of advertising / hour
Now if program A leaves the antenna at 10AM....