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."

Comments

Re:It seems kind of pathetic to do that.

[wyldeone]

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.