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NBC to Create Programs Centered on Sponsors
explosivejared writes "It sounds farcical when you first hear it, but NBC has teamed up with an ad agency to produce actual feature programs that are centered around promoting the products of the network's sponsors. The network has already begun production on one sci-fi program entitled 'Gemini Division,' which will act as a platform for products from Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco. The programming will be broadcast via the network's 'digital properties,' e.g. the NBC web site. I guess it was only a matter of time for something like this to come along after product placement became the norm."
The significant point, however, is that the show comes first. By reversing the creative process and using product promotion as a starting point, not only is the quality of content likely to suffer, but the effectiveness of the advertising along with it.
What's worse, it seems these plans will give the brands involved an unprecedented level of influence over the content. From TFA: [It will be] a unique way of giving brands a seat at the table with writers and producers in developing episodic programming that ties directly to brand needs
Amnesty International
Make TV shows from ads?! That's so easy a caveman could do it!
My work here is dung.
Like they say, nothing new under the sun...
Another great reason to continue avoiding network tv.
expandfairuse.org
And after the DVR makes commercial-skipping so much easier. The business model must evolve. Unknown if it will survive. And while I know everyone will say that this will turn most viewers off, the truth is if it's entertaining people will watch.
I love this quote:
The collaborationBSOD jokes aside, I'm trying to figure out how you can communicate helpful technical product information in a science fiction drama show. Is it going to be like the time Jeff Goldblum used Mac OS 9 to take down the alien computer systems? Or is Rosario Dawson going to chase aliens and time travel with a Zune and an MSDN subscription? It's one thing to have a Coke can sitting in plain view, it's another to show how the protagonists succeed using shrinkwrapped software.
So when i pirate this quality content, are they going to try sue me? after all marketing is the entire point of this.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This was the norm on old radio programs.
Jack Benny centered who knows how many of his jokes on Jello. In the Whistler, people were always pulling into Signal gas stations. Sometimes going miles to fine one of those "fine signal gas stations". Fibber McGee & Molly even made the Johnson Wax pitchman the crux of their plots.
With lower costs in producing this kind of stuff it makes perfect sense. Everything old is new again.
Just wait, the "Mattel and Mars Bar Quick Energy Chocobot Hour" can not be far off. Check your local listings.
It might actually be an improvement over current Fox shows.
I've been listening to old radio shows on Sirius satellite when I take long drives, and I have come to look forward to the Johnson Wax spot on the Fibber McGee and Molly show. They usually did a pretty good of working it in more or less naturally; for instance, when getting a spare room ready for a boarder, the sponsor's guy comes for a visit and marvels at how good the floor looks because of its Johnson Wax coat. Part of the fun of it is them not pretending it's not a sponsor's spot. Usually Fibber will make some comment to the audience about cover your ears, once he gets going he doesn't know how to stop, and there's always some good natured ribbing. In fact, I end up looking forward to them. I imagine it was much the same for the listeners back in the day.
If sponsors could do their promos like that old show, it wouldn't be half bad. But most of the others were not nearly so slick.
Infuriate left and right
I can understand how shows like Night Court (in which Harry Anderson, playing Judge Harry Stone, always had a Macintosh in his office) could feature a product without having it get in the way of a show. And certainly there are car companies that have had cars featured on shows or in movies, such as James Bond. But those were never central to the plot, so they didn't manage to drag things down like the proposed sponsor-centric content promises to. Even the show-within-a-show of The Truman Show didn't seem to have the nasty property they're talking about, since the plot focused on the character... the ads were just incidental ways to add revenue, kind of like hyperlinked ads in and around web articles or the hypertext-captioning of the Interstellar News Network on Babylon 5.
Your putting it this way made me realize--it's not just the creation but the ongoing generation of new episodes, not to please a fan-base but to exploit a fan-base. Moreover, as the product evolves, the show has to evolve to match... not just as the starting point of the series but for each episode. This means they can't take it where the show wants to go, they have to take it where the product wants to go, and that's going to reach a divergence. It also means that if the product is upgraded or sold or someone wants a "fresh angle", the show is going to be canceled on a dime without any regard for what the public wants. Because shows are about "what viewers want" and ads are about "what we want viewers to want".
This divergence of purpose bodes ill.
I used to write regular parodies of The Young and the Restless (out of irritation for where the writers were taking the show). In the process, I found that writing for characters that viewers understand is something where you can't "lie" in the writing. If you do, you lose the viewers. I'd start to write something trying to make it go a certain way and the voice of the characters would tell me "No, you have to go another direction. That direction is not true to my character." And it worked best to just roll with it and see where the characters would naturally take me. I came to a belief that what makes good writing is when the characters are alive like that in your mind, and the characters are writing a "true" story--not in the sense of non-fiction, but in the sense of following how life would really go. Sort of like method acting but for writing... (Ah, I see. There are no new ideas in the world. Google tells me that the term method writing I just made up is an already elaborated theory. But yes, like that. Count me an instant believer that there is merit in this line of thinking.) Anyway, my point is that the kind of cynical "we can make it go where it needs to go" writing is quite suspect...
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Except that 'Allow' will be greyed out.