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.""

Yea, Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

Any suggestions for other ways to pay for television besides ads or product placement? Don't say "pledge".

A little First Post happy??

[(54)T-Dub]

Maybe if you read the whole story before clicking reply:

Yet these programs typically lack the disclosure required of infomercials to uphold honesty and fair dealing.

Re:Just turn the box off...

[honeygrl]

"If you don't then purchase your TV channels. "

We do purchse our TV channels. The cable company pays X cents per channel per Y # of customers for each channel they offer. Each channel sets their price. My hubby works for the local cable company and told me the reason cable prices had gone up was because they had been paying 10 cents per channel for Y number of customers and the price had gone up to 30 cents. The stations can pretty much raise the price all they want and people don't complain to them because they don't know how it works. They just complain to the cable company about their prices going up instead.

Re:Howard Stern

[tpaddock]

It was Kathy Griffin, and she said she got paid to go tour around all the talk shows with her only goal being to advertise the product. She would slip in it in story, and often had to tell the show beforehand that she was there to promote the product.

some good books on this subject...

[jtilak]

reading is fundamental...
Culture Jam [amazon.com]
Adcult USA [amazon.com]
Affluenza [amazon.com]
No Logo [amazon.com]
Amusing Ourselves to Death [amazon.com]
Endangered Minds [amazon.com]
Selling Out America's Children [amazon.com]

Re:Product placement is good

[eweu]

In films characters held bottles labeled 'Beer' and ate from boxes labeled 'Cereal.' Things like that just wouldn't cut it today.

Worked in Repo Man [imdb.com].

Anti-drug plotlines

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC the US government has used product placement to their effect with the deals made with some stations around 2-3 years ago. Basicly the stations have to allow x amount of comercials time to the government. This was usually at prime time, and could be sold for a lot more than the government was paying. In exchange, some of the shows (ones which the station had editorial control over) featured drug related storylines, and "moral" endings.

Didn't bother me much. I use what I want to use, so long as it doesn't bother others, but I do recognise drug use does have problems. Most of those are made worse by the illegality of drugs, but there are some root causes. Addiction for example, many people are dependant on caffiene. Many people use it, a fair number abuse it (binging rather than continual usage) but don't end up selling it :)

Plus the whole propeganda thing doesn't bother me either (I'm English/Kiwi I'm used to the state owning the means of communication).

But all the same, if you can pay for product placement, whats to stop you funding plotlines? Or entire series?

- Shaman

This is nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Product placement and blatent in-show advertising actually harks way back to the first days of the golden age of television. It wasn't uncommon back then to see Lucy and Desi stop dead in the tracks in the middle of the show to start plugging Chesterfield ciagrettes..or whatever the sponsor of the week was. Game shows almost always had the name of some sponsor PLASTERED all over the set. People just don't know these things because it's all been cut out of the reruns we see today. Is this better than having to stop 5 times an hour for commercials? I couldn't say..but as someone who loves watching reruns of older shows, I can tell you the commerical breaks keep getting longer, in addition to all the product placement. And, does anyone but me remember (longingly) the days when TV shows actually had closing credits??

Re:UK has left-wing policies

[Nexus Seven]

Taxation isn't that high:

10% low rate
22% mid-rate
40% high rate

Although I'll acknowledge that "high rate" is a bit of a misnomer these days.
Compare that to France or Germany's 50-60% tax rate, though...

you can't get around that BBC is big government-controlled media
No its not. In fact, government interference with the BBC is specifically prohibited by law. That's why the BBC routinely turns out to be the government's biggest thorn. See the recent situation in the UK with the BBC and the government battling it out as an example.

...government control of health care...
Only in America is free health care "left wing", despite the fact that it's universally available in every other western nation.

...most of the economy...
Name me a government owned company...