Cinematical

Also added to the confusion: "Medium" is produced by Paramount, then aired on NBC.

Personally, I have problems with product placement just for product placement. It is easy to have the product fit the narrative other than vice versa. The setup on "Medium" sounds forced.

I have appreciated self-aware placement such as the Burker King setting in an episode of "Arrested Development". After that show and previously with Wayne's World, however, that concept can already be put to rest.

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No, I don't think I'd rather have product placement scripted into the television shows I watch. I'm used to commercials, I can deal with the 2-4 minute distractions associated with them (if you've grown up in the US, like I have, then you've undoubtedly built up strategies for avoiding them . . . strategies that are second nature).

I think scripting the adverts would create a huge pressure on the writing process (I can envision agreements whereby a certain show is required to script in X number of adverts). It's an additional adulterartion (on top of product placment) that I can do without.

And there's also the question of buying DVD collections of series (which I sometimes do): part of the pleasure of buying a box-set for $60 is that I can actually watch an entire run (a season, let's say) without the commercials. Scripting commercials into series (rather than using commercial breaks) means that when you buy the dvds you're also buying a permanent record of those in-story adverts.

cel

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Ads in shows typically mean a closer mesh with reality. I don't watch "Medium," but I'd rather her talk about going to a real movie than a fake one, much like I'd rather see a Pepsi can than a blue and red "Soda" can.

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i don't see how this is different from the last csi:miami episode starting with madonna's 'hung up'.

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Speaking of those blue and red "Soda" cans, I've always thought it funny how you can place a product in a movie/show and get money for doing so, but if you don't have an agreement for the licensing, you can get sued. I never understood that.

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I find the business side of this deal fascinating. Three different studios, three different production companies. I think we're going to be seeing a lot more blurring the lines between advertising and editorial -- the way to marketing in a world of Tivo and iPod and Internet downloads

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This is the first of many acts of desperation as the traditional masters of movie/TV/music distribution slowly die off and are replaced by new, more efficient distribution systems.

If they increase product placement to the point where they don't need traditional ads, the content will be crap. They can be "smart" and "subtle" about one, two, maybe even three products, but fifteen or twenty? Not gonna work. And two ot three sponsors won't pay to support a whole 1-hour show, unless their product is showcased at least four to five times per episode. Also not gonna work.

Over the next decade, networks will die, and the first skirmishes are being fought over who the distributors of content will be. Your cable company, iTunes/Rhapsod/etc., telcos, everyone sees the writing on the wall, and wants a piece of this future pie.

Currently, between the consumer and the production company stand multiple layers of companies that comprise the current distribution system - advertisers who finance, cable companies delivering the signal, networks determining the content and matching it with advertisers. Remove these layers (and the corresponding profit margin for all of these), and you are left with producers-distributors-consumers. The barrier to entry in the production field is minimized, since you can probably support a moderate-budget show on a few hundred thousand viewers (whereas today's networks cancel shows with a few million as "poorly-rated") willing to pay for content, plus one or two product placements per episode.

You get more content, and more content variety, content targeted to specific audiences (and not watered down to appeal to some bullsh*t Nielsen family) and content distribution in synch with modern lifestyles - watch it when you can or want to, not when Les Moonves tells you to do so.

And you get fewer Farscape/Dead Like Me/Arrested Development heartbreaks, because many such shows become economically viable in such an environment.

(FYI, my friend Marc and I had been discussing such things long before the whole iTunes/TV content deal came out, as he has TV channels as clients, and this is one of their main concerns)

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I was appalled at the shameless Geisha product placement. First, it took me a minute to get that we'd gone from the show to the commercial; I was ashamed and annoyed when I belatedly got it. I realize that it's just a TV drama, and being disingenous here isn't the same as being disingenous on something important like whether Iraq ever had WMDs, but in this climate of eroding trust, I would think retaining trustworthiness would be important. It makes Amazon look great, that at least they'll say "We think people interested in X are also interested in Y" (which sometimes yields inscrutable results). Medium didn't bother to say why they thought Geisha was right for its viewers.

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