mymediamusings

Product Placement Paranoia is Pathetic

There were a whole bunch of articles over the past few weeks about the supposed dangers and threats caused by the rise of product placement in television programming. The UK looks like it’s going to try to ban it completely. HuffPo reports:

“Product placement on broadcast TV is soaring — up 39% in the first quarter of 2008 alone. Federal regulators are taking note. According to an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required), the Federal Communications Commission recently voted to “open a formal proceeding about new rules requiring more disclosure of product placement.”

Nanny-state, anyone? And as TechDirt points out:

“All content is advertising in some manner or another. A TV show acts as advertising for the network it’s on, for the actors in the show, for the producer of the show and as “endorsers” of the products in its ads. Does that all need to be disclosed as well?”

Come on, people. Everyone knows that it is advertisers who pay for television programming. If we’e going to continue to find ways like TiVo and downloads to get around traditional ads they have to find another way to reach us. Otherwise, they will stop paying for the programs that were created for the sole purpose of selling things in the first place.

That’s why they call ‘em “soap operas.” They were developed by the dishsoap companies as radio dramas for the housewives home alone all day – and they all sold dishsoap.

The idea of going back to the days when a can of coca cola has to say “soda” on it instead is absurd. We live in a branded world. Just because we’re putting our world on TV is no reason why the brands should all disappear.

And who is the government afraid all this product placement is hurting? Do they think it is causing subliminal urges in people to buy things they don’t need? That’s the backbone of our economy!