Product placement a new era.
Here is an interesting feature from Tuesday’s New York Times – thank you Spinwatch for highlighting it
“Product placement is hardly a new phenomenon, and the morning [U.S. television] shows long ago mastered the quid pro quo of daily television: Actors give interviews timed to their latest projects; authors are recruited as experts just as their books hit the stores,” writes Alessandra Stanley. “But the fourth hour of ‘Today’ has tipped the balance of the program. … Especially now, in the Christmas holiday marketing frenzy, it is sometimes hard to tell the NBC program from those on ShopNBC or QVC. … It used to be that hosts who are at least nominally part of the network’s news division maintained an air of neutrality during consumer segments; now they are in on the pitch.” This further blurring of “the distinction between consumer news and product promotion” isn’t helped by the fact that “Wal-Mart recently began showing a 20-minute infomercial — four women chatting roguishly over coffee mugs about the merits of the chain — that looks uncannily like an episode of ‘The View