Regular Life

You might skip commercials with that TiVO or DVR, but if current trends continue, you still will see the ads.

Historically, network television shows have been a great source of corny, made-up brand names on various products — usually food items. “Chocoloate Milk Mix,” or “Oaty Toast O’s” could be seen at any moment. Last week, however, I noticed while watching an episode of “King of Queens” that they talked about and showed a bag of Cheetos several times. Because the main character is overweight and they play on that a lot, this show has featured several generic names for junk food. While I don’t know why the caged bird sings, I now know why they suddenly started using Cheetos.

In the wake of consumers’ pausing “live” TV and fast-forwarding through commercials, advertisers are pressuring writers to place products in scripts. This ranges from a bag of chips to what movie the characters see (and subsequently rave about, of course).

This means viewers will have to endure lines meant not just to make them laugh or cry, but to urge them to buy, buy, buy! Increasingly popular DVD’s of episodic television are a large source of revenue for the studios and a huge boon to viewers who want to enjoy commercial-free entertainment. The infusion of ads into scripts will sully that experience, unless producers come up with some ingenious product placement method that allows easy removal from the DVD version.

Some have commented that podcasting, the practice of listening to or watching content downloaded from the Internet, is a way around advertising. I doubt it will remain so if it goes mainstream enough to make the advertisers notice. Just listen to any popular FM radio station for 30 minutes to get an idea where this could lead. Producers and distributors of quality original content rarely give it away if they can get paid.

On some nights, my wife and I don’t watch TV at all, but when we do, we skip commercials with great joy. We recorded the classic Charlie Brown Christmas special for our son, for whom we feel skipping commercials is much more important than for us. I can’t stand that I cannot hear certain songs without the commercial bastardization coming to mind. “You ain’t got a thing if you ain’t got that cling… Do-wrap, do-wrap, d0-wrap…”

For commercial-free television, consumers might just have to ditch the fee-based recorders and TV-show DVD’s, and spend that saved money on premium channels like HBO and Showtime. I saw the light a week ago, when DishNetwork gave us several HBO channels for free. There is some excellent programming over there for both adults and children.

Here’s an article with more details on the disturbing trend of product placement, including examples.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,69775,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3

On a slightly related note, DirecTV was ordered to pay a penalty for calling “do-not-call” numbers:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051213/ap_en_bu/do_not_call

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