The FCC Focuses On Something Other than Nudity, For Once
Product placement. You know it, you love it. But pretty soon, the characters on your favorite show might be drinking “nameless red-can soda” instead of Coke. If you guessed that the FCC might have something to do with it, then you’re right - but I gave it away in the title, so don’t get too boastful.
Here’s a brief rundown of the situation, from Reuters:
The agency said it believes product placement ads in children’s programming already run afoul of current FCC advertising restrictions. But it questioned whether a more explicit, outright ban is needed.
The issue of so-called “embedded advertisements” has been a subject of rising concern in recent years among consumer groups and some lawmakers in Congress.
Programmers are turning to embedded advertising since many viewers were using TiVos and other digital video recorders to skip over traditional ads.
A group of 23 consumer and health advocacy groups wrote in a June 19 letter to the FCC urging the agency to tighten the rules on the embedded ads, as well as a related tactic known as “product integration” which weaves product promotions into the script of a TV program.
The advocacy groups, including Public Citizen and the Parents Television Council, cited industry estimates of a 13 percent increase in the number of product placements in prime time network television in 2007.
Can you imagine? THIRTEEN PERCENT.
On one hand, I have the natural knee-jerk reaction to this: WHY? Why does the FCC want to babysit us even further? Do they think that we don’t realize all visible brand names on T.V. are paid-for? Do they actually believe that we’re going to jump up in the middle of an episode of CSI: Miami and declare, “I need to go buy a Nokia wireless phone…MIAMI STYLE.” (YEAAAAAAAAH!)
(Disclaimer: I have no idea if Nokia advertises on CSI: Miami. I don’t really care, either. But I do recall reading an article on Survivor, in which one of the contestants confessed that they were forced to call the phone a Nokia. “I need to use the Nokia.” If I had watched the show, that would have stood out like a sore thumb to me. But hey. I guess some people don’t notice, and just blindly assume that Nokia is the only manufacturer of wireless phones.)
On the other hand, anything that distracts them from wardrobe malfuctions is a good thing.
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I would normally suggest that something’s got to be done about this, but given that network television viewership is falling through the floor like a hot rock covered in acid, I think the market might be equipped to handle this. The migration to direct to video movies and the internet is proving that people are getting sick up and fed with being babysat by an amorphous government agency with way more power than it should have.
Here’s an interesting thing about the FCC re: warderobe malfunctions. The agency doesn’t actively monitor television, but rather responds to complaints. And where do those complaints come from? For the Jackson tit, at least, 99% of them came from the same organization spamming the FCC with automatically generated letters.