"McMorning, everyone! Here's the news"
The tentacle-like growth of clandestine advertising
in TV shows in the form of product placement has taken
another controversial step with the introduction of
McDonald's products into regional news programs.
Fox 5 News anchors Jason Feinberg and Monica Jackson
and the McDonald’s coffee, filled with fake ice
Product Placement: McDonalds on Breakfast News Show
"McMorning, Everyone! Here is the News"
Current affairs show in deals with McDonald's
Critics attack product placement trend in US
The tentacle-like growth of clandestine advertising in American TV shows in the form of product placement has taken another controversial step with the introduction of McDonald's products into regional news programmes.
Several TV outlets have begun to sell the fast-food giant the right to place cups of its iced coffee on to the desks of news anchors as they present morning current affairs shows.
Typical is Fox 5 News in Las Vegas, an affiliate of Rupert Murdoch's Fox television network. Two cups of coffee, their cubes of ice glinting in the studio lights, now daily stand before the channel's morning presenters.
The presenters conspicuously do not drink from the cups, which is just as well - the cups contain a bogus fluid and fake ice to prevent the cubes melting.
The New York Times has reported that similar deals to place McDonald's products in news shows are up and running in TV stations in Chicago, Seattle and New York.
Product placement has become a huge branch of advertising in the US, creeping into all areas of entertainment television. Not only are products seen on camera, they also make their way into drama scripts, such as an episode of the popular soap, The OC, which had one character talk about having "a9.com'd" a friend on the day the internet search company A9 launched a Yellow Pages service of the same name.
Advertising and broadcasting content have become increasingly blurred, with new reality TV show, What I Like About You, pitting young women against each other to compete for an acting slot on an advert for Herbal Essences. The ad is then broadcast in a break during the show.
This is the first time product placement has percolated through to news broadcasts. Journalism ethics groups have protested it is another erosion of standards.
"There has been in broadcast journalism certainly, and arguably in all journalism, a drifting away from the standards of straight news in the direction of entertainment," said Roy Peter Clark of the school for journalists, the Poynter Institute.
Fox 5 News has declined to reveal how much it is being paid by McDonald's for the six-month promotion. The station's news director, Adam Bradshaw, said that the product placement was only allowed in programmes that were appropriate, including later morning shows with an accent on lifestyle.
"I would not put it on a straight newscast like my 5 or 10pm news," Bradshaw said.
The other potential difficulty with the new trend in TV news was conflict of interest. Bradshaw said the McDonald's deal would in no way impede the station broadcasting negative news concerning the food chain.
"News is news. Sales is sales. If there's a story about McDonald's we would report on it just like anyone else," he said.
He added that in such cases he would remove the coffee cups from the newscasters' desks, in a similar way to the pulling of adverts for airline companies during newscasts that report an air crash.
TV stations across America are suffering from a downturn in advertising, partly due to the challenge of the internet and partly due to the country's more recent economic troubles.
In a harsh financial climate, many are turning to new cash streams, such as Fox 5 News's latest innovation.
TV Commercials: Capitalist Propaganda [Source]
TV titans and the marketing industry are gearing up to sap our will and make Americans more passive than ever. Their ultimate goal: the breakup of American character followed by the commercialization of the American soul.
This is TV’s negotiating time with advertisers. Networks and advertisers are meeting this month to plot the reinforcement and intensification of our mindless absorption of TV commercials.
It seems that not enough of us are sitting comatose for hours of non-stop consumerist reverie.
Too many of us, apparently, are getting up from TV sets to stretch our legs and use the bathroom. The industry is also upset at us for muting the commercials and wandering off to have a beer or acknowledge a family member.
According to a report this week in The New York Times, TV titans are planning changes to please advertisers that include integrating the actors and actresses from the programming into the ads, as well as simultaneously showing more ads with the programming.
The goal, one marketing executive said proudly, “is to blur the line between content and advertising message.”
Thank you, TV land, for blurring that line and making the impaired vision of more Americans your policy contribution to national health. That vision thing that democrats talk about is overrated anyway.
What’s so bad, other than enriching Wal-Mart, about being compulsively acquisitive and addicted to a stream of erotic impulses to buy more plastic storage bins to keep our junk in?
TV commercials heighten our sense of deprivation and keep us in a state of secret longing for what we don’t have. What’s the big payoff for us?
The commercials feed our emotional addiction to the feeling of emptiness, just as, sure enough, the debt of consumerism empties out our pockets.
Let’s pretend we’re not quite that screwed up and that our shopping carts are not piled high with illusions of entitlement.
Let’s make believe we’re not tracking through a no-man’s parking lot of impulses, sensations, and compulsions without a sense of interdependence or belonging.
Advertising has been toying with our emotions to foster desire since the 1920s. What would we do if the commercials ever stopped?
The void in our lives would be devastating, like highways without gas stations. All the logos, brand names, and cool things through which we relate to the world would abandon the cultural landscape, voiding our identity.
The impulse to spend money would desert us, and we might feel obliged to save the cash and use it to reclaim the country from foreign holders of our debt.
So when the Nielsen Company calls to see if we’re being good Americans and watching all the commercials, it’s important to say, “Yes, please keep them coming. I watch them all the time.
"Make them better, more powerful. Blur my vision so I won’t be distracted or frightened by reality.”
Some of us, however, might feel it’s worthwhile to resist the commercialization of our soul.
When watching a program we like, what do we do then when a commercial break comes on? Abiding by an 11th Commandment, “Thou shalt not watch commercials,” seems a bit rigid.
It’s probably better to become conscious of our circumstances in the moment: “Oh yes, it’s me, I’m alive and well, emerging in this moment from my stupor here in front of my TV.” We can then close our eyes and try to recall our name.
We can also ask ourselves, “Is this commercial worth seeing for the 100th time?” Or we might say instead, “How about if I mute the sound and get up and do 50 sit-ups before plopping back down with my popcorn.”