Things I Hate About TV: Extremely blatant product placement

Ah well, I'm off to Burger King. It's a wonderful restaurant!

Agreed - this drives me NUTS!! 30 Rock handled it well (a la Wayne's World). This made me go straight to YouTube to find this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7thSdlRhuM

I have to agree with "sitruc", though, that this joke will be worn out quickly. It will be interesting to see where advertising moves...Maybe more online as more viewers get their programming via streaming?

Here's my idea: More people would WANT to watch commercials if they were funny & original - more like the programs. Now if only there were an abundance of idle programming writers willing to be paid bigger salaries by large corporations...

They are called "Soap Opera" because Soap companies Sponsored the shows. If ANY TV show was to have blatant Ads it is this type of show.

Don't get me wrong, I love "30 Rock" (and will miss it after the last episode that was in the can before the WGA strike airs next month). But I thought that it was a little bit tiresome when they used product placement as a joke the second and third times (Verizon and Bee Movie). If you were just starting to watch the show, well then I could see why you thought it was brilliant, but really the first time it was used (in Season One) with the Snapple was the only time it was funny and not tired.

"30 Rock should be used as an example. While they have had some pretty blatant product placement this season, it has been incorporated in such as way as to be funny and part of the plot rather than be jarring and senseless."
I may be in the minority, but I don't get that reasoning. 30 Rock was some of the most blatant advertising written into a show that I have seen. Product placement can be part of a joke, but it can get old, quick when it is the joke. I'd rather see billboards in the background, a bus driving by with an ad on the side, a can of a particular brand of soda or the camera pan across a laptop's logo. I'm not saying it can't be written into the script or it should only be background objects, but I just don't understand why 30 Rock was good for what they did(I know I'm not getting my point across, but my brain has shutdown for the year). I do prefer background objects being the ads, but I hate it when any ad distracts from the scene. I was going through the channels the other day and one channel was near the end of the movie "Coach Carter" and one of the kid's headband with an And1 logo was moving depending on which side the camera was on and it was driving me crazy. After the initial jokes, the product placement on 30 Rock was annoying to me. GE, NBC-Universal, Verizon, countless others. I get it. I wonder if they will allow the sponsors to be changed for re-runs if the show ever makes syndication. In my mind, a voice over replacing GE with some other company is funnier than what 30 Rock did. Aren't a few shows like Yes, Dear digitally changing the advertiser on background objects?

As a longtime Days fan here, I feel that if product placement is what it takes to keep the struggling soap to stay on the air, I can take it. One thing growing up that always annoyed me is how shows did everything they could NOT to promote real products (such as heading to eat at "Burger Guy") and seeing a real product show up on a show does add realism because we all see it in our lives.

The best product placement ever was in "Return of the Killer Tomatoes". Halfway through the film, production stops since they ran out of money. Someone suggests product placement, and in the next seen you see someone hold a box of Corn Flakes in front of George Clooney's face while he's speaking.

Passions did the same thing a few months ago with a home pregnancy test. And 7th Heaven had an obnoxious history with Oreos and Campbell Soup.

.....Not that anyone watches Passions or 7th Heaven.....Certainly not me, anyway. Um......

This is completely ridiculous. So the networks are just supposed to air their shows with zero advertisements? Someone has to pay for the content on television. With so many DVRs ruining the traditional advertisement scheme, something has to change. At least the networks aren't like the music industry; suing everyone that fast forwards commercials. Deal with product placement, it may be the only way for "free" television to survive.

The reason why we complain, even though it's supposedly short and painless, is because it rips us out of the fantasy and back into the reality of we're watching a tv show. The characters aren't real, they're actors. And then ya' get pissed afterwards and can't get back into the show.