productplacement

The Newark Star-Ledger's Alan Sepinwall (actually his friend Phil Rosenthal) points out on his blog that last night's pilot for 30 Rock had an interesting bit of product placement: the oven that "vice president of East Coast and microwave oven programming" Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwon) developed, the GE Profile Trivection oven, is real (notice what it says on the lower left corner of that web page: "The GE Profile oven with Trivection technology becomes a star on NBC's new sitcom, 30 Rock.").

But that's not the most interesting part. NBC decided to air an ad for the Trivection oven right after the scene where Jack talks about the oven to Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) and producer Pete (Scott Adsit). It's as if they wanted to emphasize to the audience, "Hey, folks, this isn't some comedy thing Tina came up with! It really does use three kinds of heat!" Considering the fact that the scene was making fun of Donaghy, I'm not sure if this was the right move by GE. Was this an ingenious way to introduce a product or an act of desperation by NBC's parent company? Let me know in the comments.

Yeah, I hate it too. The Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America staged a joint protest in Los Angeles yesterday over product placement. The two organizations have been united against the same cause since November. They picketed and chanted in front of a building in Beverly Hills where an advertising summit, sponsored by Ad Age, was taking place. SAG and WGA weren't allowed in the meeting, despite their requests to be allowed in. Both groups are pushing for regulations, or a "code of conduct" on product placement in television and movies. At the very least, they want more money for not only being storytellers but also advertising copywriters.

While Pepsi cans and Fed Ex trucks in the background are all strategically placed, the writers and actors have a problem when the powers-that-be require them to work products into a story or even write an entire story around a product.