Leno is the total shill, but he’s under major pressure by NBC to generate revenue, so he’s not the one to blame for these placements. Especially annoying is the bald-faced admission of the “Earn Your Plug” segment. Ironically, the Bing segment was demo’ed on a Macintosh browser screen — I bet the M$ PR folks winced when they saw that.
Soon the sponsors’ ads will be displayed on the screen during the show in a way that we can’t possibly avoid. I wouldn’t be surprised if Leno’s desk started displaying ads on the front surface. (Is there an AdBlock Plus extension for TV?) Any form of subtlety is long gone.
I’ve come to re-appreciate newspapers because at least the embedded ads aren’t animated! Unfortunately, they won’t be around much longer.
I too loathed seeing Heroes being turned into a shill for Sprint. I don’t mean simply seeing a Sprint cellphone during the show. But they use to cover up all product names on Tv, decades ago. I mean the supplemental story line, that can only be seen via the Sprint website (or on their network?). I’m not going to lose any sleep, worrying about what I might be missing of Heroes, because I don’t have a Sprint account. I’m barely on board with this show, mostly out of curiosity. But if it ventures into multi-laned commercialized channels, forget it!
Speaking of Microsoft placements. Earlier this year, when I rented the movie “Day the Earth Stood Still” (2008). They had this “Microsoft Surface” tabletop in one scene. And one briefly saw the Windows XP logo in the center. Not I still think the “surface” technology is useless and has no real purpose. But this movie’s producers went out of their way to create a scene for a fictional Microsoft product. That’s not even (and may never be) available to today’s consumer market. So why even bother?!
I guess it’s like how they projected the existence of Pan Am, in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. When 2001 finally came (and went) Pan Am was out of business. And certainly never had commercial flights into space. So movies are shill for these companies to keep their stocks strong, not to sell products one can buy. Isn’t that a bit like Insider Trading, in some slick way?
If you want product placement, watch spanish language television like “Telemundo”.
There’s one show where the host actually gets the audience to sing the official tune of some Laundry Soap.
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I don’t care. I will merely observe that seeing any of them can get to be painful after too many views. Most are of course for things I won’t buy.
Leno is the total shill, but he’s under major pressure by NBC to generate revenue, so he’s not the one to blame for these placements. Especially annoying is the bald-faced admission of the “Earn Your Plug” segment. Ironically, the Bing segment was demo’ed on a Macintosh browser screen — I bet the M$ PR folks winced when they saw that.
Soon the sponsors’ ads will be displayed on the screen during the show in a way that we can’t possibly avoid. I wouldn’t be surprised if Leno’s desk started displaying ads on the front surface. (Is there an AdBlock Plus extension for TV?) Any form of subtlety is long gone.
I’ve come to re-appreciate newspapers because at least the embedded ads aren’t animated! Unfortunately, they won’t be around much longer.
I too loathed seeing Heroes being turned into a shill for Sprint. I don’t mean simply seeing a Sprint cellphone during the show. But they use to cover up all product names on Tv, decades ago. I mean the supplemental story line, that can only be seen via the Sprint website (or on their network?). I’m not going to lose any sleep, worrying about what I might be missing of Heroes, because I don’t have a Sprint account. I’m barely on board with this show, mostly out of curiosity. But if it ventures into multi-laned commercialized channels, forget it!
Speaking of Microsoft placements. Earlier this year, when I rented the movie “Day the Earth Stood Still” (2008). They had this “Microsoft Surface” tabletop in one scene. And one briefly saw the Windows XP logo in the center. Not I still think the “surface” technology is useless and has no real purpose. But this movie’s producers went out of their way to create a scene for a fictional Microsoft product. That’s not even (and may never be) available to today’s consumer market. So why even bother?!
I guess it’s like how they projected the existence of Pan Am, in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. When 2001 finally came (and went) Pan Am was out of business. And certainly never had commercial flights into space. So movies are shill for these companies to keep their stocks strong, not to sell products one can buy. Isn’t that a bit like Insider Trading, in some slick way?
If you want product placement, watch spanish language television like “Telemundo”.
There’s one show where the host actually gets the audience to sing the official tune of some Laundry Soap.
Someone mentioned the Google search bar in the Bing segment…funnier is that the browser they show is Apple’s Safari.