July 14th, 2008
Product Placements Acquire a Life of Their Own on Shows
By Stephanie Clifford
The New York Times
This is the kind of product placement woven into the plot of a popular show that is of growing concern to the Federal Communications Commission and consumer groups. Product placements are “a huge, out-of-control issue,” said Robert Weissman, the managing director of Commercial Alert, a nonprofit group that aims to limit commercial marketing. He said that the involvement of advertisers in the shaping of scripts and plots represented “fundamental encroachments on the independence of the programming.”