It's interesting that Sears didn't appear on the list but that "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" did. Do they not count companies that bankroll shows as "product placement"?

They should look at company websites. Foxnews.com's website looks like a yard sell compared to cnn or msnbc.

What is even worse is that you get product placement AND commercials. It is like the worst of both worlds.

Again, this is just another example of corporations (often reporting to shareholders) trying to maximize profits, and at the expense of the product itself. Where these is healthy competition, a direct cause-effect can be seen. In quasi-monopolies, they can get away with it much longer.

I knew I had an incredible urge to buy that chicago bears coke bottle, and the chef-style nike shoes, and a cingular wireless phone to listen to music at a 24hr fitness club......

whoops, maybe I don't pay enough attention, but I didn't notice any of that, nor make any purchases of those brands (except for coke for the various 'beverages' I consume) haha.

@loquaciousmusic:

bankrolling a show is different from product placement......Sears is a brand, not a product ;)

I don't watch American Idol, so maybe someone can clue me in on this, but I thought the show consisted of people singing, the judges giving their opinion, and people voting. Where does all this product placement come in to play?

Only one of these shows that I watch is Amazing Race. Aside from the cars that they drive, I really can't think of any product placements, so they must not be very obtrusive/obvious. Anyone know what they are?

There's a huge difference between simply placing a product into a show and making a show ABOUT that product (branded entertainment.)

Some shows are excellent about integrating products into their plots. But it's ridiculous to complain about either of these things: they are what bankroll the programming we enjoy. If you don't like it, stop watching TV.

I also wonder if they miss product placements on medical dramas.

GE medical image machines routinely show up on medical shows with their name brands in plain view, brand specific technical language used and descriptions of what the machien does leaking into conversation.

really, as long as the product placement is done well, i don't mind. if it saves me a couple of commercials, then i'll take it.

Tivo is the reason product placement is becoming more popular. The next thing to look forward to is dynamic product placement. It already exists for sporting events (many of the billboards during games are photoshopped in). It won't be long before Randy, Paula, and Simon's coke cup is replaced with a blue mug and the logo photoshopped in by the network or even the affiliate.

I only watch two of those shows but they're both enough to bug me with the product placement. (ANTM and Hell's Kitchen, if you're curious.)
Good for the occasional laugh, though. "Smells like cupcakes!"
Kornkob reminded me of something -- Nuvaring spends a lot of money on product placement on Scrubs. Nearly every hospital nurses station shot has a Nuvaring poster in the background. Personally, I like that kind of product placement, since only a person who would have a need for that product would notice the ad in the first place.

I always thought Blind Date should be getting that scrill from at least one liquor distributor. Seagrams... when you really want to get to know someone.

King of Queens is the only fictional program in that list, right? It seems more jarring to have product placements in a fictional program, but that might arise from my disdain for reality programming.

Isn't American Idol on TV something like 9 or 10 nights a week. That would seem to drive down their average a bit.

The only product placement I agree with is the Extreme Makeover, these companies are donating their products to make people's lives better, and should be recognized in the show as such. The rest of them can stuff it.

Where these [sic] is healthy competition, a direct cause-effect can be seen. In quasi-monopolies, they can get away with it much longer.

@mantari: what on earth are you talking about?

anyway, has anyone seen the product placement in 30 Rock? they actually make it part of the show. the honesty there just adds to the entertainment value.

Honestly, I would prefer subtle product placement in a tv show, in exchange for less actual commercials. It seems these days, you only get about 40 minutes of content and 20 minutes of commercials for a 1-hour tv show.

@Kornkob: GE and HP make a lot of those. It's not surprising. If you want to be realistic, best to use the actual equipment that's actually used in laboratories and hospitals. It adds realism for me - I've done labwork before - more than having the equipment be made by, say, Weyland-Yutani Corp., or however that's spelled.

Nuvaring also has posters on the wall during Grey's Anatomy. I rarely notice them, but my wife always does.

@Kornkob: The other part of that is that product placement of something like a can of coke is something that everyone can buy and it reaches 100% of their audience... at least its relevant to 100% even if not everyone drinks soft drinks or the like. But as far as medical machines go... I don't even know what the heck they are doing half the time in shows like that, let alone would I recognize the brand name, nor would I have any influence on purchasing of those products. Its not like I go into the doctors office and say "Hey, what kind of machine is that? Unless its a GE, no way are you using that on me, buddy"

As well, I heard somewhere that most forensic investigators don't watch shows like CSI because the inaccurate and impossible technological feats are irritating when its your field. I don't know, as a computer scientist who loves bad hacker movies if this is true, but if that is the case with medical dramas, I see almost no point behind the brand placement except for realisms sake.

In most car shows, they get all their parts from sponsors for a partial discount and have a segment dedicated to showing you parts from various companies. It's very upfront and helps them stay on the air.
Kinda like how John K wants to make commercials so he can make cartoons his way w/o meddling execs: http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/search/label/Direct%20Spons...

@mattshu: dude, you're an idiot. there are only 7 days in a week!

@robbie: Yea, 30 Rock does a great job of mocking product placement while doing it at the same time. The Sarah Silverman Program also did an excellent job with Tab Cola. I think the best program for branded entertainment, though, is Entourage - they've had entire plotlines about XBOX games, or brands of motorcycles or shoes, and it's seamless while making sense to the characters.

Funny you should mention it- my husband anbd I wqent to the movies last night, which featured a parallel universe in which there is only one kind of beer, andywhre. It was actually pretty distracting.

speaking of product placement...anyone catch the "xbox loves you" float that crashed the european release of sony's ps3? that was pretty funny.

kotaku had a little blurb about it:
http://kotaku.com/gaming/only-in-france/xbox-crashes-frenc...

"Product placement is annoying. You can't TiVo through it"

Consumers started skipping the commercials, so show producers needed another way to deliver value to the advertisers that pay for the shows.

You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

Do you seriously expect TV shows with zero product placements in a near-future era when DVRs are ubiqitous?

Did anyone else buy an Audi after watching 'I Robot'?

Funny, I don't watch any of those shows, and the only of the listed products I consume is Coke. And even then, I only ever drink 2 or 3 cans a week (mostly with whiskey).

Out of that entire list, I don't watch a single one of those shows, and the only products from the list I regularly use are Coke (I much prefer Pepsi, but not everyone has it) and Dell.

@Troy F.: The Amazing Race is such an excellent show that the product placement almost goes entirely unnoticed. The first-place winners of each leg always win a prize, in many cases a trip from Travelocity. The cars they drive are prominently featured if it is a model available in the US.

What I was really surprised to see missing from the list are the Bravo shows Top Designer and Top Chef. Placement is way over the top on those shows, especially Top Chef's Kenmore kitchens. Kenmore gets about 10 mentions per show by that woman with the annoying accent (Padma? Padme? Can't stand her.)

When American Idol gets shown on ITV2 in the UK all the product placement has to be blurred out. Product placement is illegal there and ads are limited to like 4 minutes per hour divided up into no more than two or three breaks.

anyone notice that text/branding is now become prevelant nearer to the center of the screen instead of the bottom? And to me the length of time that logo's and names stay up in commercials has risen? Just wondering if anyone else noticed, but I think that many commercials are designed to still be identifiable during 'fast-forward' with DVRs when the seek bar is up, obscuring the bottom portion of the screen.

I'm actually surprised CSI didn't make the list...on a recent episode there was about a 5 second slow-motion close-up shot of one of the cops putting Duracell batteries in his flashlight. Plus there's the Nikon camera in every other scene, the cars, etc.

Product placement predates Tivo and other DVRs.

Well done product placement is subtle. Like slipping in the rather natural 'So the efdex guy dropped off this package' into the script.

In fact, I frequently find language that has been scrubbed of any specific refereces to be more jarring. Not once, for example, have I heard someone talk about a 'delivery driver' dropping off a package here at work. It's always the 'fedex guy', the 'ups guy' or 'the mailman'.

The GE medical equipment fguring into a plot so closely--- it's not just about trying to get people to ask for a particualr scan machine or the like. It's about getting the average joe to be more familiar with and thus more comfortable with, fancy new technology for diagnosis instead of more common testing. More facilites will buy the product if people get used the idea that 'real' medical equipment that saves lives in a dramatic way looks like the thing they see on Grey's Anatomy or House. (I think it was Greys' where the ER had a bone densiometer in it-- even though bone density is one of those diagnositics that is never an 'emergency' and has no business in an ER).

Has anyone noticed that on a whole lot of TV shows every single character has a Motorola Razr cellphone?

@jmoeller:

American Idol prominently places Coke via Coke-branded cups on the judges' table and the "Coca-Cola Red Room" (pictured with this story). Check out the Coke bottle-print couch.

They place Cingular/AT&T by reminding people to text message their votes in via that service, complete with a shot of Ryan Seacrest holding up the phone du jour.

Finally, they have a promotion deal with Ford in which the contestants film a different Ford commercial every week. The winner also recieves a Ford car - a Mustang if I recall correctly.

I watch AI; it's a guilty pleasure for me. I just liken the rampant product placement to watching a sporting event. Just look at all the "X Brand Play of the Game" type segments, the logos all over the stadiums, and the scary number of ads shoehorned into one game.

@Shutterman:

I noticed that on "House" last season! Everyone had a freaking Razr. I have a high tolerance for that sort of thing, but that was ridiculous.

@loquaciousmusic: mmmm, Tears for Sears. Excellent show.

@HearsMusic:

The first-place winners of each leg always win a prize, in many cases a trip from Travelocity.
 

Interesting. I did a little bit of googling and found mention of using the Travelocity Gnome in events (like digging up a gnome and carting it to the pit stop). I guess I never considered those to be product placements - the advertisement needs to be sort of insidious, in my mind. Like superimposing a Coke bottle on a table during post processing.

After all - if prizes on a game show count as product placements, The Price Is Right has to be the king of them all. :-)

@HearsMusic: Good call about the Amazing Race product placement. I was wracking my brain for that one as well. Now that you mention the cars, it also occurs to me that occasionally they'll deliver clues via a Sidetrack or Treo or other device, or have contestants check an AOL account for their next clue.

hah, i don't watch any of those crap shows.......

Only saw Amazing Race once...which was more than enough crap for me. Product placement on that show was blatant, to the point of absurdity. They just dropped you off a helicopter in the middle of nowhere....and you're going to reach for a cell phone and see perfect quality video? Doubtful. Even the way they did it was some of the worst scripting I've seen, to the point that it made me wonder if the "contestants" were just "actors" reading lines.

As far as American Asshole goes, I refuse to watch that show. Product placement is annoying, but the lack of true talent (and judges willing to rip people to shreds) bores me. Maybe having worked in the real music industry, I'm a bit jaded. Kinda like the way medical staff usually are bored with medical shows like ER and Gray's Anatomy.

I see no mention of the rampant use of Dell or Apple computers. Mind you, usually the Apple logo is covered with a silver foil circle sticker, but the Dell logo is plain-as-day on the backs of all those flatscreen displays and laptops. Check out ER and CSI next week to see for yourself.

And what about iPods? The term "iPod" has become the "aspirin" of the 21st century, with Average Joe referring to ANY mp3 player as an iPod. But on the TV shows, characters are toting the real thing. And everyone is happily referring to them as such.

Not that I mind at all. I'm a bit of an Apple whore myownself.

@Shutterman: Yes I have! I've also noticed that a lot of shows have people's ringtones set to the default Cingular tone, a very sly form of advertising. Sure, the character never mentions they have a Cingular phone, but I know they do just from how it rings.

INO, any time a real world product is used on a show, it's a product placement. The only time it annoys me is when everyone uses the same product like someone above mentioned about a movie with the same type of beer everywhere.

Otherwise, it's a lot better than made up products, or blacked out labels. They have to support the show somehow and this is better than a commercial break.

Wheel of Fortune, The Price is Right, etc. have been doing this for years now, so it's not like it anything new.

@caerulea: OOPS! I just noticed Dell in the top ten. Now I'm embarrassed. Ah well... still no sign of Apple though, and their EVERYWHERE :)

Ah well. It's been a long day :P

@FLConsumer:

Product placement on that show was blatant, to the point of absurdity. They just dropped you off a helicopter in the middle of nowhere....and you're going to reach for a cell phone and see perfect quality video?

Are you sure you weren't watching Treasure Hunters? Treasure Hunters was so flagrant that they actually called the clues "Motorola Messages." The largest sponsor had its name all over everything, including the logo and sometimes their logo would be superimposed post-production onto landmarks and scenery. The best part is that I can't remember the name of the major sponsor without looking. Guess they didn't do a very good job :-)

The clues on The American Race are almost always paper clues.

i'm surprised that tlc's what not to wear didn't show up here. i laugh every time i see the slow-mo shot of the woman handing over her bank of america or visa card to the cashier...