Britain’s culture secretary, Andy Burnham, has said ‘non’ to an EU directive allowing product placement on British TV screens. This had a rather nasty effect on ITV’s share price, but such determination can only be a ‘good thing’, especially for viewers frustrated with the surprising prevalence of iPhones and Apple Mac owned by many of the characters in modern US drama, and the creeping way this seeps even into the BBC. American talent contests that involve a lot of product placement – America’s Next Top Model, Project Runway, Shear Genius, etc etc – must make quite a living from it.
Indeed, in a fractured broadcast market, this is a natty way to make money, but it is short-termist; US network audiences are far from what they once were, with the more selective preferring to pay the premium that buys the premium cable sanctuary of HBO/Showtime. From a lagging British perspective, this should be instructive. One must only look at the shortening of the ‘hour-long’ American show from 44 to 41 minutes, the extension of pre-credit ‘teasers’ to occupy one quarter of the show, and the compression of credits to little more than a title screen to illustrate the pressures.
Still, when taken to extremes product placement can become a art form in its own right. More skilful than infomercials, some US radio in the 1940s and 50s is a masterclass in the shameless interweaving of product and content. A notable practitioner was one Jack Benny, whose Sunday night radio show your correspondent stumbled upon during a nocturnal raid of the archives. This edition opened with an advert for Lucky Strikes, cigarettes that characters would then discuss during the episode, often recalling the exact words of the advert, showing their concern that millions of smoking Americans were unhappy with their current brand. What should they do? Why, the answer was as clear as the taste of Lucky Strikes.
A loose narrative dealt with Benny’s farcical journey to arrive in New York in time for his TV show, for which this edition was essentially an advert (an early example of cross promotion, as the shows overlapped for five years, the radio show carried by CBS, the TV series by NBC. So cross-network, cross-promotion – intriguing, but was it ground breaking? Any help welcome on this). Such bare-faced capitalism can only be applauded; especially when the blunt force of the humour makes it all seem perfectly natural. Perhaps product placement has its place after all – or was Benny just a great talent of the times?
News hour, with Jerry Caesar 