Product Placement has found a new home; the local news broadcast. The paid advertising practice of including recognizable brand name items in plain sight of camera for television and film productions has made its way onto the Morning Show of Fox’s Las Vegas Affiliate KVVU. Anchors of the program now sit with rarely-touched cups of McDonald’s coffee with logos a-blazing in full view of the camera.

Executives at Meredith Corporation, the parent company of KVVU, say the products are part of a six-month promotion intended to shore up advertising revenue, and will not affect the content of broadcasts. How representatives of the advertising agency that brokered the promotion say that a negative news story about McDonald’s would most likely result in the end of the product placement and its ensuing revenue to KVVU and Meredith Corporation. Account Supervisor Brent Williams from the ad agency Karsh/Hagan told the New York Times:

“If there were a story going up, let’s say, God forbid, about a McDonald’s food illness outbreak or something negative about McDonald’s, I would expect that the station would absolutely give us the opportunity to pull our product off set,”

Practically nobody in their right mind goes to local news broadcasts for hard journalism at this point. The format is essentially engineered around emotions - Fear, as evidenced in “If it bleeds, it leads”; Goodwill, as seen in lifestyle pieces - rather than informing any sort of intellectual curiosity. Still putting product placements on a program that even bills itself, rightly or wrongly, as News seems a bridge too far to me. I’m not saying they can’t do it. I’m just saying they should stop misrepresenting themselves.You can takepart in learning more about an organization that indeed cares about the state of journalism in America by checking out Media Matters.

LINKS:

NY Times: Advertising: A Product’s Place is On the Set

Broadcasting & Cable: KVVU Defends Product Placement

International Herald Tribune: Product placement edges into U.S. newscasts