Page 194 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Hypercommerc al sm | 1

Eric Barnouw detailed the ways in which advertising professionals learned that
commercials that diverged in style and content from programs were ineffective
at selling products. Since then, media buyers have long demanded what is called
programming environments: particular stories and character types that surround
the product and its ad campaign with compatible and complimentary messages.
In this way viewers and readers are primed to be more susceptible to ads and the
symbolic culture that sustains them.
The economic success of broadcasters is dependent on programs that please
two different constituencies, ad buyers and TV audiences, whose interests some-
times diverge. Many network professionals attempt to create interesting, inde-
pendent programming, but productions must be attractive to sponsors who
pay the bills. Because ad agencies and their clients make “up front” media buys
based on the programs they see, producers know well that shows dove-tailed
to sponsors’ wishes garner the highest rates. In these ways, advertisers come to
exert enormous influence on programming design. Nowhere is this more evi-
dent than with reality shows, in which entire programs are designed by and for
advertisers.

BranDED EnTErTainmEnT
Product placement on TV has evolved into what the industry now calls
branded entertainment. Media contracts revolve around brand integration deals,
a common feature of reality shows. In many of these shows the networks have
contracted with task sponsors, or companies willing to pay to have entire epi-
sodes built around their products. In its third season, The Apprentice built pro-
grams around, for instance, Dominos Pizza and Staples. Products were designed
and pitched to company executives, and through the entire episode, each show
featured brand logos in an all-encompassing corporate environment. Another
NBC reality show, The Restaurant, contracted with Coors, American Express,
and Mitsubishi. The three companies paid the entire production costs of the epi-
sodes. In the first show, chef/owner Rocco DiSpirito orders beer, then corrects
himself, “Make that Coors beer. Kimberly, do not come back without Coors beer
for all these people,” he says. In addition, dialogue with branded content is being
dubbed in after filming (Husted 2003). Such practices alter the programs as ad-
vertisers influence the scripts, settings and editing process. As one entertain-
ment writer noted, The Restaurant has the feel of an infomercial. Such programs
might better be called product placement shows because the advertising content
is being scripted, with any pretence to reality being in name only. These shows
hark back to television of the 1950s when sponsors controlled programming,
and illustrate the current merger of entertainment and promotion.

magazinEs

These precepts hold true to magazines as well, where combining advertis-
ing and content has been standard practice. Articles written to augment paid
adverting by emphasizing promotional themes or featuring products are called