Product placement advertising makes its way into US news programs

The tentacle-like growth of clandestine advertising in US TV shows in the form of product placement has taken another controversial step with the introduction of McDonald's products into regional news programs. Several TV outlets have begun to sell the fast food giant the right to place cups of its iced coffee onto the desks of news anchors as they present morning current affairs shows. Typical is Fox 5 News, an affiliate of Rupert Murdoch's Fox television network in Las Vegas. Two cups of coffee, their cubes of ice glinting in the studio lights, now daily stand before the channel's morning presenters. The presenters conspicuously do not drink from the cups, which is just as well–the cups contain a bogus fluid and fake ice to prevent the cubes melting. The New York Times has reported that similar deals to place McDonald's products in news shows are up and running in TV stations in Chicago, Seattle and New York. Product placement has become a major branch of advertising in the US, creeping into all areas of entertainment television. Not only are products seen on camera, they also make their way into drama scripts such as a recent episode of the popular soap, OC, which had one character talk about having "a9.Com'd" a friend on the day the internet search company A9 launched a new Yellow Pages service of that name. Advertising and broadcasting content have become increasingly blurred, with one new reality TV show, What I Like About You, pitting young women against each other to compete for an acting slot on a Herbal Essences advert. The ad is then broadcast in a commercial break during the show. But this is the first time that the form has percolated through to news broadcasting. Journalism ethics groups have protested that this is another erosion of standards. "There has been in broadcast journalism certainly, and arguably in all journalism, a drifting away from the standards of straight news in the direction of entertainment," said Roy Peter Clark of the school for journalists at the Poynter Institute.