Product Placement; Also: The Law
I just finished reading a year 2000 article by AVERY, ROSEMARY J. and FERRARO, ROSELLINA on the purported controversy over product placement in television programming. Turns out, the arguments of each side in the clash are reducible to the two terms of Avery/Ferraro's title: Verisimilitude or Advertising? Supporters of the legality of product placement in television programming lay claim to a branded product's miraculous ability to bring "verisimilitude" to a fictional narrative. Critics of the practice regard (or attempt to regard) product placement as a form of commercial speech, defined here as "speech that proposes a commercial transaction," able to be regulated by standards established through various legal precedents (Valentine v. Chrestensen[1942]; Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations[1973]; Central Hudson Gas and Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission of New York[1980]; Posadas de Puerto Rico v. Tourism C. of Puerto Rico[1986]; Board of Trustees of State University v. Fox[1989]). More on these court cases later.
The binary thus established--verisimilitude or advertising?--is, oddly, as well established in the field of film criticism, where a line is often (somewhat) arbitrarily drawn between "realism" and "melodrama" to evaluate the aesthetic worth of any given film. Real films have merit, as they "objectively" communicate important social messages without bias. Melodramatic films are manipulative. Often films dealing explicitly with social justice, poverty, race, etc., are those praised for their verisimilitude, regardless of how manipulative their messages may indeed be. Melodrama, conversely, is thought to be a mind-numbing tool of the right, committed to the task of subjugating us persons, molding us to the status quo and forcing acceptance of inequality.
Interestingly, in the Avery/Ferraro analysis, it is advertisers (or supporters of product placement) who argue for "realism" in television programming. Critics of the practice refuse the claim, but also don't deny that the presence of branded products in a fictional narrative somehow makes that narrative more "real." In other words, critics implicitly accept the realism argument, while still contending that product placement constitutes an advertising message open to regulation as commercial speech.
Currently, film product placement is not regulated, and does not generally seem to be regarded as commercial speech. This means that film producers are not required to supply sponsorship disclaimers before film screenings, indicating "who" has paid (in part) for the program you are about to see. The purpose of Avery and Ferraro's study was to uncover differences between film product placement and television product placement, so as to determine whether or not brand placement in television shows ought to be regulated differently than that for films. They conclude that feature films still have more product placement than television programming, but that TV has a higher percentage of brand placement that could be characterized as having persuasive intent.
What this means I don't really know. The findings of the study are not that compelling, as it appears the vast majority of brand appearances on prime time television are during news and sports programs, where product placement is either incidental, or explicitly represented as advertisements. Of course, how "incidental" or integral brand appearances are in a newscast is debatable, especially in this age of branded newscasts. Moreover, it seems that access to contractual agreements regarding product placement is "proprietary"; meaning, of course, that we are not allowed to know which products are "placed" and which are merely "chosen" by creators of content.
This is kind of alarming: according to a Nielsen Media Research report issued in 1999, the average American household watches 7.2 hours of television per day, each person spending approximately 40% of his or her free time watching TV. Whether or not the verisimilitude/ advertising binary appropriately reflects the various opinions on the matter and the many possible interpretations of "commercial speech," it is clear that television has a tremendous impact on peoples' lives.
That is the conclusion of my small baby's mind.