http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/23/usa.mcdonalds
US advertising: McMorning Las Vegas, here's the news·
Current affairs show in deals with McDonald's
· Critics attack product placement trend in US
Ed Pilkington in New York The Guardian, Wednesday July 23, 2008
Fox 5 News anchors Jason Feinberg and Monica Jackson and the McDonald’s
coffee, filled with fake ice
The tentacle-like growth of clandestine advertising in American TV shows
in
the form of product placement has taken another controversial step with
the
introduction of McDonald's products into regional news programmes.
Several TV outlets have begun to sell the fast-food giant the right to
place
cups of its iced coffee on to the desks of news anchors as they present
morning current affairs shows.
Typical is Fox 5 News in Las Vegas, an affiliate of Rupert Murdoch's Fox
television network. 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 re****ted 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 huge 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 an episode of
the
popular soap, The OC, which had one character talk about having "a9.com'd"
a
friend on the day the internet search company A9 launched a Yellow Pages
service of the same name.
Advertising and broadcasting content have become increasingly blurred,
with
new reality TV show, What I Like About You, pitting young women against
each
other to compete for an acting slot on an advert for Herbal Essences. The
ad
is then broadcast in a break during the show.
This is the first time product placement has percolated through to news
broadcasts. Journalism ethics groups have protested it 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, the Poynter Institute.
Fox 5 News has declined to reveal how much it is being paid by McDonald's
for
the six-month promotion. The station's news director, Adam Bradshaw, said
that
the product placement was only allowed in programmes that were
appropriate,
including later morning shows with an accent on lifestyle.
"I would not put it on a straight newscast like my 5 or 10pm news,"
Bradshaw
said.
The other potential difficulty with the new trend in TV news was conflict
of
interest. Bradshaw said the McDonald's deal would in no way impede the
station
broadcasting negative news concerning the food chain.
"News is news. Sales is sales. If there's a story about McDonald's we
would
re****t on it just like anyone else," he said.
He added that in such cases he would remove the coffee cups from the
newscasters' desks, in a similar way to the pulling of adverts for airline
companies during newscasts that re****t an air crash.
TV stations across America are suffering from a downturn in advertising,
partly due to the challenge of the internet and partly due to the
country's
more recent economic troubles.
In a harsh financial climate, many are turning to new cash streams, such
as
Fox 5 News's latest innovation.
About this articleClose This article appeared in the Guardian on Wednesday
July 23 2008 on p17 of the International section. It was last updated at
12:34
on July 23 2008.
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