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> but I've heard some people say half the point of paying for cable way back in the day was so you _didn't_ get ads.

There were at least three reasons.

1) In most markets, there were a grand total of 3-4 major stations. If one lived in one of the larger market then there might have been one or two extra PBS stations. Cable marketed 25 or 35 or 40 channels to the existing 3-6.

2) In a lot of locations, analog reception was terrible (ghosting, static, etc.). Cable marketed a crystal clear picture as an alternative to the ghosts and static.

3) Fewer commercials. Yes, in the early beginning, they did indeed have fewer commercial breaks. Some channels had none, or only had a 4-5 minute break between programs. Those days from cable's start are long gone today.

While cable did market itself early on as 'less commercial breaks', #1 and #2 above were likely the larger draw, and with the costs then (mid 1970's) of $20-30/month appearing smaller than today's $150+/month cost, it was a somewhat easy sale.

>2) In a lot of locations, analog reception was terrible (ghosting, static, etc.). Cable marketed a crystal clear picture as an alternative to the ghosts and static.

Which, funny enough, my area cable providers won't show local channels because we're close enough to the city to pick them up on an OTA antenna. Even though my antenna only picks up one channel.

> I'm not old enough to have seen it, but I've heard some people say half the point of paying for cable way back in the day was so you _didn't_ get ads. That seems to be the case for newer, streaming services.

And just yesterday I discovered my first "supported by product placement" disclaimer overlay in a Netflix show. Not a big deal, probably just them getting in line with local regulations, but it might be a harbinger of things to come. Not cutting up the goose that lays golden eggs might just happen to be something that high stakes capitalism is not particularly good at.

Oh wow, they actually labeled the product placement? I often wish I was aware of all the product placement I'm seeing unwittingly. In what locale are you and what show were you watching?

In the UK all product placement needs to be declared at the beginning. Lots of Youtube stars get in trouble for this in the UK.

Do they require individually mentioning all the products/brands (which would greatly increase recall metrics, making the placement more valuable to the buyer) or is it just a blanket "supported by product placement"?

The latter is what we have here in Germany and I find it rather unfortunate that it covers such a wide range of advertising influence: from lower rates for all that IKEA stuff one would need to create realistic backdrops, to full blown product praise like you would see on a shopping channel.

The disclaimer might be new, but not the product placement. The first season of Netflix's House of Cards, which aired in 2013, had an obnoxious amount. It even made its way into the dialogue, turning one scene into a 10 second ad.

"Is that a PS Vita. What games does he have?"

"All of them."

"I have a console at home that I play to relax. I could use one of these for the car!"

http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/dsbaldwin32/clips/hou...

HoC has loads... like it had an iphone app (game) product placement. I tried to find the name of it, but found this instead:

"'House of Cards' littered with product placements | New York Post" - http://nypost.com/2015/03/02/house-of-cards-littered-with-pr...

like it had an iphone app (game) product placement.

Monument Valley. Although according to both parties no money changed hands. The producer simply liked the look of game, called up the developers, asked if they could use it and the developers said "sure".

It's worth noting that Monument Valley is an excellent game, product placement or no. It's often the first thing pointed to in the whole video-games-as-art debate.

Weirdly enough, I don't mind that as much as actual ads - at least I'm still watching the show.

That's exactly how I came to the same conclusion, that only the disclaimer is new.

I am actually quite torn about those disclaimers: once people have officially committed to product placement, any remaining internal unwillingness to compromise writing for placement revenue will break down completely.

The opposite is just as worse by the way: our public broadcasting networks here in Germany are producing some rather popular fiction, and they have started to implement draconian rules to fight product placement (after some sizable scandals where the money went to their contractors or employees instead of going to the nominally nonprofit networks themselves). The result is that any time something like social media comes up in, say, a cop show, they have to make up a new fantasy brand to represent Facebook, Twitter or Google. This severely hampers their ability to talk about the modern world. Imagine for example what would be left of The Godfather if you replaced all references to the "brands" of Catholicism (and Christianity in general) or Italy with generic placeholders. You might as well move it from America to the Shire entirely.

The influence of product placement is there now matter how you spin it. In House of Cards (US), the worst influence might not be in who paid but in who did not: iirc Twitter seems to be pretty much embargoed in the show, even though they are using it for promotion quite a lot.

Product placement just kills the pace of the show. My family watched White Collar together, and it had some really forced product placement from Ford. They have a scene where a conversation is happening in traffic, and the car beeps and then does the emergency stop thing. One character tells the other to keep his eyes on the road, and the other one responds, "It's a Ford, it can take care of itself. I'm keeping my eyes on you."

That was so forced and stupid my brother and I still quote it. It was so completely tone deaf that it pretty much cemented Ford as a company that is completely out of touch.

As time goes on, the product placement bit from Wayne's World gets more and more topical.

I take comfort in the hope that product placement actually works better when it is not implemented in that despicably crude way, and that eventually both sides of the transaction will learn to stay subtle.

If the cool hero uses a motorcycle to escape the evil henchmen I don't care much wether money was involved in selecting the brand of motorcycle. If he then spends a minute of screen time lecturing about the benefits of said brand, it should be considered a new category far beyond product placement.

Chuck had a rather infamous product placement for Subway in the second season that worked out pretty well. The placement itself was gratuitous and over-the-top, and it drew quite a bit of criticism from the press. Yet, I thought it worked well for comedic effect in the context of the show, especially considering the character involved and the contemporary absorption of Subway's ad campaign ("five dollar footlongs") into pop culture. Sure, I rolled my eyes at it, but I also had a good laugh because it was obvious that the show was self-aware in the way they did it.

Anyway, I only bring this up because, while I agree with you in principle, I think that in the right context, exaggerated product placements can be as palatable as subtle ones.

(Later on, when the show was being considered for cancellation, a massive fan campaign had hundreds of thousands if not millions of fans getting themselves some footlongs to eat during the season finale and mailing the receipts to NBC, thus saving the show for three more seasons).

I would really rather the characters use real-life brands than obviously fake nonsense brands. When someone uses a MobTel phone to call 555-555-5555 and request pizza from Little Kaisers, it seriously drags me out of the moment.

If they're using a Samsung, eh who cares. My brother has the same phone, I can relate to that.

I'm not sure about Netflix, but certainly on Amazon, Hulu, and HBO Go some shows get forced pre-rolls promoting other shows. Contextually it seems relevant but it certainly is a gateway to more ads.

My prediction: once Netflix growth flattens you will see them start making moves towards ads. This is billions and billions of dollars in easy cashflow that probably won't just be left sitting on the table by a public company.

Broadcasters have been overwriting stadium ads for awhile now. Digital insertion was fine when it was used to enhance games, showing down lines in American football, following a puck in Hockey, and more. However the ethics around insertion of ads apparently escaped the industry, it would have been fine but I am awaiting the day where you don't know where the scene is real or not. They probably could put everyone in a Coca-Cola shirt in the stands with the tech available. More fun, they could digitally ad fans to stadiums.

I never liked when they "enhanced" the puck in hockey, but I think drawing the 10 yard mark on the football field is fantastic. It's remarkable to me how well that works.

In baseball, the ad behind home plate is often a digital one and when they show a replay, you can usually see the green rectangle. I'm also a fan of the pitch trackers in baseball (the box that shows where a pitch was relative to the strike zone rectangle). I've always wondered if the size of the pitch tracker box is different for each player?

The on-screen ads are annoying, but all the ads delivered by the announcers is getting a little much too. Every replay, highlight, and inning/period/quarter seems to be sponsored.

Everything is sponsored and the rest is badly-written/executed script. "Show your support, send in your twits/texts to get something<worthless> free". Or, "Be the first to see this or that thinly-associated xyz on our site!" The worst is the elementary level, leading interviews, aka fandering to the lowest deninator: "You just blew it! Tell the fans at home how bad it feels."

In today's era of high definition picture, puck "enhancement" doesn't make any sense, but back in the day when we were stuck with 17" standard definition broadcasts (which was also slightly warped by the curvature of the CRT screen and perhaps a bit fuzzy if your signal wasn't great), puck "enhancement" was practically a necessity.

Always wondering where that's done. I often hear about it, but it doesn't seem to happen in the UK. E.g. football cup this summer, the ads would target people from the participating countries, if England wasn't playing you often wouldn't see a product you could buy.

There was also a push to put ads on the player's jerseys. This is already common in sports like football/soccer. It is just visual noise at this point.

I am fascinated that kids like to wear copies of soccer jerseys and prefer them to have the ads because that way they feel more "authentic". I laugh when I see similar bike jerseys.