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What TV Shows Are Really Selling

N.E. Marsden, a HuffingtonPost blogger and volunteer coordinator of Fairness and Integrity in Telecommunications Media (FITMedia), lays out the case the latter organization has been making to get the Federal Communications Commission to further regulate embedded TV advertising such as, say, the German submachine gun brand that has been so prominent in episodes of "24."

Marsden applauds the FTC's rules, taking effect Dec. 1, to force bloggers and "stealth corporate marketers" to disclose when the former accept payment for endorsing products. "Though the details have been hotly contested, the principle is sound: People have a right to know when someone is trying to sell them something."

As it stands, acknowledgment of the embedded-content sponsors of broadcast TV programs are buried in the credit crawl, and they need not be identified in programming on most cable and satellite networks, including channels geared to youth. Furthermore, "the notices are ... too small, too fleeting and too obscure ('promotional consideration provided by') to be effective," she writes. Bottom line: "Without full transparency, the public is in the dark and youths are at risk."

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1 comment about "What TV Shows Are Really Selling".
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  1. Jonathan Mirow from BroadbandVideo, Inc., October 30, 2009 at 12:37 p.m.

    You know what? I webcast stuff. No FCC, no rules, no censorship, no time constraints. On the flip side - no product placement, no national branding...no income (sigh). Yet.

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