ABC's mild summer success of "The Days," a drama about a dual-income couple raising three kids, has proven branded entertainment is still almost always about entertainment - not about hawking a
Craftsman wrench.
Looking for fresh summer programming, ABC decided to partner with media agency MindShare Worldwide and its advertisers clients, Sears Roebuck & Co. and Unilever, as the
producers of the show. The result was moderately good entertainment as well as healthy summer, young-adult ratings.
Time magazine got the right tone in a story today - showing how aspects of the Texaco Star Theater with
Milton Berle in the 1950s are being morphed into today's product placement-crazed television environment.
But it missed a point.
Time gave the impression that ABC would be forking
over $1.35 million for each hour episode. But, in reality, there was no license fee paid to ABC. The deal was purely a barter advertising arrangement -- giving MindShare about half the show's
advertising time, with ABC selling the rest. Still, there is nothing wrong with that. It's the summer and networks are always looking to keep down production costs.
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Time did bring out a
key element of the deal - the actual product placement part of the show wasn't really its focus, and kept to a minimum. Breezy entertainment is what summer audiences crave - not whether viewing a
teenage girl making lunch should make one run out and buy a Kenmore microwave at Sears.
Months ago when most of the press reported on the deal, the spotlight - from such publications as the
Wall Street Journal - was all about product placement.
Nope. While product placement has some value, it pales in comparison to these advertisers' primary needs - high-rated programming in
which to run summer and back-to-school commercials, with a secondary objective to make some back-end TV distribution money as producers of the show.
Censorship concerns - also raised early on by
the press - haven't been a problem. The producers (the advertisers) don't have content control. It remains with ABC.
Will there be more deals like this? Sure. Only if the drama surrounding a
depressed teenage girl, or her troubled boyfriend, or her flawed parents, is compelling enough.