http://www.wimnonline.org/articles/triumph2.html
Reality TV Lets Marketers Write the Script wrote:Even more disturbing than marketers plundering our programming for "monetizing opportunities" is the newest trend: content created for the sole purpose of pushing products. On the premiere of ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, a group of designers were given a week to remodel the house of a suburban, middle-class family whose rosy-cheeked little daughter survived leukemia. Cameras captured the family cavorting at a name-brand vacation resort while the team, led by Trading Spaces toolmaster Ty Pennington, renovated their home with Craftsman tools, stocked their kitchen with Kenmore appliances, and filled their living room with electronics from Toshiba, Panasonic, and Sony—all of which were available for purchase from a Sears-sponsored, link-filled "As Featured On" section of ABC.com (which viewers were prompted to visit at the end of the program).
The sentimental climax came when the young cancer survivor gasped with glee at the life-size dollhouse Pennington had built for her. The happiness on that brave little girl’s face, Pennington mused, is what this was all about.
Well ... not quite. EM: Home is about what most reality TV series are about: manufacturing poor excuses for entertainment around sponsors’ goods. According to the New York Times, EM: Home was the most lucrative branded-entertainment deal ABC has ever inked, with Sears paying more than $1 million for narrative integration in each of the six episodes, as well as purchasing commercials during each hour.
Reality TV Lets Marketers Write the Script wrote:Among many examples McChesney and Foster point to is a series of top-level meetings held in 2000 by USA Network, in which major advertisers were invited to "tell the network what type of programming content they wanted." When networks manufacture content to meet advertisers’ needs and advertisers give content to networks for free, it’s a win-win for marketers and big media—but viewers are losing big. "We’re trying to create marketing platforms through television for our clients," Riesenberg told the Philadelphia Daily News. "It’s not at all about making better television. We don’t profess to be able to do it better. It’s really about finding that right fit, and then integrating them into that fit."
Reality TV Lets Marketers Write the Script wrote:The biggest of all the myths promoted by reality TV is that these programs exist simply because the public demands them, as "proven" by ratings. It’s not nearly that simple: Behind Survivor’s long-term, landscape-shifting impact was the relentless promotion of the series by CBS’s parent company, Viacom. To generate buzz, more than 100 affiliate radio stations ran segments, including dozens of drive-time interviews with Burnett (which folks could listen to while driving past Viacom-owned billboards for the show), while 16 of CBS’s TV stations and Viacom’s MTV and VH1 covered Survivor as if its ins and outs were news. Eventually, Entertainment Tonight and a slew of other infotainment programs jumped on the bandwagon, interviewing booted contestants (after they had appeared on CBS’s Early Show, of course), a practice that has become de rigueur for broadcast tabloids and respected news outlets alike.
The PR blitzkrieg made it appear as though there were overwhelming yet spontaneous popular interest in the show; all the biggest reality series have achieved their spectacular popularity by replicating Survivor’s strategy of multiplatform media attention, product integration, and public relations. That’s the dirty little secret behind the corporate media contention that they are bombarding us with ad-rich, quality-poor reality shows simply because that’s supposedly what the public wants.
Reality TV Lets Marketers Write the Script wrote:The value of the media time given to the yet-unformed group was estimated to be at least $20 million. Because of the built-in fan base sure to result from so many hours of "editorial" exposure on network TV, Warner’s London/Sire Records inked a recording contract before the band had a name — or even singers. Not until the songs were written, the show placed in the prime-time lineup, and the pre- and postproduction planned were the artists plugged in, like an afterthought. Once selected, Eden’s Crush appeared on WB affiliate news stations in New York and Chicago, guest-starred on the WB’s Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, were featured on the Warner Brothers–syndicated infotainment show Extra, and conducted an AOL live chat. The group’s first single sold more than 200,000 copies right out of the gate.
The article was written in 2004, but it is especially relevant now. The writers strike ensures that story based shows like Heroes, Supernatural, Smallville, etc, will be put on hiatus. Therefore, only unscripted reality shows will be able to air new shows. Continuing on the ideas expressed in the article, the writers strike is not just the conflict between the writers and the producers, it is also a conflict between the advertisers and the writers. Now that reality shows will be the only shows airing new content, I wonder if this will be the heyday of advertise-injected reality shows. And if so, will story-based shows fully recover when the writers strike is over?
Thoughts?
