McDonald’s Caffienates TV News

by nicole ~ July 24, 2008

A few weeks ago, I blogged about product placement and the FCC’s push for more disclosure of embedded advertising in entertainment television. The jury is still out on that one…but what happens when product placement starts to invade your local TV news desk too?

According to this New York Times article, it is already happening.   The article states:

“In recent weeks, anchors on the Fox affiliate in Las Vegas, KVVU, sit with cups of McDonald’s iced coffee on their desks during the news-and-lifestyle portion of their morning show. The anchors rarely touch the cups.

Executives at the station, one of 12 owned by Meredith Corporation, say the six-month promotion is meant to shore up advertising revenue and, as they told the news staff, will not influence content.”

This concerns me. Most people are aware that the news is not 100% unbiased. While it is pretty much impossible to remain completely unbiased in any situation, there are certain biases that are easy to avoid, product placement being one of them. 

My first instinct upon reading this article was to try to determine what the print media equivalent of this would be. Sure there are paid advertisements in print, but television already has paid advertisements too.  Of course, the argument that could be posed here is that there is no print DVR. While I’m not sure TV news product placement will take off, if it does, it might turn some faithful watchers back into faithful newspaper readers instead.

My second thought upon reading this article was an alternative for Mc Donald’s. Instead of placing iced coffee on the desks of newscasters who aren’t even drinking it, why don’t they place it in the hands of a few commuters in major metropolitan areas?  While the reach might not be quite the same, I bet they could do it free, and seeing people actually drinking the coffee might be a bit more affective. I’d be happy to have my morning commute sponsored by anyone who wants to give me free coffee …and I doubt I am the only one.

Nicole Amato is an Account Executive at Mediashop PR and a graduate of Northeastern University with a BA in Journalism.