Bottom Of The Barrel

Is DVR changing TV?

You bet your sweet ass it is! We have had our DVR from a couple months now and we tape everything and watch it back in much less time. In some cases nearly half the time. When American Idol first started out this season, they had some shows that were 2 hours long. One night I timed it and we got through the whole show in 70 minutes. Fast forwarding the commercials is quite handy [now if my DVR could just not tape the commercials altogether, that would be awesome].

I had read recently that approximately 4 million Americans have a Digital Video Recording device in their homes and that by the year 2011 that number would expand by 5 to 6 fold. The people buying these devices are the exact same demographic that the advertisers are trying to reach. In an other article I read today, the Hollywood TV producer types are trying to push back on product placement in their shows and story lines, although they all agree that is a necessary evil in today's entertainment world. What they want is artistic freedom without advertisers forcing their products into the story line. The thing is, is product placement really that hard to write into a show?

In the season finale of "How I Met Your Mother", Marshall and Lily were in the midst of an argument when they called pause and suddenly decided they were hungry, and headed to Red Lobster [including a quick exterior store shot with the two characters eating inside for a very short scene - now was that so hard?]. Who was the lead advertiser in the very next commercial break? Red Lobster of course.!

So here's my idea for the upcoming 2006-2007 TV season, why not make product placement just part of the show and cut out commercials all together. From time to time we see s show run the entire time allotted with one major sponsor [like a full hour of 24 brought to you by Ford]. So why not a whole half hour of a sitcom with nothing but product placements? I can see it now, Barney rolls into his office taking on new BlackBerry 8700g, while Marshall & Lily register at Macy's and Ted & Robin talk about their new dating life while sipping Frappuchino's at Starbucks. Plus the viewer will get a full half hour [or hour] of the show. Sounds like a win-win[-win] situation to me.

This blog entry was brought to you by Chrysler, Nike, the number 3 & JIF and if of those TV executives want to discuss my ideas, please feel free to contact me.

posted by TheWino @ 10:05 AM