Lost Remote reports that marketers spent $3.5 billion on product placement in various media. Can someone explain the difference between product placement and radio payola, between paying to play and paying to place?
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September 21st, 2005 at 4:27 pm
Um, “payola” is a cool catch-phrase that everyone is familiar with?
“Product placement” has way too many syllables. No buzz.
Otherwise, no.
Maybe ask Mr Spitzer.
September 21st, 2005 at 4:39 pm
Interesting question, Jeff. Seems to me that paying to play involves specific control over the exposure of the entertainment product itself (the song) while paying to place doesn’t necessarily influence whether the product (the program, the film, etc.) gets exposed and can be viewed simply as an additional revenue stream. It’s a pretty lame distinction, I know.
Are you suggesting that TV programs and movies run disclaimers indicating whether products featured in the narrative paid to be there? I’m not sure the end user cares enough to warrant it. And given the upside-down economics of Hollywood production, any monies that can be earned to keep product alive and profitable without seeming awkward in the context of what’s being seen on screen shouldn’t be frowned upon.
September 21st, 2005 at 4:46 pm
Jeff,
Payola in radio is illegal when a song is played due to a payment but that fact is not disclosed. In other words, as long as there’s disclosure, it’s completely legal to pay stations to pay songs. As far as product placements… I don’t believe there are any regulations.
September 21st, 2005 at 4:46 pm
I have never understood what was wrong with radio payola. What difference does it make if the station owner gets played to play a song? Why should a radio dj have to disclose his motive for playing something. No other media is required to do that. All humans, when speaking to others, hide their motives from time to time.
The listener is free to tune in another station or turn the radio off.
September 21st, 2005 at 4:47 pm
simple, the use of public airwaves, which are a limited commodity.
if somebody wants to pay for placement on a print publication or a website (or whatever), its none of the gov’s business. public airwaves - it is.
September 21st, 2005 at 4:59 pm
Wag - substitute “indecency standards” for payola and see if you still agree with your point.
September 21st, 2005 at 5:45 pm
Jeff, if you’re talking about product placement in TV (or print) you’re talking about paying to place, in effect, a prop in the content. If you’re talking about radio payola, you’re talking about paying to place the content itself.
In some cases, I can think of Seinfeld and Friends off the top of my head, the pay scale was directly linked to the interaction with said prop, up to and including the prop becoming part of the plot. Having your box of cereal on the shelf cost x bucks. Having the name mentioned cost more. Having it become a plot point cost a lot more. But whether the writers took cash from, say, Junior Mints, and then wrote the plot around it, or simply wrote a plot that had a random candy falling in during a surgery, then went looking for a brand, I don’t know.
And the fact is NBC picked Seinfeld’s show because they thought it could make money off of it, not because Seinfeld’s creators/producers paid NBC.
Whereas radio exec A is playing Song B because recording company C paid them to do so.
September 21st, 2005 at 5:55 pm
jody….yes i think that the public airwaves should have decency standards but private communications should not. do you advocate letting hardcore porn stream over the public tv channels? i don’t. do you think hardcore porn should be regulated in its video / internet form? i don’t.
September 21st, 2005 at 6:41 pm
There’s no difference. Payola is advertising under a different name.
September 21st, 2005 at 7:59 pm
The idea of “public airwaves” is going to be totally outdated when we’re all listenting to podcasts and streaming radio over Google’s free wireless broadband in five years.
I say let them play crap music that they’re paid for, people will stop listening eventually. Subsidized crap will never be able to compete with truly good music, especially when the long-tail becomes mainstream (no, that’s not oxymoronic).
I was watching some show last night and they were using some new windowing system so the ad remained on screen while the show was visible in another window. Just like in a web browser. Had I Tivoed it I couldn’t fast forward through the ad.
September 21st, 2005 at 8:18 pm
1. Limited Market. In radio, a listener will only be able to hear, or be exposed to, a limited number of songs on a given day. Each payola song will necessarily replace another song the person could have been exposed to. Placement in a movie or TV will not reduce the number of other movies or TV programs a viewer is likely to see.
This distinction is different than the “limited airwaves” argument of KickH.
2. Placement vs. Re-placement. In TV and movies it is clear that you can see a product being used, a veiwer can meaningfully seperate out this exposure to a product from the story being watched. With radio, the song is the product. (similar to paw’s comment above; I would favor disclosure (no disclaimer needed)).
3. Consumer expectations. It is commonly understood that products are placed in movies and TV for the purpose of advertizing while (many) people expect payola laws to be enforced and not have music exposure based on who paid.
September 21st, 2005 at 9:30 pm
wag: I had assumed that you were in the same camp as Jeff who is implicitly arguing (in this post and his Howard Stern crusade) that a) payola is bad and should be regulated by the government, but b) indecency is bad and shouldn’t be regulated by the government. So my apologies for assuming you’ll fall into the hypocrisy trap.
I’m what I call a “conservative libertarian” so I’m with you that both things are bad (also as long as the government owns it and we’re a democracy, I don’t see why the wishes of the majority shouldn’t prevail on government property). However, my preferred solution (which I don’t see happening anytime soon) is to just privatize the airways and use the FCC to resolve “property” disputes.
September 22nd, 2005 at 9:29 am
product placement is done without the knowledge of the audience, in fact the bbc recently got caught with their pants down : they are specifically forbidden to do any PP, and heads will roll over this one…..
September 24th, 2005 at 7:54 pm
what Robert_Young said…
William_s
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