Congressmen
Tackle Product Placement
By Ira Teinowitz
TV Week
9/27/07
Warning that increasing use of product placement and
product integration are “blurring” the line between TV ads
and TV content, two congressional committee chairmen are
calling on the Federal Communications Commission to do
more to make sure viewers know what they are seeing.
“In our view, the blurring of the line between advertising
and content represented by product placement and
integration is unfair and deceptive if it occurs without
adequate disclosures to the viewing public,” U.S. Reps.
Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said
today in a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. “In some
extreme cases, it may also undermine the integrity of the
television programming itself.”
Rep. Waxman is chairman of the House Oversight &
Government Reform Committee; Rep. Markey chairs the House
Energy & Commerce Committee’s telecom committee.
Rep. Markey’s committee in May held a hearing on issues
around product placement and product integration and heard
testimony on pressure on writers and producers to weave
mentions of products into shows.
Mr. Martin last week, during an FCC media ownership
hearing in Chicago, said he had asked other FCC
commissioners to initiate a look into issues of product
integration into programming. He suggested DVRs and TiVos
may be prompting networks to look at more subtle and
sophisticated means of inserting commercial messages and
cited growing concern that the agency's sponsorship rules
weren't providing adequate disclosure of placement.
Mr. Martin said he has asked other commissioners to
initiate a rulemaking that would seek comment about
whether the FCC's existing sponsorship identification
rules need to be amended because of increasing industry
reliance on embedded advertising techniques to ensure
adequate disclosure to the public.
The committee chairmen in today's letter said they didn't
feel the FCC had made enough progress since the hearing in
addressing some of the issues raised at the hearing
“We believe the commission should examine the growth in
product placement and product integration and how this
trend affects the overall composition and nature of
television programming. As part of this inquiry, the
commission should also review the criteria broadcasters
and cable operators currently use to distinguish between
commercial and creative content,” said the letter.
The two urged Mr. Martin to do a thorough review of
sponsorship disclosure requirements. They said any review
should include an examination of whether “rules
sufficiently achieve the statutory requirement to inform
the viewing public of the actual products being sponsored
in a show as well as the entity that paid for such
sponsorship.”