- Product Placement -

Gail Collins on how advertising is beginning to infiltrate the content on TV:

Lines we never even bothered to think of as lines are being crossed. Last summer in Las Vegas, the anchors on the local Fox station started delivering the news with two prominently placed cups of McDonald’s iced coffee in front of them. A spokesperson called it a “nontraditional revenue source.”It’s only a matter of time before TV reporters conclude interviews with disaster victims by asking if they wouldn’t like a refreshing glass of V-8.

As Collins notes, this stuff has been going on in the movies for a good long time, and when we run around happily emblazoned with corporate advertising on t-shirts, hats and so forth, it's hard to get see the downfall of modern civilization in the display of two cups of McDonald's iced coffee. And really would offering a glass of V-8 be so much more tacky than asking the disaster victims how they felt...