Product Placement On TV Targeted

(6/27) Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said the FCC will review new rules on how television programmers alert viewers about product placements in programming. He said product placements and integration into story lines have increased as television viewers increasingly use recording devices like TiVo and DVRs to fast forward through commercials. Currently, the FCC's rules require television programmers to disclose sponsors who have embedded products into shows. Those disclosures typically are done during the credits at the end of the show, which fly by viewers in small script. "We want to make sure consumers understand and are aware that they are being advertised to," said Chairman Martin, who first pushed to clarify disclosure rules last fall. "We ask how we should update our rules to reflect current trends in the industry." The FCC plans to study whether sponsorship notices should be written in bigger print and displayed for a defined period. They are looking at adopting rules similar to those for political ads, which require sponsorship messages to be in a print at least four percent the height of a screen and displayed for at least 4 seconds. The agency also will look into stronger rules for advertisement disclosures in children's and cable programming.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/26/AR200806...
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