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So, I haven’t really been paying attention to the struggle between television advertisers and DVR/PVR/TIVO for a while. But essentially, if you are taking advantage skipping commercials with your DVR, you are driving down the value of television advertising.

As I have mentioned before, one of the cleanest ways to get around this is through product placement.

One of my favorite shows right now is Burn Notice, and it is shamelessly positioning products. Michael Westen recently spent a few voice-over seconds talking about how offensive driving is helped by the computer-controlled stability control, and the ability to disable it with the touch of a button, in his ex-girlfriend’s convertible Saab. The show’s website will even help you identify and buy the clothes appearing in the show. This has been relatively well done, except for one scene that had little explanation for Michael wearing sandals, other than they wanted to direct you to Zappos.

Product placement also helps out HBO and Showtime. Subscribers pay the same monthly bill to watch both Weeds and/or a piece of cable turd. There is a zero-sum pool of money from which to produce all of these shows whether they are stinkers or Golden Globe-winning ratings monsters. There is no advertising to supplement superstar salaries and exotic location shoots. Enter product placement. In modern shows, like The Sopranos, there was Coke and Entemann’s. But what about The Tudors? This is a period show about King Henry VIII and the crazy Boelyn clan, back in the 1500’s. How can they put product placement to work to pay for all of those fancy clothes?

I’ve got it. The various associations have a great opportunity:

• Beef – “It’s what for dinner”
• Cotton – “My, that tunic is soft and durable, what is that animal skin?” “Why no, squire, it is cotton!”
• Coffee – Really, you can fit Juan Valdez just about anywhere.

Have you seen any other blatant product placement campaigns? I’ll help with one more: Dodge Ram trucks in The Sarah Conner Chronicles. There had to have been a Dodge marketer on the set for those vehicle montages.

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