Dancing on Iceland

December 22nd, 2010
Picture Credit: Flicr; Mike Licht

A new Ofcom ruling will allow product placement on certain programmes  from the end of February 2011 providing a much needed lift to commercial channels following a well-documented dip in advertising revenues due to the recession.

News, current affairs and children’s programming may be excluded from the new ruling but that still leaves  a wealth of opportunities in soaps, sports programmes and dramas where product placement could generate a huge additional income.

The advantage that advertisements hold over product placement is their ability to ‘go viral’. A great idea broadcast once can lead to millions of hits on free-to-use YouTube, adding reach and value to the campaign. Product placement has to be editorially justified and as such is unlikely to lead to a viral and any great amplification in audience figures. Of course some scenes in our favourite soaps are repeated endlessly, but, and this is just my opinion, the most popular soap scenes are grim murders, revelations, explosions and fights; what product wants to be associated with any of that?

I think 2011 will see companies getting to grips with product placement, we might see a few blatant initial offerings to begin with as producers fail to wrestle overall control from the fat cats chasing money. The ‘editorially justified’ clause certainly prohibits any characters in period drama Downton Abbey stumbling across a time-travelling Honda and racing to 2010 for a can of Pepsi but now that Ofcom has officially opened the floodgates anachronisms might well be omnipresent 10 years from now, if that’s where the money is!

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Journo for a day

March 9th, 2009

Last Thursday I spent the day as a newshound at the Manchester Evening News.

Democracy had bid for the pleasure at Twestival last month and I was the lucky recipient of a day as a journalist with self confessed Blogger, journalist, foodie and social media junky Sarah Hartley.

I met Sarah bright and early at Urbis to take a peak at Channel M‘s Breakfast Show. I was amazed by the levels of calm in the studio; that was until we popped down to the gallery and heard what was going on behind the scenes and in everyone’s ears.

Following a quick dash across the city I met the very charming people at the Newsdesk then headed out to meet journalist Chris Osuh at the County Court.

After a morning learning about court reporting I returned for the 12.30 conference where the editors of each section share their stories for the next day’s paper.

Dianne Bourne of The Diary Page then injected some glamour into the day as the three of us went out for a lovely lunch at San Carlo (apparently a celeb favourite although sadly I didn’t spot any).

Back to it and a whistle-stop tour of the important people of the Newsroom including Business and Sports editors as well as the Sub Editors.

What struck me most was the way the whole newsroom is getting involved in providing online content alongside putting together a paper which is published three times a day.

Quick stop at the 4pm conference then off to the spectacular Great John Street Hotel with Dianne to meet Debbie Rush (Corrie’s Anna Windass) and her lovely family for a Mother’s Day feature.

The cakes that formed part of the afternoon-tea themed interview sustained me until 7.30, and 12 hours after I’d met Sarah I’d definitely got the full picture of life at the MEN.

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