Thursday, April 21, 2005

From A Plug, To Getting Plugged

Firms paid TV's tech gurus ro promote their products .

Howard Stern talked about this a while back and said it was wrong if it wasn't disclosed. I agree. It is product placement within a show.

Hearing a celebrity talk about a product gives it much more weight than watching a bunch of Survivors fight over it in a Immunity Challenge.


Corey Greenberg, tech editor for NBC's "Today" show, appeared last July to praise Apple's iPod as "a great portable musical player . . . the coolest-looking one" and suggested a compatible device to "share your music with other people." "This is the way to go," he declared

"Let's cut the Apple commercial here right now, okay?" co-host Matt Lauer interjected.

Lauer was onto something. Greenberg, an NBC contributor, confirmed yesterday that he has received payments from Apple as well as Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Seiko Epson, Creative Technology and Energizer Holdings, charging $15,000 apiece to talk up their products on news shows. The contracts were first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal.

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