DIGITAL TV
When Mars Inc. turned down a strategic placement of its M&Ms candy in a certain 1982 film, the story goes, Hershey jumped at the chance to create a special product for the movie. Turned out the flick was E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, one of the top-grossing releases of all time, and the product was Reese's Pieces, still going strong 17 years later. Since then, product placement has been big business, amounting to tens of millions of dollars a year.
But suppose those product placements were up for grabs again when the film aired on television - could M&Ms get another shot at sidling up to E.T.? The TV industry is already taking the first steps in this direction. With the advent of DTV, which demands that films be transferred to digital tape, it's become relatively easy to cut and paste.
Mark Ritcheson at LA postproduction house Complete Post says his company has removed several logos from remastered films and TV sitcoms to avoid "pissing off television advertisers" with competing products. The firm took Snapple out of the picture for an HDTV airing of The Juror and excised Jif and Wonder Bread icons from The Babysitters Club.
And Ritcheson predicts this is the tip of the iceberg: "In the future, just putting ads and banners where there weren't any will be a great business," he says. "Then we'll replace them all again downstream."
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