Eye-opener with a pitch

TV news program tries product placement as revenue source

COURTESY OF FOX 5

Stand-ins for McDonald’s iced coffee appear with Jason Feinberg and Monica Jackson on the Fox 5 set.

Monday, July 21, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Reader poll

Oooooooh, they’re calling out your name.

Two cups of McDonald’s iced coffee (BUY!) sit on the Fox 5 TV news desk, a punch-you-in-the-face product placement (BUY!) to chase down your morning news.

They’ve been on the Las Vegas station set for about two weeks, following the lead of a few TV stations across the country, and they’re still looking every bit as frosty and tantalizing (BUY!) as they were the first day you laid your eyes on them.

But wait, here’s the best part: They’re not real. Fake coffee on the real news, two plastic cups permanently filled with some kind of bogus drink. The anchors aren’t even supposed to acknowledge them, McDonald’s reps explain. That’s part of their genius, my little lambs! They get into your mind without you knowing it. So they just sit there, two logo-emblazoned plastic cups, percolating into the psyche. Made-to-scale models that weigh something like seven pounds each — refreshing, and bottom-line boosting!

Fox is starting its day with a “nontraditional revenue source,” KVVU news director Adam P. Bradshaw says.

The station and McDonald’s won’t disclose how much the fast food empire paid for the product placement. But lest there be any concerns about mixing fact (the morning news) with fiction (fake coffee), he points out that the cups are put out only after 7 a.m., when the hard news gives way to light lifestyle news.

“I stress the fact that it is being done on a program that is a combination of news entertainment and lifestyle programming,” Bradshaw says.

And if there’s ever an E. coli outbreak beneath a certain set of golden arches, he says, KVVU will report the daylights out of it, gosh darn it.

Kelly McBride, the ethics group leader for Poynter Institute, the nonprofit journalism training organization, isn’t convinced. Product placement in a newsroom, she worries, represents the “slippage” of news into advertisement, a descent into a dark world where conglomerate companies control coverage.

If so, the slippage is also occurring at stations in Chicago, Seattle and New York.

And when Las Vegas is done suffering this dry-your-eyeballs-out-of-their-sockets summer heat, Bradshaw says KVVU might switch to ceramic mugs with massive McLogos filled with fake black gold McDonald’s coffee. (BUY!)

Discussion: 9 comments so far…

By 2wheelsdaily

7/22/08 at 11:17 p.m.

Suggest removal

FOX 5 is already a half rate channel with a joke of a news program. On air advertising can hardly impinge upon their professionalism.

Given the amount of stuttering and mispronounced words, some real news would be that Jason and Monica looked over their manuscripts at least once before reading them on air.
By 2wheelsdaily

7/23/08 at 12:23 a.m.

Suggest removal

I vote Darren Peck for most annoying weatherman of all time.
By 2wheelsdaily

7/23/08 at 12:26 a.m.

Suggest removal

Perhaps the author didn't notice the Apple computers that they use on FOX 5. Or maybe she thinks Apple is a "good" corporation and McDonald's is a "bad" corporation.
By ZoDiAc

7/23/08 at 2:08 p.m.

Suggest removal

The funny thing about fox 5 is that the news is barely passable as news. In the 7/22 morning "news" show both of the so called journalists read the same news brief back to back and then stared at the camera dumbfounded on what the next step was. It seems that they would rather fill the news with happy go lucky stories and terrible coffee than hard fact news.
By BugMeTons

7/23/08 at 2:40 p.m.

Suggest removal

monica is looking totally hot in that picture. yum yum yum!
By BugMeTons

7/23/08 at 8:27 p.m.

Suggest removal

Sad. On so many levels.
By vbfree

8/4/08 at 6:52 a.m.

Suggest removal

note that tv screens in McD's only show Faux News . . . won't change the channel if you ask. Apparently it's part of the contract. A C-SPAN caller today reported that he called a 5-state regional McD's headquarters and was told that it's company policy to only show Faux.