As viewers don’t realize, sometimes advertisements are made into their favorite television shows. Both 30 Rock and Arrested Development are on the streaming site Netflix, but sadly 30 Rock will be removed sometime in October.

Anyways, in the Pilot episode of 30 Rock, quite a few companies / corporations have a promotional message. One of the first (and frequent) was NBC, pictured on “a representative of their program” jacket as a pin, then mentioned verbally again further on in the show. This would be an example of advertisement integration within the show. Other placements would include a cappuccino machine for their office, an oven by GE, what seems to be a poptart, a Hummer, and what also looks like an Aquafina bottle that was thrown at their boss.

The cappuccino machine might make viewers think that they might want one in their offices also, it’s probably a good idea to have one. For the GE oven, it was a verbal advertisement for their new and improved oven: “The GE trivection oven cooks perfect food five times faster than a conventional oven because it uses three types of heat.” and their boss just goes on to talk about the three heat types and makes a joke about their show “The Girlie Show” about not having the last kind of heat. The poptart that was shown was just someone eating it while they were talking, this might be influential to the viewer to go get one while they’re watching the show (product placement).  The Hummer belonged to one of the characters on the show, about to be cast into “The Girlie Show”, it is highly doubted that it would have an impact on someone. The character that owns it just seems like he makes a lot of money, so he’s able to buy that type of car for himself- that might be what’s influential to the viewer.

There were verbal advertisements like Burger King, K Mart, GE, and US Weekly in the show as well. As viewers watch, the rich character with the Hummer was meeting the show’s producer at a fancy restaurant. He got visibly upset and said that he wanted to eat where he knew that he liked  the food, so they went to a small town restaurant. Everyone knew his name and greeted him as soon as he walked in the door. He also knew what he wanted right away without looking at a menu. This could be an advertisement to support local businesses in the run-down side of town to promote business for them.

There weren’t too too many ad placements in Arrested Development but they had some humorous ones. For instance, the characters ended up going to Burger King for some reason, but one literally said “I’m going to get a refill on this drink. Did you know I can get any refill, and it’s free?” and the other was like oh really. They also made a huge production on the fact that it “was such a good restaurant” and they should go there more often. Another was that the show was legally obligated to state the difference between something going on for a mother and son dance and an 80s rock band, both named “Motherboy”. The episode also had a few other stars from other television shows, Amy Poehler was one of them and Mila Kunis was a maybe (not totally sure).

Altogether, product integration isn’t really distracting to the audience if the producers incorporate it with humor, if it includes the story line in some way or some ridiculous scene with the product. If anything, hypercommercialism is just ridiculous in itself, even annoying sometimes. Corporations are just so self serving that they feel that it’s necessary to advertise to their customers every single second of their lives. Google even recognizes what we search and creates ads on other pages for viewers to click on. However, the “related” product advertisements that pop up sometimes can be useful if it’s what viewers are looking for.