Media Daily News reports that a report released Monday night by TNS Media Intelligence shows that the average program now carries an average of four minutes and twenty-five seconds of product mentions or branded placement of products. Understandably most of the shows with heavy handed branded content were the reality shows, but even scripted shows such as CBS’ “King of Queens” carried an average of 18 minutes and 13 seconds of branded content per hour equivalent. In fact, the same show only carried 16 minutes and 49 seconds of commercials.
I for one, think that product placement and branded entertainment may be on the verge of jumping the shark…once you reach almost 20% of total TV communication message carried by program content, things may very well start to backlash.
