Plastic product placement on ABC
There are various ways to advertise on network television, but only product placement inoculates the message against the fast forward button. In the case of ABC’s Private Practice, a medical drama set in Santa Monica, California, a sales pitch for bottled water was even written into the script recently. A character who we are to accept as an Ivy League-trained brain surgeon was given a speil about how ready access to bottled water untroubled by guilt about the bottle’s persistence in the environment for 1,000 years was what she loved about the show’s ocean-side clinic. With this insouciance for hire, ABC managed the ultimate perversion. No, not asking us …