[logfromblammo]

Obfuscation of the mutual back-scratching arrangements does not obviate the fact that the segment airing on national broadcast television is not being disclosed as an advertisement, nor that many viewers will not necessarily recognize it as such without outside assistance.

It is really very well done if you consider it objectively. The show that is itself loaded with inlined advertisement is also able to sell traditional advertisement time in its segment breaks.

But in my own opinion, shows that do that sort of thing need to be nuked from orbit, and the glass broken up with jackhammers so that salt may be plowed into the dust underneath. I simply cannot abide the ubiquity and intrusiveness of advertisements in the current culture.

[smokeyj]

News companies have tools to help schedule advertisements in ways that don't make the advertiser look bad (airing a segment on oil spills then don't advertise BP).

While advertisers don't explicitly ask media companies not to run negative segments, they can book a large commercial inventory and incentivize as much.

[modfodder]

Oh I agree and didn't mean to infer otherwise, just doing my bit to illuminate the process (a process that might have changed since I was last involved a decade ago).