Product placements infiltrate TV shows

They get flush turning TV shows into promotions -- and all you get are these lousy product placements. Beware: Television more and more is shill-o-vision, where commercial breaks still come and go but the commercials never end.

Commercials for Sears products, which outfit ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." For Coke, with logo-inscribed glasses nursed by Simon and his comrades on Fox's "American Idol." For Clairol, when a contest to be "Herbal Essences Girl" pitted two pals against each other on an episode of the WB sitcom "What I Like About You."

And this is only the start. Foiling ad-aversive TiVo users, TV honchos burn with gold-rush fever as they stake out a zap-proof advertising gold mine: the programming itself.

Hear CBS boss Leslie Moonves as quoted last month in Broadcasting & Cable magazine: "We're making more and more of those deals: The kind of cars they drive in 'CSI'; the kind of orange juice they drink in 'Two and a Half Men.'"

In 2004, the value of television product placements (a product or brand name inserted for marketing purposes into entertainment fare) increased by 46.4 percent over the year before, to $1.88 billion, according to the research firm PQ Media.

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