• Diet Peach Disease Prevention Tastes Best

  Posted Thursday, April 02, 2009 11:50 AM | By Willa Paskin
  
  
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  There's an interesting article in the Times today about a deal the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation just cut with Viacom, which owns CBS, MTV, Nick, BET, etc., to create new, socially responsible programs and to insert lessons on healthy living, AIDS prevention, education, and so on into already existing programs. As the Times puts it, the foundation is now paying for "message placement," a variation on product placement where the benefits of organ donation, not Snapple, are being sold to the audience.
  
  The foundation has already influenced story lines on shows like ER, Law & Order, and Private Practice, the idea being that George Clooney, in character as Dr. Doug Ross, is a better salesman for organ donation than the most persuasive educational pamphlet ever written ever could be. The Gates Foundation isn't the only nonprofit using this method—the Kaiser Family Foundation has worked with the likes of America's Next Top Model—but it has taken the rare step of paying for it. The money is, of course, the best way to ensure the Gates' message "gets out" and is taken seriously by the folks who actually write these TV shows, but it still sets an uncomfortable precedent: If the Gates Foundation can buy a "message" on a prime-time drama, so can some other, possibly lesser, organization. Social health issues are way more complicated than Snapple, which is maybe why they shouldn't be for sale.
  
  
  Filed under: television, Product Placement, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Viacom
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