Emmys: MySpace, Apple and Al Gore
In an evening full of contrived moments, the winner of the Most Contrived Moment during the Emmys on Fox is .... the presentation of the primetime Emmy for Creative Achievement in Interactive Television, included in the telecast for the first time. It started with an Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) product placement as Masi Oka from NBC’s Heroes introduced the category while seated on stage behind a Macbook Pro, then segued into a plug for MySpace when he tossed to virtual first friend Tom Anderson to announce the actual winner by webcam from his office: Current TV. Partners Al Gore and Joel Hyatt (not Hart, as Anderson said) then used their product placement, oops, acceptance speech, to talk up the wonders of Current and promise news next month. (The other nominees were MLB Mosaic, BravoTV.com, Disney Channel Broadband Video Player and Yahoo Fantasy Football Television Tracker.)
MySpace, of course, is owned by News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), which also owns tonight’s Emmy network. Gore is on the board of Apple, where his bio is so old it doesn’t mention Current.
Portable devices: Another category featured each of the nominated episodes being viewed in the audience on a different portable/mobile device including the iPhone, an HTC Hermes and a PSP.
Posted In: Entertainment, Media & Publishing, TV, Cable & Telecom, Social Media, Video, Technologies / Formats, Broadband, Companies, Apple, News Corp., Fox, Fox Interactive Media
Newsletter
Comments (2)
Sep 17, 2007 10:56 AM
what up can you tell me a way to get on myspace
Sep 17, 2007 11:52 PM
Staci,
I agree that the Apple and MySpace elements in the FOX broadcast were un-adulterated paid content. Wondering why you consider the Current acceptance speach another example of product placement? The Interactive Television Emmy award is one of the Televsion Academy’s juried awards and was voted on by the ATAS Interactive Media peer group membership and verified by a blue ribbon panel of industry judges - certainly not a paid appearance. Current deserves the recognition and people in the audience and at home might not really know what they’ve been up to for the last 2+ years. As for promising more to come…that whole show was a commercial for the new television season, why shouldn’t Gore tease their next big thing?