NBC Sells Its Nonexistent Soul For A $5 Subway Sandwich

I'm pretty certain I'm the only person who watches 90210, but there was some hilarious Dr. Pepper placement this week. "Its not a road trip without Dr. Pepper" whilst holding the can up next to his face with logo facing the camera perfectly.

@plf4: Cautionary tale on why sandwiches should be made in the privacy of your own home, so only you can determine how many potato chips mashed on the bread is egregious. This, my friend, is essential "sandwich making etiquette" you will not find with a chain meat and bread shiller.

Spirit Fingers

Please. This pales in comparison to the McFlurrie episode of 30 Rock.

@Dorothea Bercq: it actually stands for "substitute good."

plf4

At least we know now that the "sub" does not stand for "subtle."

@WindowSeat: Actually, that is a pretty accurate description of that thick pungent odor that forms an impenetrable stink-bubble around every Subway shop.

@Spirit Fingers: eww...

plf4

NBC and their make-believe TV shows. Ha! They almost had me.

And Subway is so on the lower rung of the fast-food sandwich food chain, but at least there's no reason to justify the existence of Blimpies any longer, that awful place, of the sweaty, drippy, mal-temperatured cheese evil incarnate.

Yeah, sweaty cheese. Just what you want. Cheese that's the equivalent of a large man with pit stains who leaves a Splat! on the workout bench and neglects to use the handily provided spritzer mere centimeters away.

I'm talking to you, hairy dude with the maroon sweatpants pulled up to your nipples, everyday, every. day.

Spirit Fingers

@KurticusMaximus: It is a great show.

@General Halfshaftery: I heard it was only 6 out of 10, but what ever.

xyu

@Gregoire: If Best Buy was anything like the Buy More though I would never buy anything there...

xyu

@czecher: I guarantee you they came up with that jingle after surfing the web for bargain basement male prostitutes.

Chuck is awesome. Don't hate on Chuck. It is shockingly entertaining.

@General Halfshaftery: This is a rumor I would believe since the smell their bread exudes when it's baking is close to what Satan's ass must give off on an especially hot day after a Taco Bell binge.

WindowSeat

@thecowardlylion:Nothing seth Mcfarlane does is brilliant.

Lincolnsbeard33

I'd rather watch an awkward product placement than a 30-second ad with a shitty jingle.

(5... 5... 5 dollar foot loooooooooong)

czecher

See now if we spread a rumour here that 7 out of 10 Subway sandwiches tested positive for traces of fecal matter maybe we can negate any sales increases as a result of appearing on Chuck.

@Murph1908: ok so you are ACTUALLY andy rooney, right?

Here's a thought!

Quit paying actors $750k per episode! (Looking at you, L&O SVU).

There's more than one way to get your bottom line in the black. Increasing revenue is only one.

Murph1908

How is it at all possible that enough people watch Chuck to make this a worthwhile deal for Subway?

plf4

Not to mention that the show is aleady a weekly advertisement for Best Buy (thinly disguised as Buy More).

While flipping channels the other night I passed "The Biggest Loser" and they were all eating Subway sandwiches. There was a nice close-up of the sandwich wrapper.

Which other NBC shows featured Subway ads this week? Can you spot them?

Isn't there something wrong with this?
I mean, isn't Subway trying hard to be the "healthy sandwich choice" for people who "used to fit into these pants and now look how skinny I am from just eating subway without exercise or dietary pills what so ever" customers?

Then why would they use their product to serve it to an overweight man?

Its like when they had Family Guy in the subway shop as a way to promote. Yes, we use fat guys to promote sandwiches that we promise will get you to look as good as Jared (but not as rich).

Mr_Stephens_Head_Of_Catering

Next week...Chuck flashes on Jared and 175 old Subway advertisements run through his head (and on screen).

Fat doods like sandwiches?

No one does it better than Seth McFarland and team over on Fox. Brilliant each and every time. Doritos anyone?

thecowardlylion

@czecher: YES!!! I agree 100 percent. Put the ad in the show and get rid of one of the worst jingles I've ever heard.

EdgesRazor

@Macloserboy: Eh- this is pretty shameless, but at least 30 Rock did it with some tact. I mean- the guy fucking said Subway's tagline.

@Macloserboy: They didn't get paid to do that and it was clever. This is pathetic

How far we've fallen. I remember when Lenny Bruce used to project the brand of tobacco he was smoking on teevee for a grand or two and he'd have grief about it from Ed Sullivan producers. Now it's the producers themselves in the bidness of pimping brand. From here it's only a small step to a fake news outfit creating its own events on behalf of a political party. Don't laugh; I think they do that in Argentina today, and prevailing winds are southern.

@Dorothea Bercq: I see what you did there. Nice.

@Mr_Stephens_Head_Of_Catering: There is the suggestion that maybe fat guys doing Subway ads is blackmail. Pay us and we'll take it off; otherwise we'll run it forever.

@PennyMartian: Ah, a return to those thrilling days of yesteryear. Without a guide, a new media simply clones the old one. Like, old silent movies aped the overacting histrionics of stage plays, because live theatre has to project to the back rows. And early teevee commercials had Jack Lescoulie or Harry Von Zell in a suit smiling and holding up product for the camera and speaking lines from radio ads.

@General Halfshaftery: One very enterprising high school stoont for a Science Fair went into the local Taco Bell and took some rather repulsive samples and concluded by a clinical test that there was more interesting and virulent bacteria around the soft drink stand than in the toilets.

So Taco Bell kicked off a Taco Bell Means Clean Toilets run of commercials.

I made up that last item. I stick by the rest, though.

@KurticusMaximus: I have never watched it but now that I know Buster Bluth is in it, I just might.

czecher

They should turn this to good and product place some NGOs pro bono.

"You know what I think is a great organization? Amnesty International. I'd totally write a check to them this second if we weren't on a speedboat being chased by terrorists who want to unleash the virus in this canister."

AvenueOfTheStrongest

@Tremonius: "fake news outfit creating its own events on behalf of a political party." Doesn't that exactly describe the 150 years of American journalism?

plf4

@JacquesPaysan: you're really going to point out just ONE egregious Gossip Girl product placement?

plf4

@Tremonius: You are forgetting that back then TV shows were exclusively sponsored by one or two companies. They often even put their names right in the titles, like Kraft Television Theater. Even I Love Lucy, which was sponsored by Phillip Morris, had it's characters smoking their brand of cigarettes.

Chances are that Lenny Bruce got reprimanded not for the act of product placement, but because he was giving airtime to a product that was not the show's sponsor and may have very well been a competing brand.

Clearly none of you have noticed the almost NASCAR-like product placement/ advertising for Vitamin Water in some of the more recent Gossip Girl episodes.

@czecher: The one problem I have with Chuck is that the writers don't use Tony Hale nearly as well as they could.

@PennyMartian: I was just coming to say... "the most blatant product placement in network TV history?"

Clearly, Hamilton doesn't watch 90210. Not that I do. (Seriously, don't start. It's really, shockingly bad.)

ArmCandy

I wanna see his footlong!!

YUM!

NoGrumpys

Well, I like Chuck and Subway and don't mind product placement all that much if done right. I don't particularly care for Applebee's and those type of restaurants but I have a much more favorable opinion of them for supporting Friday Night Lights (plus it's more believable Tyra would work there and not some place like the Peach Pit). While this is poorly executed I thought the closing line referring to the boss's relationship with the mother was pretty funny and not what I expected.

MrJames

@Gregoire: Actually, the reason it's "Buy More" and not Best Buy is because the network wouldn't have been able to clear use of the Best Buy mark - the Buy More conceit is a workaround created by legal. (Ditto the "Work Bench" on Reaper.)

The first mistake was actually showing the actual sandwich. The sight of that stringy lettuce falling from the mashed bread has put me off of getting a Subway sandwich for another year at least.

@downlow: c'mon, The Apprentice is the worst of them all... those fucking challenges where Donald starts off by saying " x is a multi-billion dollar industry... (oohs and aahs from quasi-impressed contestants) and y is the leader in x..." bah

@Tremonius: We did a similiar experiment in 9th grade biology. The toilets were totally clean. The water fountain sample grew a little something in the petri dish though.

I like how Top Chef's product placements are submarined by the contestants' bitching about the products.

Itsjustcatnip

@EdgesRazor:
I have to disagree. I can pause the TiVo, or get up to go get a drink, or simply turn the tv down during the commercials.

Put them IN the shows, and they are unavoidable.

And what makes you think that as the ads pervade the shows, that they won't get to the point where they sing the jingle anyway?

Murph1908

@downlow: Yeah, but only when they're complaining or ambivalent about the product. Like "Man, is this taco bell food we're eating shitty or what? Let's go to subway tomorrow. It sucks but I can force it down."

AvenueOfTheStrongest

@Murph1908: No shit, I'd rather no commercials at all, but then we'd have no shows. DVR is great but it's the reason they have to use product placement.

czecher

@MrJames: I think FNL does a good job weaving the product placement into the story. Toyota was also a sponser and Buddy made a little comment which was essentially a commercial, but since Buddy owns the car dealership the sales pitch made sense with the story and was actually pretty funny.

I don't mind product placement when it is done well. It can actually make the story and characters more relatable to real life.

If rediculous product placement can get us Chuck Season 3, I'll eat Subway for the rest of my life.

AshleyKeen

@Zlund: They totally got paid to do that, and their oh-so clever wink-wink look how we acknowledge it gig wears thin. 30 Rock has a LOT of product placement.

@bytememehard: The realism is so in my face! Cinema verite.

I want to mention this without sounding like the biggest turd, but it's impossible... I caught an episode of 90210 the other night and the main characters were on a road trip. There was such a lame LAME lame product placement for dr. pepper. They even had to pull over for a pee break as too much dr. pepper was drank. gaah.

dangercat

Both the eating of a disgusting Subway sandwich and speaking lovingly of the food were totally in character for Big Mike, so it was there and I noticed, but it wasn't jarring. It's not like they had the skinny CIA agent chowing down.

@KurticusMaximus: hear, hear ...

Lucky for you it was one of the best Chuck episodes EVER or else I'd really be pissed...god why am I craving chicken teryaki just now? Wow for a second there ::SUBWAY:: I though that I::SUBWAY:: was being influenced by tacky ::SUBWAY:: ad placements..............::SUBWAY!!::

radrider82

@czecher:

People have been avoiding commercials since their inception. Before my TiVo, I'd mute the TV during every commercial break, mainly because stations played the commercials 20% louder than the programming.

Yes, DVRs are a greater threat. Even when we watch TV 'live', my wife and I start watching at 20 after so we can skip the commercials.

But I was replying to the Put the ad in the show and get rid of one of the worst jingles I've ever heard. comment. Moving the ads to inside the show will NOT make them less annoying, as this original story about Chuck and Subway has proven.

As I said earlier, maybe it's time the networks reevaluated their business models. Paying 2 actors $750k each per episode is outrageous. And unless we as consumers fight back against the craptastic product placement, we'll still be subjected to it, and the actors will continue to make more in one episode than we make in 10-20 years.

Murph1908

Part of me doesn't want to watch this show because of the stupidity of the whole Subway debacle, but the other part really wants to watch it because it has Buster Bluth. What's a girl to do?

@PennyMartian: It's just not a road trip without a cooler filled with Dr. Pepper stacked ever so lovingly and logo up.

@JacquesPaysan: The Vitamin Water White Party. Yeah.

@downlow: Yes! I like irony. It's gwine save us all. We are all urged to avoid the licks of canines. Then I heard there is less harm from that source than from your lover. Then a doctor said, well, yes, there is more bacteria in the yap of Bo, but less than can do you harm.

And then I always like to drop in the comment by George Plimpton about the locker room of the Detroit Lions. "The conversation was surprisingly good. In fact, better than in places where it's supposed to be good."

Sort of like Gawker.

Oh, for the days of yesteryear, when George Burns would stop in the middle of his show and talk about Carnation evaporated milk. It's from Contented Cows!!

iow, get over it. If watching a fat man chow down on a Subway sandwich for twenty seconds gets me 48 more minutes of Chuck, I'm down for it.

GreyGander

yes - the time they were in the bedroom talking and he brought up total cereal - hilarious - do not hate on McFarland@thecowardlylion:

want