Virgin Media (the cable telly bit)

It has came to my attention that the videos on Virgin Media's music on demand section seem to be different than the ones on the music channels with regards to product placement.

Ones to keep an eye out for

Lady Gaga: Poker Face - the table and cards have prominent branding for some online casino, on MTV you just get the slightest flash of the back of the card.

Black Eyed Peas: Boom boom pow - ridiculously long zoom into an HP TOUCHSMART pc screen at start and end.


There's probably more to be honest.

Question is, is Virgin not doing wrong by this? I presume they're just sourcing their vids cheaper than the music channels and thus might not be getting the better copies, or is on-demand somehow separate?

These seem to be the unedited versions aired in America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIK-U6ZfyYE
There is the long zoom into the HP.

Seems that they don't want to product place in uk, so they edit them out.

Didn't ofcom just relax the laws regarding product placement though?

I note that poker face has the logo blurred on 4music.

IIRC it was the EU that relaxed product placement rules, but Ofcom and the gov have stood firm about it being banned

I wonder if MTV and C4 have better trained compliance officers who are more clued up as to what is and isn't acceptable under Ofcom rules...

whilst not about product placement I noticed they had a search function appear on music on demand a few days ago (leading to the A-Z moving under a sub menu) but its vanished again. Wonder why as it did appear to work on my box.

Hopefully it'll reappear again soon enough. IIRC playlists with skip did this too before appearing for good.

Although I still don't understand the concept of skipping, if only there was a tiresome woman to patronise me about it every few minutes...