Heroes creator worried about product placement
By fred | August 4, 2008
Apparently Heroes creator Tim Kring is getting worried that product placement and over staffing of digital divisions (online content) [at NBC] might affect the shows. Well, I’d say that’s a pretty fair worry to have, especially if you’re on NBC, as perfectly illustrated by, say, the second season of Heroes.
In a panel discussion Wednesday at NATPE’s LATV Festival in Hollywood, Kring explained that “the big fear for us is that when [digital/made for online distribution] material and content start to be generated by people who are outside the main or inner core of the creative force of a show, you have all sorts of pitfalls and things that can go wrong. You throw a little bit of sponsorship and product placement into the show and you have a recipe for all kinds of serious problems“.
Well, there won’t be anyone to argue with this, except the likes of Zucker or Silverman of course, but I think it should be reminded to Kring that what mostly hurt last season of his show isn’t the webisodes or any online content, it’s the actual show itself. The very episodes of the second season were plain awful, and they came directly from the “inner core of the creative force of a show”, only that’s just the problem : no creative force, no artistic vision for the show, no intent to bring the characters to a defined place or through a determined path, they just tried to redo what seemed to have worked during the first season, ensuring not to kill anyone because you always find fans of every character out there…
And while there’s been many reports by those who got lucky enough to see the pilot of the upcoming season that the show was back on track, I don’t buy it, and I’ll need to see it myself to believe it. Because I think they’re still hiring new people, enlarging yet again the cast of the show, and I have a feeling no one will be killed, not Nikki, not even Nathan, no one…
Coming back on topic : of course digital content coming from outside of the show’s creative force is bad, of course product placement is bad, of course NBC sucks, doesn’t take a genius to see that. But it’s not like Kring & co were reluctant to go into that World Promo Tour last season instead of, you know, coming up with good scripts…
PS: Yeah, I guess I have a thing against them now, but you can’t really blame me, they ruined what at first looked like a pretty cool show! Of course I’m pissed…
