The Form Of Product Placements In Reality TV Show

Over the years, TV media always occupies a strong position in the advertising market while the traditional plug-in TV advertisements gradually are developing to a bottleneck. TV advertising market is facing an unprecedented threat by saturated resources, escaped audience, new media and technologies, growing independence of TV producers and so on. As a result, product placements become necessary measures in this television entertainment era. In various television program genres, TV reality show has a unique internal and external attributes. It creates "rules" instead of traditional drama scripts and documentary realism, making a "fictitious-real" media environment. By means of its low-cost production, young-age audience, high participation and clear-performance of advertising, reality TV has found a unique way for brand/product placements.Based on a sample of American reality TV show"The Apprentice", which is popular, mature-made and extensive-copied in China, this issue will research into the advertising forms in reality TV show by content analysis methods. Through an aspect of application, an objective description would be made that the status and development trend of product placements. It is proposed to be mining and using the core elements of television programs to place product/brand, with a variety of program forms enhancing the value of media. This point of view is expected to draw some useful experiences for the development of domestic TV industry, but also to establish a theoretical basis for the future research on product placements in TV and other media genres.