Remember when Obama tried to exclude Fox from the press core and all the others in the press core said if you do we are out. We could use some of that principled reporter solidarity now.

Not a justification but an explanation.

Product placement are the commercials in movies.

Because they don’t want to do anything to make brands not buy the spots during the episode.

So if an episode has product placement for pasta sauce A then pasta sauce B, C, and D don’t want to buy commercial spots for usually the entire run of the show.

It’s not set in stone but having it be that way for all your shows makes it easy to sell big blocks of commercial spots spread across the network.

It’s rough but the other option is death. The cold would kill you if your immune system wasn’t doing this to you.