If No One Watches Commercials, How Do TV Shows Make $$$??

With incredibly blatant product placement! From big pharma! Of migraine medicine being given to a patient sufferent from migraines! And then five minutes later, again!

It’s all on record and evidenced by these poorly made gif’s from last week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy (after the break because they’re so jumpy, I now need migraine medicine).

They didn’t say the drug’s name out loud, but they certainly got some real hot shots of that box. REAL HOT SHOTS. The FCC says that shows are supposed to disclose product placement, but as the credits rolled, the only mention of brands was this slide:

It says “Some Medical Equipment Furnished By” and then lists six companies that make medical equipment. This article from 2007 details how the exchanges work. The companies give the show product in return for having their product on the show, and no money is exchanged.

What’s INTERESTING about this case (“case”) is that Sumatriptan, the drug so boldly highlighted, is not a brand name–the patent expired on the drug in 1995, and while it’s still a main ingredient in some brand name drugs, it’s sold generically as Sumatriptan. So this is like having an ad for aspirin instead of an ad for Tylenol. BUT Covidien, the first named on the “furnished by” list, is involved in the production of a brand-name version of Sumatriptan, so I think they must be involved somehow, some way.

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