Deal or no Deal

Peter Kafra on AllThingsD, telling his readers „Why NBC Can’t Make Money From Its Latest “Saturday Night Live” Viral Video“ with last Saturday’s „Pandora“ sketch on SNL

“Saturday Night Live” used to worry that people would watch the sketch show on the Web. Now it embraces the idea.

(…)

But you can be as Web-savvy as you want and still bump into stubborn copyright laws. Which is what appeared to happen this weekend with a sketch that starred Brunos Mars as a Pandora intern.

Unfortunately dear Peter, the whole premise for this article is wrong.

No money from a viral video? Since when does NBC make money when viewers watch a sketch on NBC.com, the only official place to watch them? I don’t think NBC puts the SNL sketches on YouTube, or do they? And is there any advertising on NBC.com? And do you know about advertising deals between NBC and the brands that are in those sketches? Do they pay for the hits the sketches get?

You seem to take all those basic points as a given. I don’t. I usually don’t just assume stuff and then build an article around those assumptions. I mean you’re a journalist – aren’t you supposed to base your articles on, say, facts?

Which brings me to my next point: what about the money Pandora paid NBC to draft a sketch around their brand in the first place? (see also: Dorritos and Chanel #5)

I mean I think it’s a given that product placement deals are common on TV. I think there are even laws about them. So taking THAT as a given seems ok to me. But I think even for that assumption you’d get a couple of people contesting that SNL even does that.

Speaking of which: what did you get from GossipCop for dropping their name? Is this whole article basically about them? I mean if you can assume that NBC does make money by publishing sketches with brands in them online, aren’t we supposed to think that you get money for name-dropping?

Or is that up in the air as well?

by the way, I chose that image because there’s real news about SNL – Louis C.K. will be on this week. w00t!