A word for our sponsors

Like Howard Beale in the 1976 movie Network, writers recently stuck their collective heads out windows and yelled: 'We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore.' At least their union did. At the end of November, the Writers Guild of America issued a white paper against the covert use of product integration and ad placement, particularly in reality programs. As WGA West president Patric Verrone points out, his members find the increasing use of guerilla integration a 'particularly pervasive and obnoxious development,' and see it as the thin end of a wedge that will push into other genres.