Product placement: UK to oppose European Union directive, says Andy Burnham

Now here's a surprise that some people may not have seen coming, namely the fact that Culture Secretary Andy Burnham is actually defending the integrity of television programmes over and above the whims of broadcasters' advertising departments and marketing people.

At least he is clever enough to realise that to allow unbridled product placement would run the risk of undermining the integrity of a whole industry, although the UK is perhaps the exception rather than the rule within the whole of Europe in that it still produces television programming that people still care about to some degree.

Whether Andy Burnham would have adopted the same stance if all those TV fakery scandals hadn't taken place last year is wide open to conjecture, as well as whether this opinion is widespread throughout central government. Of course BSkyB doesn't care about such things when it has a subscription model to support itself with.

Despite what some within the industry might say, the traditional TV commercial is far from dead and buried, and it's more of a case of an industry having to creatively adapt to change by making commercials in such a style that people will want to watch them (eg. drumming gorillas or live skydiving exploits) as opposed to skipping over them.

Before anyone gets too excited, bear in mind that the whole thing could end in some form of (potentially messy) compromise and will perhaps require legislation to be passed, although keeping obvious forms of product placement well away from drama productions should be a fundamental priority.

And any UK broadcaster who dares to speak out against what the Culture Secretary is advocating, namely that "As a viewer I don't want to feel the script has been written by the commercial marketing director", must obviously care more about their profit margin than the fundamental integrity of their 'product', despite their arguments to the contrary.

You have been warned.