Magazine will make it easier to get the stuff you see on TV

Product placement on TV is the newest marketing ploy.
knight ridder newspapers
So you're craving the sexy slip dress Teri Hatcher wears on TV's "Desperate Housewives." Maybe you see yourself in jeans that Earl sports on the new show. Or you like the sofa pillows in "Two and a Half Men."
You want to own them.
Some day not far off you may, thanks to a new marketing magazine that is expected to make wardrobe and home decor items seen on the screen available for purchase. It's called Get in print and online.
The magazine taps a trend traced to HBO's "Sex and the City," which tantalized thousands of fashion-minded fans with its trendy clothes, shoes and jewelry. When the show left the air, many of these items were frenetically swept up in an online sale.
The trend picked up speed when new television technologies, such as TiVo, started to diminish the power of paid commercials and revved up marketing efforts to get product placement on television shows. An actor is wearing Lee jeans. A child is eating Frosted Flakes. With luck the logo may be in sight.
And shopping magazines such as Lucky and Shopetc have become remarkably successful. Fashion features are generated by advertising dollars, while consumers relish the guidance and convenience.
Birth of idea
All of these factors helped to spawn an idea for Rick Harrison, a publishing veteran in Winston-Salem, N.C. He is developing Get, which will catalog the merchandise manufacturers have paid to have displayed on television shows.
Next month he plans to start negotiations with networks to decide which one will launch his project. Once established, he expects to add other networks and shows. He says the plan will be firmly in place by late spring.
It's an idea expected since the days of Carrie and Mr. Big. With online shopping on the rise and celebrity-obsessed consumers always in a frenzy, one is left to wonder what took so long.