Ellen Gray: Plugging products producing big payoffs

CHUCK. 8 tonight, Channel 10.

PRODUCT PLACEMENT, long a hot-button issue in TV and movies, seems to be having a moment of cool.

Maybe because the once-stealthy form of advertising is increasingly hiding in plain sight.

Or because some of us are realizing there's no such thing as a free TV show.

Some viewers are even embracing it, including those participating in today's campaign to win another season for NBC's "Chuck," whose second-season finale is scheduled for tonight.

On Facebook, "Chuck" fans are being urged today to "buy a $5 footlong from Subway and drop a note in the comment box at the franchise letting them know you're participating in the Finale and Footlong campaign to save NBC's 'Chuck.' "

The same thing's happening on Twitter, where some users - including some TV critics - have replaced their profile pictures with "Save Chuck" logos and are tweeting up the Subway campaign, the idea for which came from a particularly blatant plug for the sandwiches within a recent episode.

As save-our-show campaigns go, it appears so far to be less organized than the one, say, mounted by fans of CBS' "Jericho" a few seasons ago, in which viewers shipped tons of peanuts to the network to protest the show's cancellation, based on a single, uncommercial line in one episode.

Though the "Jericho" tale turns out to be a cautionary one - the show was brought back, only to be canceled again - targeting advertisers at least makes more business sense than burying network suits in products that can't possibly put money in their pockets.

"It shows a real sophistication on the part of the viewer," "Chuck" creator Josh Schwartz told the Los Angeles Times last week while declining to say much about the show's chances for renewal.

As of last week, "Chuck" was averaging about 6.5 million viewers for the season to date.

NBC, which put Applebee's at the very center of "Friday Night Lights" as part of its efforts to keep that even lower-rated show on the air, is hardly the only network spotlighting advertisers' products within its shows.

Among the most obvious pluggers: The CW's "Gossip Girl," which, with its heavy use of cell phone technology, keeps all its teens texting on Verizon.

It's there I first spotted Verizon's new home-phone product, the Hub, before I'd seen a single commercial for it.

Yet the struggling Peacock, under the guidance of entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman, has been looking to make money every way it can from its shows, and, with the possible exception of the car commercial known as "Knight Rider," few viewers seem to mind.

NBC Universal isn't above getting a little free promotion, either, with its logo prominently displayed in every episode of the hilariously subversive "30 Rock."

Fans of Sci Fi's "Battlestar Galactica," another NBC Universal show, were a-Twitter last week when Salma Hayek turned up on "30 Rock" last week wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words "What the Frak?!"

Sure, "Galactica's" over, but there's still that DVD to sell. And yet the shirt also worked so well within the show that it might just have been a gag.

In fact, half the fun of "30 Rock" is trying to tell real product placement from the fake.

Take the Slanket.

Liz Lemon (Tina Fey), discovered last week by her boss wearing one of the sleeved blankets inside her office, got defensive, telling him: "It's not product placement. I just like it."

Me, too. *

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.