For mass media I'm writing a paper about how huge conglomerates like news corp, GE, viacom, etc, use their products to promote eachother. For example, in "Friends," one of the characters always goes to watch a certain basketball team play. Apparently, the parent company of "Friends" owns that team. I'm looking for things like this.

However, I've found it hard to do research on the topics I've chosen, the movie "I, Robot," and "The Simpsons."

I found that "I, Robot" is just full of product placement advertising, not cross promotional stuff, and "The Simpsons" signed an agreement when Fox aquired them that they couldn't order the writers to put certain things in the show, so neither of these turned out to be very good choices.

As I look for more, does anyone know of any particular shows/movies/newspapers that have a lot of cross promotion? It would be highly appreciated.

Thanks.

"The Truman Show" and most TV shows that aired during the pre-commercial era are filled with nothing but product placement.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120382/

What I'm looking for is product placement, but only products that are owned by the parent company of the one I'm observing.

Try Disney or Warner Brothers. They are very big on cross promotion. Not so much with product placement per say but with control of their franchise characters. For example, Warner Brothers owns DC comics, so they produced Batman the movie. In turn the spun it off into various animated TV shows and toy lines. The studios are much more interested in owning a complete product line like Batman than finding ways to put in random product placement.

Although, there is a one notorious bad example of product place ment gone wrong. "Mac and Me" was a film produced by the McDonalds corporation. Basically, it is the story of how this one lonely kid discover a hideous ugly alien. They becomes friends after he takes him to McDonald to have a big Mac, hence the title. The movie essentially exists as a 90 minute long comercial. Fairly horrible, but yet oddly hilarious. The first Ninja turtle film also has a lot of product placement from pepsi and Burger king.

Thanks, I'll look into Disney/WB.