On a recent episode of CSI: NY, Detective Danny Messer's cell phone rang with a familiar tone. "Coldplay?" his partner asks. "Yeah," says Messer. "It's called 'Talk' -- something my girlfriend's really good at." In two commercial breaks that followed, CBS ran ads for the ring tone used on the show - the second single from Coldplay's multiplatinum X&Y -- before it was available elsewhere. No money changed hands for the product placement or commercials, but revenue from ring tones sold during the one-week offer -- at $2.50 a pop -- was split evenly between CBS and Capitol.
"The Coldplay ring tone was an experiment," Nancy Tellem, president of CBS Entertainment, says of the November 30th episode. "The hope is that, in the future, ring tones could provide additional revenue for us." CBS hopes to earn income from ring tones of theme songs and music featured prominently on other shows. The CSI deal is part of CBS' broader efforts to integrate music into its programming: "We are recognizing that we can do a lot more with the labels," says Tellem. "And they are recognizing that we can really get their artists in front of a lot of people."
On January 17th, the network will introduce a midseason replacement show, Love Monkey, that promises to offer more musical tie-ins than any nonreality series in network history. It stars Tom Cavanagh (who played the lead on NBC's Ed) as an A&R executive at an independent label, and early episodes include cameos from LeAnn Rimes, Ben Folds and Aimee Mann, who also performs on the show -- as well as appearances by a slew of promising unknown artists.
CBS made a deal with Columbia Records to cast newly signed seventeen-year-old singer-songwriter Teddy Geiger in a recurring role on Love Monkey as an up-and-coming pop rocker. Geiger wrote the show's theme music and performs several songs in the first eight episodes, which Columbia hopes will boost sales of his debut CD, due in February. "It's an amazing opportunity to get to a much bigger audience," says Columbia marketing exec Barbara Jones. "You can't beat being on prime time on the number-one network."
Nic Harcourt, an influential Los Angeles DJ, serves as co-producer and music supervisor for Love Monkey, selecting artists to highlight. He chose She Wants Revenge, Eugene and Robbers on High Street for spots on the series and thinks it may help them get deals like Geiger's. "Clearly we've seen in recent years the impact that a successful television show like Dawson's Creek or The O.C. can have on record sales," Harcourt says. "It's smart for CBS to look for a younger audience this way, and it's smart for the show to expose new talent. There's plenty of it out there."
