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Last night on The Biggest Loser, they were getting quite ridiculous with the sponsorship censorship.

They are obsessed with blurring-out any logos, slogans, or names of brands that are not approved to be on the show.  If someone is wearing shoes that the show doesn’t want to be seen, then those shoes are blurred for the show, so that you can’t tell what brand they are.

If someone, anyone at all whether foreground or background, is wearing a shirt with a logo that is not okay, then it is blurred.  If they are showing a segment from inside someone’s house, you’ll see pictures on the wall – but some of the pictures will be blurred.

I don’t know if they have signed some contracts with corporate sponsors that dictate that they have to remove any competitors from the show.  That is a pretty strict contract, if that’s what they are enforcing, so I hope they are getting some good money for the effort that they have to make.

Or another reason could be that they are hoping to extort extract some money from companies. “We have a very popular show, but your products aren’t being shown because you’re not paying us any money.” or something like that.  Inadvertent product placement would be a legitimate concern on a reality TV show, because the average people that appear on the show don’t necessarily know or care with which companies the show has agreements. The people just wear or use what they normally do.

If you’ve seen The Biggest Loser lately, you are very aware that product placement matters a lot to them. The show has at least one very obvious product placement part of the show. It’s meant to appear as just another segment of the show, but we can instantly tell when a product-placement segment is beginning. They’re not fooling anyone.

The reason for this post was a certain fuzzing-out that occurred in yesterday’s episode. When Sione was going home, they showed the vehicle that was driving him to his house. They fuzzed the logo (or badge) in the middle of the vehicle’s grill, ostensibly to hide what brand of vehicle it was.

But it was a Cadillac Escalade!

Just hiding the logo on any Cadillac made in the last few years will have no effect, because their grills and overall shapes are distinctive. The show fooled no one.

Plus, they forgot to mask the word “Escalade” that was visible on the side of the SUV.

Cadillac has done a good job in designing the exterior of their vehicles. I can think of some vehicles, mainly sedans, that most people would not be able to identify without their badges. But Cadillacs do not fall into that category.

For that reason, I think TBL is going by some letter-of-the-law contract, because it is pointless to disguise only the Cadillac badge on an Escalade.