Having these companies potentially compete against Sky is a fascinating future, so, in a rare piece that might appeal to both football and technology fans, I’ve considered what could be quite a fragmented future for football broadcasting over at Pitch Invasion.

I’m not hugely familiar or necessarily a massive fan of Alice Cooper’s music, but it struck me how unusual it is for a musician to have not just a self awareness of his hits but also a joy for still playing them. “I’m a music fan,” he said, “And when I go to a gig, I want to hear the classics too.”

Yes, no experimental jazz versions. No reluctant musician resenting wheeling out the songs they’re best known for. Listening to Cooper deconstruct School’s Out – “You only get one chance to create an anthem, and this was ours” – was fascinating.

The interview touched on a number of other topics, including his near-death experiences, his willingness to fight in Vietnam and the tongue-in-cheek humour in his performances and songs.

Given the outcry over Alice Cooper and the band’s performances at the height of their fame, there’s a delicious irony (that you sense he appreciates) that the once-demonised singer is witty, humble, intelligent and an all-round nice guy, and a Christian as well.

It’s a wonderful interview and a simple, brilliant piece of programming. BBC Four throws up some wonderfully fascinating programmes at times – and, rarely, one that actually makes me want to sit and write about it.

It’s available on the iPlayer until Monday, 28 November.

At the start of the programme, there was an ident pushing viewers towards checking into the programme on Get Glue. It’s the first time I’ve seen the social entertainment network pushed in conjunction with a mainstream TV show, although Channel 4 did announce a partnership back in June.

Get Glue is, as Michael Litman says:

“…billed as a social network for entertainment. Think of it like Foursquare but for things you’re doing and not physical places. But it’s a similar mechanic. You can check in to TV, music and films and get badges and rewards to keep you doing it.

And just like that this whole social TV thing elevates itself to new levels. The last thing I can remember checking in to using Get Glue was the Royal Wedding. Thousands were doing the same too.”

Get Glue is certainly big in America. Logging into Get Glue last night (I’ve had an account for a while), Made In Chelsea was the 5th highest trending programme on Get Glue. It was also the only British programme in the trending list, bar Doctor Who, which was listed under BBC America, although it didn’t air during American primetime.

The American aspect is why it was a little surprising to see it on Made In Chelsea. Get Glue is very geared towards an American market, which is one of the reasons I’ve not really stuck with the service – it doesn’t feel as if it offers much for me as a UK TV viewer at the moment.

Even so, it will be interesting to see where Get Glue go with the activity check-in route. There’s the usual stickers and badges, but as we’ve seen with Foursquare, this in itself isn’t really a compelling reason to stick with the service and users need something else to stop them drifting off.

There’s also the huge backchannel that is Twitter. The microblogging service might not have set out to become a giant TV chatroom but it certainly ticks that box – just check the UK trending hashtags during primetime. Do users really want a second channel, just to check in to a programme.

That said, there are many social media projects aimed at TV bubbling under and there’s no doubt a lot of the main networks are looking at the best way to tap into this. One of my longstanding predictions is that social TV will be one of the next big advances in the social sphere. There is definitely an audience, as Twitter and Get Glue are showing, but it’s a question of finding the right service to hook people in.

Ironically, this could come from Facebook. The social media behemoth may be trying to ape aspects of Google+, but some of the predictions around F8 seem directly targeted at stealing Get Glue’s thunder. And this makes sense. People already use Facebook to talk about TV and are getting used to checking in with Facebook Places. A Get Glue-style service would be a logical and, potentially, well-used step.

It would be interesting to see what numbers Get Glue is doing in the UK, and how successful the E4 experiment is. There’s definitely a hint of the future there, at the start of Made In Chelsea. Whether that future belongs to Get Glue is another question entirely.

This is a rather roundabout way of saying make an effort to seek it out and watch it if it’s passed you by as well. It’s an excellent and illuminating exploration of how the internet has changed our world. It’s especially good if you’re new to social media and want an overview that doesn’t assume knowledge or patronise. Absolutely fascinating and probably one of the few non-sport related programmes I’ll be making an effort to watch.

I also suspect some of the themes in the second programme are ones I’ll touch on when I finally get around to writing my Peru / social media post.

(Yes, I know it’s generated a lot of buzz online. I’ve missed it, ok. I’ve been busy with other things, and when that happens, TV tends to take a back seat)

When then culture secretary Andy Burnham said there were “serious concerns” about product placement, he was doing the British public a disservice. It’s not as if product placement is a new concept that audiences may find it hard to understand.

And, to me, a good indication of how well something is understood is if the audience can understand a simple joke around it, and judging by the amount of films with product placement related jokes in, they understand it pretty well.

Back in 1992, Mike Myers inserted a wonderfully simple – and still very funny – product placement gag into Wayne’s World.

Without wanting to analyze the joke to death, the product placement joke worked on several levels and required a degree of understanding from the audience. Myers has a good grasp of product placement jokes, especially around Starbucks in the Austin Powers movies.

Obviously the entertainment industry isn’t likely to bite the hand that feeds it, but there have been other examples, heading way back. The Truman Show has Truman’s wife desperately trying to shoehorn a product placement into a domestic argument, while Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol 1 makes its own point about product placement by prominently featuring a raft of hyper-real fictional products. Latterly, the Orange adverts have also got in on the fun.

But, you may say, these are films and not TV. True, but then audiences have been watching films full of product placement for years now and, to date, nobody’s seen a significant breakdown in society.

Take the James Bond franchise. A new Bond film, an event in itself, will typically have around 20 brand partners with products in the film. Die Another Day raked in somewhere around $100m through placement. Yet, despite the odd clunky moment (“Is that a Rolex?” “Omega”) the films are often none the worse for being littered with brands; fitting given the style and endless brand namechecking in Fleming’s books.

Viewers are also familiar with US TV and, even though imports are censored for placement where possible (think blurred out tumblers on American Idol), viewers are savvy enough to know when they’re being marketed to. The ham-fisted attempt at censorship just draws more attention to the placement.

Then there’s the added level of realism that product placement brings. We use brands on a daily basis. Some have even entered our lexicon. Yet characters still head into a pub and ask for a pint of beer, or use non-branded or fictional products to a frustrating level (although, in a weird full circle, so fictional products become so successful they cross the line into real life).

I take the point about exchange quality for more adverts. I take the point we’re bombarded with adverts on a daily basis elsewhere, and can do without it ruining our favourite TV programmes. I especially take the point that product placement shouldn’t be inserted into children’s programmes, and the government if right to keep this as an exception.

But there are balances that need to be struck. If we want commercial broadcasting to keep producing high quality dramas, original comedies, or watercooler-worthy entertainment shows, we have to accept they need to be funded somehow, which means advertising.

It’s never been easier to skip through adverts and, like adverts in print newspapers, you can’t be sure anybody’s actually watching – a nation can quite easily use an ad break for a mass cuppa or loo break.

So that makes product placement a lot more attractive to a brand, and easier to sell for the broadcaster. Does a company want a 30 second spot that some people may see or a placement in the programme that everybody will see.

At a time when commercial broadcasting is in need of a cash boost, it has made no sense to continue to ban product placement. It won’t be the panacea to all woes, but it will help.

And, for once, I agree with Steve Hewlett when he says that badly-done product placement will see viewers turning off.

Sure, there will be some shows that take the money and produce an unwatchable advert, just as cinema has produced some clunkers where brands take centre-stage – Daredevil and Castaway are two that spring to mind.

But there’s no reason why the two can’t co-exist and produce something that everybody is happy with. Proof can be found in Shane Meadows’ Somers Town, originally intended to be a short film funded by Eurostar, but one that ended up turning into a rather delightful feature film.

The two can co-exist and we, as audiences, are mature enough to understand when we’re being sold something, without the need to be told we’re being sold a product (a plan to come out of government, which was, frankly, patronising).

By all means have a framework or code of conduct (and I’d support this idea), but in this day and age, there’s no good reason why our favourite TV stars can’t refresh themselves with a Bud after a long day’s work, before doing the weekly shop at Sainsbury’s before curling up on the sofa with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s.

Ok, so that may sound like a lot of brands just in one sentence, but think how, well, ordinary that is. If I told you that’s how I spent my evening, you wouldn’t bat and eyelid, and nor should we when our fictional counterparts do the same.

[Disclosure: I work for ITV in a communities/PR capacity, but these views are entirely my own. Plus, my university dissertation, many moons ago, was on the subject of product placement, so it's a subject I've always retained an interest in, and would do regardless of where I worked.]