Back in the golden age of television, which would really be more accurately described as the black & white age, live advertisements were the norm with even a children's puppet like Howdy Doody hawking cigarettes in real time.

But we're so far from those days, that now even a Ryan Seacrest thinks the live advertisement is beneath him, as we can see as he half hearted plugs the iPhone and downloading American Idol performances through iTunes.

Don't get me wrong cramming even more product placement into Idol is tacky, but Seacrest come on - you can sell Kristie Lee Cook with a straight face but can't pull it off for a product (iPhone) people actually like?