AT&T is a paid sponsor of the eightWest program, which may have had something to do with those eight minutes of positive coverage.

Last month, a Rochester, N.Y., morning television news show handed over five minutes of airtime in a thinly-disguised advertisement for local phone company Frontier Communications.

WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids took shilling to a whole new level this morning on its hour-long morning lifestyle program eightWest when it handed over nearly eight minutes to promote AT&T’s U-verse service, infomercial-style.

Essentially handing the microphone over to AT&T area marketing manager Dan Wells, the show’s hosts fell all over themselves talking about how wonderful the service was.  Channel 8’s Terry DeBoer had her original AT&T installation personally supervised by Wells, a service ordinary Grand Rapids consumers probably won’t receive.

As the “Cutting Edge” segment progressed, the station ran a chyron including AT&T’s logo and slogan, “Rethink Possible” as Wells talked about all of the service’s claimed benefits.  DeBoer just thought it was all awesome, gushing this sampler of reactions as a technobeat soundtrack pounded away in the background:

• “An exciting new adventure in television!”
• “It really is quite remarkable!”
• “The super-sized DVR is awesome!”
• “What are the other services and features that take U-verse to the next level?”
• “It’s exclusively offered to you by our friends at AT&T.”
• “Thanks to the power of AT&T and all of their services, you can save money.”

After eight minutes of enthusiasm, there was no time left to inform viewers of a slightly relevant fact only visitors to their website might have noticed: AT&T is a sponsor of the eightWest program.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WOOD Grand Rapids ATT U-Verse 6-10-10.flv[/flv]

Spend eight minutes in AT&T’s marketing Universe on WOOD-TV’s morning lifestyle program, eightWest.  (8 minutes)