NBC's 30 Rock sitcom is part of a pretty strong Thursday night lineup. But use of blatant product placements makes for a pretty weak marketing strategy.

In last night's episode, Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) and Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) take a moment to discuss how great Verizon phones are. Fey's character mentions how people should rush out to a retailer right now and buy a Verizon phone; then she turns to the camera and says, "Can we have our money now?"

Interruption marketing (let's not kid ourselves; that's exactly what product placement is) colliding with weak writing makes for bad advertising. I'd bet Fey, as clever and accomplished as she is, felt dumb delivering that line. This is from a show bragging their episodes are still new, and not affected by the writers' strike.

30 Rock has used product placements before, just not in such a blatant and poorly executed fashion. I hope the show stops using this tactic; it was annoying, distracting, and in poor taste.