If you've been watching CNBC and MSNBC lately, you may have noticed that several shows have a new sponsor. Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) provides TelePresence remote conference hardware and services to these stations in return for some screen time.

It's not quite the egregious product placement you have come to expect from the entertainment world, where a show like American Idol pushes American cars, mobile phone services, and its favorite brand of sugar-water in your face at every available opportunity. The ubiquitous Jennie-O ground turkey in The Biggest Loser could be replaced by Butterball products and nobody but placement sponsor Hormel Foods (NYSE: HRL) would complain. Product placement in this context appears to give advertisers a good bang for the buck, or else the usual suspects would stop showing up for one season after another of blatant marketing efforts.

By contrast, Cisco's products enable big-screen interviews with remote subjects, putting lifelike faces to disembodied voices. I'm not sure if main competitor Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM) has the globally installed infrastructure to match what Cisco is doing for these shows. So at least there's a solid business reason to use Cisco's particular solutions.

But having news-oriented TV shows pushing brands like Cisco between the commercial breaks is troubling. McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) raised plenty of eyebrows in 2008 when the fast-food chain inserted cups of its new iced coffee drinks on the highly visible desks of news anchors, through a deal with broadcaster Meredith (NYSE: MDP). Such moves are frowned upon, dude. Moreover, CNBC has market-moving powers.

The NBC-branded stations do take some precautions to avoid looking like biased pump-and-dump artists: The TelePresence systems aren't used if Cisco is part of the story, CNBC actually pays Cisco to lease the equipment and not the other way around, and executives swear that the relationship will never affect their coverage.

I guess I'm all right with all of that, given that every major news channel is ad-supported in the first place. I don't believe that broadcaster-to-advertiser relationships inside the actual shows affect the studio's bias any more or less than the usual eagerness to please the usual crowd of between-show marketing customers.

On that note, stock advice from TV shows carries very little weight with me. Advertiser relationships may skew coverage; entertainment value seems to trump usable information; endless loops regurgitating the same information all day long add no value over always-available news stories in print; you can drown in CNBC's Erin Burnett's eyes and forget all about the stock market. TV is great for entertainment and live warzone footage (like a Steelers-Eagles game, for example), but at best just a distraction for serious investors.

So take the money and publicity and run, Cisco. I won't respect you any less in the morning, and the stock-news stations are already on my blacklist anyway.

You may feel differently about the sponsored news issue. Let 'er rip in the comments below, Captain.