When Philips Electronics announced that they were going to be the sole sponsor of "NBC Nightly News," we talked about it possibly being something that other companies may do more of in the future. That future is already happening as Microsoft (MSFT) has announced that it has inked a deal to do the same with ESPN's "SportsCenter."
Both deals are similar in that they are going to run fewer ads than regular, while the shows are then able to run more content. The ads are in general cut in half, running around 7 minutes over the duration of the show, rather than the typical 15 minutes. Philips is only going to run a little over a minute of ads in their sponsorship.
Others are starting to join in this strategy as Sony Pictures, bought all the ad time 
on this fall's premiere of FX drama "Nip/Tuck," and FX has a sponsor deal for the January debut of the drama "Dirt."
At first glance, this may look like a bandwagon that everybody is jumping on, and the result will be another cluttered space that is almost impossible to differentiate themselves in.
The thing that will in many cases prevent this is that consumers only watch a certain amount of shows per week. So if one show is sponsored by a company, it won't necessarily compete with a show watched by a totally different demographic.
One question that will need to be answered is how effective sponsorship will be if it's only offered on one show in a series or an individual program that stands alone - like a news broadcast.
Probably thinking something similar, Microsoft has bought out three more weeks of "SportsCenter" as their sole sponsor.
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