Let's just put this out on the table: CBS is an old-school station. While other networks experiment with dramedies, single-camera mockumentaries, and investing as much in their digital entertainment and online "extras" as they do in their programming, CBS still banks on laugh track heavy traditional comedies like Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother, and The Big Bang. CBS is still riding off that Survivor wave they caught 8 years ago. CBS is your mom's favorite station, and yet Two and a Half Men is still the ratings champ. Go figure.

Case in point: While ad sales are down on networks now that DVRs allow people to fast-forward through commercials, stations become increasingly desperate to do in-show product placement, give more ad time to the buyers online, and come up with new marketing techniques to trick viewers into thinking they aren't watching a commercial. While CBS? Is going to give you interstitial cooking shows during commercial breaks.

It's so Dinner and a Movie circa 1998:

To entice Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer-product giant, to spend on its network, CBS created a campaign featuring the host (Lara Spencer) of its entertainment-news show "The Insider." In so-called interstitials, or mini segments, during breaks in the comedy shows, the host dishes about the CBS comedies while preparing a new Bertolli product.

We'd sort of like to make fun of CBS for hearkening back to the "just microwave a meal and stay in!" campaign, but come on. It's not interrupting your shows, it makes you feel not so guilty about eating Lean Cuisine and vegging out in front of the TV, and it might be the old-fashioned solution to this whole ad spending mess.