Word of Mouth and TV? Viacom hopes so.

In it's effort to compete with social media and it's user generated content that everyone is using these days, TV has come up with a clever idea. Live product endorsement.
Everyone from Jimmy Kimmel to Conan O'Brien has tried this on for size lately. And who is behind this live commercial push? Viacom. The same Viacom that's embroiled in a lawsuit with YouTube over copyrighted content online. The same Viacom that's probably watching it's TV commercial budgets plummet on account of the Tivos and DVRs of the world.
While TV used to have live commercials in the days of Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson, they have dropped off in favor of produced spots only to be resurrected in an effort to get people to watch commercials again.
The question here is, with product placement becoming increasingly important for advertisers, will TV's content suffer on account of the commercials being placed directly within the content?