From Bree to Me

Priced at retail, products go up on the Web almost immediately after a show airs; Delivery Agent processes the orders and arranges the shipping. Everybody involved -- the production company, the studio, the broadcaster and Delivery Agent -- gets a cut of the profit.

And, out in California, Michelle Jeffries, a 24-year-old program coordinator for Special Olympics, gets the same cute pair of jeans Izzie wore on "Grey's Anatomy."

"I didn't even know you could do this until the first time I went on the Web site," says Jeffries, who heard about it from a friend. "I didn't know you could find the furniture. They even have beauty products. It's cool. It's like in the magazines -- 'to achieve this look,' and then it's all right there for you."

The products aren't necessarily unique to the Web site. Consumers could just head to the mall and buy, for example, "Ugly Betty's" holiday poinsettia sweater at Talbots. But part of the site's appeal is how it instantly identifies brands and manufacturers for the shopper.

In the era of TiVo and commercial-skipping, with product placement growing and the traditional 30-second ad losing its impact, there has been talk of the day when the entertainment and consumer worlds would become so integrated and interactive that couch potatoes could buy products on their TV screens with a few clicks of a remote. Fitzsimmons says he studied that model, felt it was still a ways away, and figured that "the Internet will suffice as a short-term mechanism."

Thompson agrees.

"The ability to sell things as they are featured on television shows in an easy, facile way . . . there are so many good reasons to develop that for commerce purposes," he says. "These kinds of businesses now are simply the tip of the iceberg."

Which horrifies some people, like Gary Ruskin of Commercial Alert, a nonprofit organization whose mission statement is to "keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere."

"It speaks to an emptiness that is in the hearts of millions of people, where what they own is more important than the content of their character," Ruskin says. "They define themselves not by what they've done, but by whether they've got Britney Spears's latest item."

Which is why, among its other classifications, Delivery Agent also categorizes some products simply by the celebrities seen using them. One of its biggest hits was the homemade crocheted poncho Martha Stewart wore when she was released from prison. The company contracted with a vendor to copy the style and then sold $1 million worth, according to Fitzsimmons. Another major seller: the Dwight Schrute bobblehead doll seen on "The Office."

"There's something unique about television," says Nell Minow, who reviews movies for Yahoo! and radio stations across the country as the Movie Mom. (Her father was former FCC chairman Newton Minow, who once famously called TV "a vast wasteland.") "We connect to television in a way that is completely different than we do movies or music. I think it's because it's in our house, and we go into the houses of the people we see. There's an intimacy.

"And this takes it one step further, where you can replicate the same living room in your very own house. I think it's creepy."

You can even buy the house, so to speak. That Airstream trailer Dr. McDreamy lives in? It, too, is available after a few clicks. Sadly, when it arrives, there is no McDreamy inside.

So, no, Minow says, she won't be shopping for the this-or-that Gabrielle Solis had on during Sunday night's episode of "Desperate Housewives."

"If they were selling her figure, that would be fine with me," Minow says. "I'd click on that."