Tuned InTuned In
It makes sense that TV, something we spend so many childhood afternoons and sick days with, is such a nostalgia trigger–see the reaction when any beloved sitcom character dies. But it’s funny how sentimentally attached people–especially, maybe, Gen-Xers of my vintage–are to commercials, usually the most-bemoaned part of the TV …
Tuned InReview
There were many, many musical performances last night at the Grammy Awards, and I am not here to review them for you: TIME’s music critic, Claire Suddath, has that taken care of for you right here. But though there was a lot to comment on—Adele’s potent comeback from throat surgery, Nicki Minaj’s staging of an early-’70s horror …
Tuned InTelevision
The New Hampshire primary is being held on Tuesday, but the bigger news for connoisseurs of campaign ads is that the Republican race has moved from the “contrast” phase to the “negative” phase to the “from Hell’s heart, I stab at thee” phase.
The latter was foreshadowed post-Iowa, when Newt Gingrich, having been the target of a …
Tuned InTelevision
The TLC reality show All-American Muslim, which follows five families in Dearborn, Michigan, has a lot of points to make about the lives of average Muslim citizens in America, among them the lingering discrimination they face …
Tuned InAdvertising
Fox is deeply convinced that you will love Zooey Deschanel this fall in its comedy New Girl. But if you are not thus persuaded yet, then by God, Fox is going to help you learn to love her by any means necessary. To that end, Variety reports, the network today will begin previewing the show’s pilot in various forums online, two weeks …
Tuned InAdvertising
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It’s almost fall, which means that promos for new fall shows are starting to reach a crescendo. But one thing that we’ve lost amid all the multimedia advertising is what used to be a network staple: the fall-season promo reel. Above, see an example from the ABC “Still the One” …
Tuned InAdvertising
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Last night in Los Angeles, my fellow TV critics who have already arrived at the TCA press tour attended a party thrown by the Playboy Channel at Hugh Hefner’s mansion. I sat in Brooklyn and watched America’s Got Talent. Not bitter! Because it meant I had the chance to see possibly the most …
Tuned InAdvertising
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The major difference between PBS and commercial broadcasters used to be, well, commercials. For-profit TV relied on ads, PBS didn’t. OK, maybe it had sponsors, but nothing so crass as commercials. Then, OK, maybe it had “enhanced” sponsor messages, which looked a lot like commercials …
Tuned InAdvertising
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So as I wrote this morning, Groupon seems to have alienated much of the football-watching world with its commercial last night, which began as a seemingly earnest plea about the plight of Tibet and ended with Timothy Hutton describing the awesome deal he and others got at a Tibetan …
Tuned InAdvertising
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Thanks for my kindly masters, this was the first year in several that I did not work through the Super Bowl and into overtime reviewing every single ad for time.com—I divvied up the game with colleagues Steven James Snyder, Feifei Sun and Josh Sanburn. I had the second quarter, …
Tuned InAdvertising
The MTV drama Skins is shedding advertisers faster than its cast shed shirts in their publicity photos. The past week, when controversy over the show’s sex-and-drugs content was compounded by purported fears that the show could constitute child pornography, saw a half dozen sponsors leave the show, including Schick, Taco Bell, GM, …
Tuned InAdvertising
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I can sometimes take the pulse of the Universal TV Watching Mind by noticing when there’s a sudden spike on traffic for a year-old post on my blog. Judging by this morning’s logs, a bunch of people are coming to Tuned In by Googling the terms “James Brown,” “eTrade Baby” and “shame” …
Tuned InAdvertising
When Fox signed up Simon Cowell to produce The X-Factor singing competition after leaving American Idol, it was perhaps not the ideal situation—how Idol will survive Cowell’s loss remains to be seen—but it made sense. Better not to risk someone else grabbing Cowell’s project and set up a competitor across the street: Fox would have …
