Belated thoughts on Friday’s Battlestar Galactica (and, sort of, Friday Night Lights) coming up after the jump:
Tuned InUncategorized
Tuned InUncategorized
Tuned InUncategorized
Post-Super-Bowl Roundup
After the jump: What advertising scholars, USA Today’s readers and at least three women thought of last night’s ads:
Tuned InUncategorized
Big Love and FOTC Watch: Super Monday Edition
Very brief spoilers for last night’s Big Love and Flight of the Conchords after the jump:
On the Rose Again
Late last week Peter French, chief operating officer at Brandeis University, spoke to Judith Dobrzynski at Tina Brown’s website The Daily Beast. In that conversation he offered a more detailed picture of the Brandeis financial predicament than anything we’ve had so far from the school beyond “trust me, it’s bad”.
We’d heard before …
Tuned InUncategorized
Ain't That a Snow Globe in the 'Nads: Amateurs Beat Pros at Super Bowl Ads
As we saw last night, the major running theme of this year’s Super Bowl ads was anxiety over the economy and job loss. This morning, there are probably a few advertising professionals feeling that anxiety even more deeply. The vaunted USA Today Ad Meter poll this morning was won not by any pro advertising agency but by two unemployed …
Tuned InUncategorized
Office Watch: Smoked and Roasted
Brief thoughts on last night’s Super Bowl-sized Office after the jump:
Tuned InUncategorized
The Best and Worst Super Bowl Ads
Last night’s Super Bowl turned out to be an exciting game, which unfortunately drew valuable attention away from the commercials. I aim to rectify that with my annual review of the Super Bowl ads, now up at time.com. Plow through it if you dare: nearly every ad aired during the game is there (with video thanks to the heroic efforts of …
Tuned InUncategorized
Super Sunday Open Thread
No one responded when I asked if you wanted an open thread to comment on Super Bowl XLIII–so given the overwhelming public demand, I decided to put one up anyway! Use this space to comment on the pregame, the game, the ads, the halftime show or anything that suits. I’ll probably post on the post-game hourlong Office (which I haven’t yet …
Tuned InUncategorized
Friday Night Open Thread
New episodes of Friday Night Lights and Battlestar Galactica tonight, but it may be a while before I blog about them, if at all. Tonight is movie night with Tuned In Jr. Jr., and I cannot violate the sanctity of movie night. I also don’t want to violate the sanctity of not-staying-up-past-midnight-blogging-on-a-Friday-night.
In the …
Tuned InUncategorized
What to Do With That Super Bowl Ring
You could spend hours analyzing what this year’s Super Bowl ads say about the state of the American economy. But this story pretty much says it all. The new name among this year’s Super Sunday advertisers? Cash4Gold.
The spot’s celebrity pitchmen: MC Hammer and noted personal-finance counselor Ed McMahon.
Tuned InUncategorized
Good Pilot, Bad Show; Bad Pilot, Good Show
In the comments under my Dollhouse post from yesterday, there’s an interesting (well, to me) discussion about one of the things that make TV reviewing different from film or book criticism: trying to assess the future of a series from a couple episodes, or maybe even just one.
As I wrote there, one trick to TV criticism is that (IMHO) …
John Updike: Looker
I didn’t want to let the week run out without a farewell to John Updike, the Great American Novelist who died on Tuesday. Updike was also a lucid and lyrical writer about art. As a young man he actually thought he might want to be a painter, or maybe a cartoonist, and after getting his English degree at Harvard he put in a year at …
Tuned InUncategorized
Super Bowl Advertisers: Please Don't Feel My Pain
We’re two days away from the big game. As I’ve made abundantly clear, I’m not a big sports fan, but I’ve been hearing this one’s looking like a potential blowout, which is not great news for NBC.
It’s also the big game for American consumer marketing, and as we all know, that competition has been a blowout for months now. Stuart Elliott …