[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R55e-uHQna0]
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, …
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, …
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OKJ8oDJhEo]
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” …
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 …
It’s a common and understandable myth that TV shows stay on the air by getting as many viewers as possible. They don’t. In commercial television, shows stay on the air by making money, something that relates to, but does not correlate directly to, getting as many viewers as possible. If you’re a network that airs commercials, you …
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ITDLbBS5MM]
TBS has a new ad for Conan O’Brien‘s late-night show, debuting in November. I’m not sure if it’s reflective of the sensibility of the new show or just the sensibility of the TBS promotions department, but it’s Monty Pythonesque. More in the Terry Gilliam aesthetic than in actually …
I’m not going to pretend you didn’t see this coming, but the Parents Television Council has called on advertisers to boycott CBS sitcom $#*! My Dad Says, based on the Twitter feed shitmydadsays and the subsequent book. “Unless or until CBS chooses a different title for this program, we are urging advertisers to avoid sponsoring such an …
The debut of Hot in Cleveland, starring Betty White with a trio of sitcom-nostalgia iconettes, attracted nearly 5 million viewers Wednesday night, making it the most-watched show on cable. Those numbers would be fairly decent for a broadcast network show (it’s not far from what, say, 30 Rock or Parks and Recreation draw), they’re …
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idLG6jh23yE]
Nike has launched a new ad—at three-plus minutes, a mega-ad—for the World Cup, and it’s a doozy. Directed by Alexander Rodriguez Alejandro González Iñárritu, the hyper, kinetic, hyperkinetic commercial, “Write the Future,” follows several international footballers through the …
When I wrote my print TIME feature on the end of Lost, one section I had to drop for space had to do with how much money ABC was asking for ads in the finale—reportedly $900,000 a pop—even though Lost was not close to the highest-rated program on TV. That fact points to something that has potential to shape the business, and thus …
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NTRvlrP2NU]
So there are a few things that are pretty much known to move product. Sex, of course—we all know sex sells. And a good deep discount—people love to save money! Oh, and also? A pained, publicly shamed celebrity staring dead-eyed at you while being interrogated by the edited, …
In this age of DVR, Hulu and TiVO, live TV events are increasingly rare. But advertisers are betting on the fact that fans of Lost are going to be tuned in live May 23, for the much-anticipated final episode. And when we say betting, we mean betting big.
AdAge is reporting that a 30-second commercial spot during the Lost finale is …
Just so you know we’re not all about Oscar complaints here this morning, last night’s awards got one thing 100% right: the award for Best Animated Short went to Logorama, one of the most spectacular things you’re likely to see in quite a while. The 15-plus-minute film tells a hardboiled action-disaster story in a Los Angeles built …
