When I was a kid, my favorite TV show was Gilligan's Island. As outlined in the abhorrent theme song above, the show was about the fate of the crew and passengers of the S.S. Minnow after the boat gets thrown off course by a freak storm and strands the crew and passengers on an "uncharted desert isle." Wacky hijinks ensue.
Campy and corny - think Lost: the Sitcom - most of the episodes are about our gang trying to get off the island, only to be sabotaged by the Minnow's first mate, Gilligan - the clumsy and misunderstood Jar Jar of his day.
Too young to understand the show's conceit, I was sucked into each episode with the possibility that this time, unlike every other episode, Gilligan and the gang would be rescued.
On one occasion, it seemed that rescue was unusually imminent (as Bullwinkle used to say: "This time for sure!"), but my mother interrupted with the bad news that it was time for me to go to school. In the pre-DVR world in which we were then imprisoned, she promised to watch the show and tell me what happened when I got home.
After the longest school day in history, I ran home and burst through the front door.
Me: "Mom - did they get off the island?" Mom: "Did who get off the island?" Me: "Gilligan - did he get rescued?" Mom: "Uhhhh...yes, he did."
I was floored. Of all the shows I missed, it was the one in which Gilligan got off the island?! I went to school the next day and spread the good news.
Years later, I saw a promo for a reunion movie called Rescue from Gilligan's Island. My eyes grew dim realizing that I'd been had: Gilligan and the gang had been stuck on the island all these years.
Reality collapsed around me much like it did to the characters in Inception, and I realized that it was really I who had been stuck on a desert island - a fool's paradise! - and that while I was watching Gilligan, I had inadvertently become Gilligan.
Are you there, Peggy? It's me, Don. From Spoilertv.com.
WARNING: This article contains spoilers from the sixth season of Mad Men.
I'd rather hang with Don Draper than Will McAvoy. Does that make me a bad person?
It's a question I've asked before and I'm considering again as we find ourselves in the one-week no man's land between the end of another awesome season of Mad Men and the beginning of what will probably be another shitty season of The Newsroom.
In theory, journalism is all about exposing the truth and advertising is all about hiding it - just ask any new TV reporter! - so we should probably identify more with a journalist doing God's work than an advertiser doing clients' work, right?
In practice, though, Mad Men's conflicted and imperfect Don Draper is so much more interesting and authentic than The Newsroom's self-righteous and -important windbag Will McAvoy, whose job is ostensibly to uncover the truth.
At its heart, the problem with The Newsroom is that it believes its own "self-righteous myth-making" (thank you Conrad Black). Like its characters, the show has its head so far up its own arse, it has no idea how dumb it actually is.
The series kicks off with anchorman McAvoy making a public declaration that America is not the greatest country on Earth (gasp!). After a three-week "vacation," he goes back to work and is shocked to discover that his new boss is his ex-girlfriend. Boing.
If it's lame that our hero's big moment of truth is just a setup for an equally big TV cliche, the series also asks us to believe that, among other things, a tell-it-like-it-is anchorman is OK dismissing seeing his girlfriend as a hallucination, a hardened war reporter doesn't know how email works, and young journalists not only read The Rock's tweets out loud to each other at parties, but the tweets actually foreshadow the news.
The Newsroom also isn't above chiding tabloid and online journalists at the same time it treats us to an episode about the Gabrielle Giffords shooting that actually ends with a Coldplay "Fix You" montage, as though the shocking news needs a big, fat cliche in order to make it more authentic.
What makes McAvoy (and the show) so unappealing is that he's the anchor dedicated to "the truth" while he believes his own lies; he not only fails to see that empty PR cliches wouldn't work if he didn't report them, but even embraces them himself. He's a quick-thinking, tough-talking smart guy who's dumb enough to get burned by a tabloid journalist.
Will: he ever learn?
Don Draper is the advertiser who proves my favorite line: "advertisers are more honest about their dishonesty." Mad Men season six was all about Draper losing his stomach for the lies he sells to others and himself in order to create the illusion of happiness.
Mad Men season six ends where The Newsroom season one begins: with our main character finally telling the truth. It's no accident that Draper spills his guts in a boardroom pitch with Hershey's: an iconic American product (or is it a religion?) coming face to face with the awful reality of day-to-day American life.
The truth doesn't set Draper free: America prefers the seeming authenticity he creates in boardrooms to the actual reality of his life. To his colleagues, Draper's "shit the bed" and they force him to take an undefined leave of absence that puts his career and marriage in question.
On The Newsroom, the truth is as manufactured as a Hershey's Bar. On Mad Men, the truth has consequences. You want the truth, Will McAvoy? You can't handle the truth.
NBC, how do viewers hate thee? Let me count the ways...
As many have pointed out, the best sport going on at the Olympics might very well be the NBC-bashing event, happening now on Twitter at the #nbc and #nbcfail hashtags.
Among the network's perceived crimes: delaying coverage of what everyone else on planet Earth is seeing live, providing poor commentary, cutting content, showing too many commercials at inopportune times, and hiring Ryan Seacrest (in no particular order).
In Canada, this discussion is mostly academic: we can see the NBC
Olympic coverage if we like, but we don't need to, because our own CTV is showing it live (on TV and its iPad app, which I've been using regularly to catch up).
Who is the audience? Hint: look online
There isn't a lot that offends me, but at the top of the list, among incompetent managers and bad customer service, is traditional media trying to preserve its old business model at the expense of its audience.
You remember the audience? It used to be the silent, passive people sitting at home on their couches, happy to lap up what the gatekeepers fed them, when it fed it to them. In that way, TV was a one-way medium: what other choice did we have?
But new media changed TV into a real-time, worldwide, two-way medium and made information impossible to control. It lifted the veil from the old system - just like the Wizard of Oz! - and gave us a voice with which to complain to and about our former media overlords.
Now TV networks and stations are scrambling to figure out how to best serve audiences and advertisers. NBC's strategy is to choke its content into prime time, so that it can sell commercial time to advertisers who can be guaranteed that the audience will be watching it at once.
The trouble with this approach is it requires everyone to pretend that events aren't happening live and to say away from Twitter. Are we OK with that? Memo to old media:
this might be how you gain viewers in the short term, but it's how
you lose them over time.
It also looks bad to pretend that things are great because ratings are up when millions of people are slamming you online. Every PR student knows that ignoring a crisis doesn't make it go away, and that numbers don't necessarily mean "success." Nielsen says that ratings are up, but it doesn't measure viewer satisfaction.
And how does NBC explain spoiling its own Olympic coverage yesterday when Brian Williams led the NBC Nightly News with the day's top story about the results of a certain swimming competition, sans spoiler alert, before his own network showed the event?
How could one of the biggest media conglomerates on the planet not coordinate its news and sports divisions? That's just incompetence.
NBC's response to not showing the opening ceremony live? The LA Times quotes an NBC spokesperson in the article above:
"It was never our intent to live stream the Opening Ceremony or Closing Ceremony. They are complex entertainment spectacles that do not translate well online because they require context, which our award-winning production team will provide for the large prime-time audiences that gather together to watch them."
It's the classic mistake of the old-school gatekeeper: "the news doesn't happen until we say it happens" and "the audience doesn't have the faculties to understand unfiltered media on their own." So, audience, get back on your couch, shut up, and just be thankful you're seeing anything.
It reminds me of the time the school at which I teach brought in a well-known TV reporter as a guest speaker. Told in advance that the reporter wanted to talk about new media, it became instantly clear that this person distrusted and disliked social media, and wanted to convince people to go back to the good old days of the "I'll tell a story while you listen" model.
The conversation went along these lines:
Famous person: "Don't you want trusted sources?"
Student: "The people you follow on Twitter are your trusted sources."
Famous person: "But we're the storytellers."
Student: "But so are we."
Sigh.
How much longer, I wonder, until the rights to the Olympics will go not to NBC, but to Apple or YouTube or Twitter?
One day soon, we'll look back at this time and chuckle about how NBC just didn't get it. It might even make a great movie (or whatever replaces movies). Might I suggest a title?
Everyone looks better with microphone headgear on.
I wanted to prove that and test USTREAM - a web channel and app that lets you watch and record video podcasts and stream live online.
You can invite your friends in advance of your broadcast, chat, interact, ask questions, show off your fire-breathing Godzilla toy, or do most anything you like, as long as you stay away from stuff that's, let's say, "not for mom."
USTREAM gets you going with 10 gigs of storage space, and you can upgrade to pro if you need more. The downside to not going pro: it embeds a little ad in your podcast when you least expect it. Booo!
I haven't yet used the app to stream, but the site has a good tutorial on how to become a citizen journalist. Why, I'll be a younger Morley Safer in no time! (Disclosure: everyone is younger than Morley Safer).
How is it that I haven't used this video podcast tool before? I blame the headgear.
1. I appreciate an excuse to drink beer at noon.
2. The scintillating play-by-play commentary.
No, I'm not drunk. I've written before about the Brits saving soccer at the last World Cup, if not with their game play then with their often hilarious commentary. Same goes for Euro 2012.
I now watch soccer with pint of Carlsberg in one hand and a pen and notepad in the other, the better to make note of a particularly deft touch with a word.
This year's best lines:
"If you can lip read as well as me, you can tell the German coach is not impressed."
"Seventy eight years is even longer than what I've been around - just."
"He's survived the scare."
"Not exactly thrilled to the core."
"We will not tire of seeing the quality of that strike."
"He's rather dispossessed."
"It's all rather sporting at the end."
"Hardly a hair out of place."
"There's a German in the way."
"Dagger through the heart."
"Opportunity!'
"Germans can start booking hotel rooms in Gdansk."
"A lesson in the artistry of passing a football."
"Spain has its party tricks, but French are the party poopers."
"There's a rip in his shirt - he'll need a new one."
The Newsroom, Sorkin's new HBO show, is about a fictional cable news outlet that discovers how awesome journalism could be if anchors just spoke their minds on TV instead of giving their viewers the same-old partisanship disguised as objectivity.
Our hero, Jeff Daniels, is a Tom Brokawesque figure who finds his inner Keith Olbermann at a college forum. He shocks everyone when he says that America is not the best country in the world (for Canadians, this is less shocking - har, har!) and has a pretty great statistics-fueled rant at the ready.
Every freshman in the building knows a good story when he or she hears it, so out come more iPhones than the last time Coldplay sang "Yellow." When our anchor comes back from the resulting three-week "vacation," he's shocked to learn his crew has gone on to other things and the new producer is an ex-girlfriend played by Emily Mortimer.
Computer bad, people good
From there, the Newsroom picks up where the film Network left off: an on-air anchor who's "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore." But Network was a comedy, and it had something to say about the future of journalism.
The Newsroom is not a comedy, though it has some laughs, and it's not very clever about the state of the news biz. The show has a strange anti-Internet thread - strange, because Sorkin wrote the acclaimed the Social Network. There's disdain for YouTube, blogs, email(!), and the computer that shows if news is important when the color turns from yellow to orange and red.
The not-so-compelling message: computers bad, people good.
A more interesting show would have Daniels play a Julian Assange-like character who knows where the future of the news lies, but finds himself fighting for freedom of the press against an establishment that won't acknowledge he is the press. Just a sec: I'll call my agent.
The show's target is a good one, if a little obvious: lazy TV journalism. But the idea that we, the viewers, need someone to snap us out of our Matrix-like cocoons ignores that we already have that person in the brilliant Stephen Colbert.
Like Sorkin's the West Wing, the Newsroom is full of self-important idealistic people that at times plays like a satire of self-important idealistic people. While this tone worked in the confines of the White House, it leaves something to be desired in a TV newsroom. Is there anything worse than a new TV reporter who thinks he or she is doing God's work?
The Newsroom is His Girl Friday by way of the Brady Bunch Movie. The show ostensibly takes place in the real world, but it's unrealistic, and the characters don't know it. It's a conceit that leads to such plot devices as the jaded, cynical anchorman who's also comfortable dismissing something he's seen as a hallucination.
The Golden Age of Journalism: two years ago
The biggest cheat is that, 15 minutes in, we find out the Newsroom is actually a period piece from April 2010, also known as the first day of the BP oil spill. It's a cheat, because it allows our journalists to quickly realize "this story is bigger than people think! They can't cap the well! There's more oil being pumped into the water than they're saying!"
Within two minutes, the gang has the entire story cracked, and before you know it, Daniels is on air live, sans cue cards, weaving together a brilliant news show that's only possible when:
1. You know what the news will be before it happens.
2. You've memorized Aaron Sorkin's lines.
When the show ended, my first impression was, "I like it!" There's snappy dialogue, an expensive set, great HBO production standards, and the always-awesome Jeff Daniels. After some thought and a faceslap, I thought, "But none of it makes any sense!"
So, in a backward kind of way, the Newsroom proves its point: it's a TV show that delivers some thrills, as long as you don't think about them for very long. Given the questionable state of TV journalism and the future of journalism itself, it could've been so much more.
A thunderstorm in Minnesota? I'll alert the media.
I'm done with WCCO. The CBS affiliate in Minnesota ruined its Tony Awards programming last night with a never-ending Severe Thunderstorm Warning map and scroll, and three loud beeps repeated every 30 minutes, drowning out the show's audio to draw our attention to the impending "rain and thunder emergency."
Thank you, WCCO, for replicating in my living room the true Broadway experience: getting boiling mad when your boorish rowmate's cell phone goes off during the big number.
Red alert. Death Star approaching.
Severe weather is to WCCO what terror alerts were to the Bush administration. No one would begrudge WCCO for warning its viewers about actual impending doom, but by now we know the station, like the Bush administration, is the boy who cried red alert.
When WCCO says "thunderstorm warning," what it means is "you're going to get a little wet." Hell, your basement might even get moist. Oh, the humanity.
"Local weather" is the way most U.S. stations get viewers, so in the era of the ever-eroding TV audience, these stations wrongly believe that a little manufactured danger is the way to go.
But if you're in the business of providing your viewers with quality programming, and you ruin that experience, what are the odds the viewers will come back? More than that: if there is an actual emergency, the constant message that tells us "we're in trouble" is a little more than irritating: it's irresponsible.
It's all about the Benjamins
So let's pretend for a minute that there was actual danger (well, lightning did cause small fires last night, according to WCCO's terrible website). We can presume the people inside their homes watching the Tony Awards were OK. If drivers were concerned, they could turn to their radios ("the everywhere medium") or mobile phones to get the latest scoop.
The only thing left that people want to watch live (the important thing for Nielsen ratings and ad revenue) anymore is "live programming." If you were a WCCO/CBS advertiser who bought a spot to run during the Tonys, wouldn't you want a refund if this is what it looked like?
WCCO is a repeat offender. I've never missed an episode of the Late Show with David Letterman - ever - which means I get to sit through WCCO's obnoxious test of the Emergency Alert System, which only happens during Letterman's first guest.
Another scroll, more beeping, and a recorded audio message to boot. What would Kiefer say?
Interesting fact: the emergency alert system was set up by Harry Truman in 1951, and has only ever been used once (in 1971) and it was by mistake. The system wasn't even used when terrorist crashed planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001.
Here in Winnipeg, we're nothing but "spillover media" to WCCO. I'm sure the good people at WCCO could care less if we watch their programming, as evidenced by their weather map, which shows the world ending at the Canadian border.
So, what can we do about this?
Email WCCO 10,000 times each to thank them for keeping Minnesotans so safe (you can do that here)?
Contact Shaw and ask it to carry another American affiliate, like it did before WCCO went HD (you can do that here)?
If you're like me, you tuned in to the Stanley Cup to watch the Kings versus the Devils, and were disappointed that there weren't members of the Royal family battling demons.
Compared to the average Canadian male, my hockey knowledge is wanting at best. I came to this realization in in grade two when I attended Robbie "Stretch" Armstrong's birthday party, and his dad gave out prizes to kids who could correctly answer hockey-trivia questions.
"Who played right wing for the Philadelphia Flyers in 1970?" he asked.
"Kookamunga!" I blurted out to laughter from the other kids, but not Mr. Armstrong. I didn't get a prize.
Since then, I've found myself sitting in many a-basement with many a-hockey fan, forced to make many a-conversation about many a-hockey game. I've tried to care, but the fact is that, deep down inside, I really don't.
To survive, I've developed seven lines to make it seem like I care more about the game than I do. At your next Stanley Cup party, simply mix and match as required:
1. The boys have got to get into the corners.
When nothing's going on and no one's scoring goals, simply say this over and over and over. This phrase sounds much more authoritative when delivered in a French-Canadian accent, but if you deliver it that way, remember: you're going to have to commit to the accent for the entire evening. 2. Put the biscuit in the basket!
You can shout this with excitement if your team comes close to scoring a goal, or with frustration if it doesn't. Either way, people love biscuits in baskets and the image will conjure up a simpler time when men ate biscuits out of baskets when they watched the game. Whatever you do, don't shout, "Put the puck in the net!" because it's dirty.
3. Lucky. Unlucky.
When the opposing team does anything good, say "lucky." When your team does anything bad, say "unlucky."
4. He won it cleanly.
When a hockey player gets a puck away from another hockey player, you can just say, "He won it cleanly." No one knows what it means, but it was repeated ad nauseam in Sega Genesis NHL hockey and has the ring of something that only a true hockey connoisseur would say.
5. If it happens all the time, why's it called a one-timer?
As it turns out, hockey fans know a one-timer when they see one, but can almost never explain how it got its name. When they're unable to answer your question, it will be they, not you, who feel inadequate.
6. Two minutes for looking so good!
Every time a player gets a penalty, say this. All the men in the room will laugh, as they remember this classic Canadian TV commercial:
7. Last minute of play in the game!
Saying "Last minute of play in the game!" in an authoritative, booming voice makes it seem like you've been to a hockey arena at some point in your life. Just make sure you save it for the last minute of play in the game.
When I was a kid, there was no bigger star than Winnipeg children's entertainer "Uncle Bob."
Uncle Bob and his dummy "Archie Wood" hosted Archie and His Friends, a locally produced daily kids' show that ran from the 60s to the 80s on CTV. "The friends" were Tammy True (Archie in a wig), Grandpa Wood (ditto) and sock puppets Petite the dog and Marvin Mouse (some of whom now reside at the Manitoba Museum).
Also featured prominently: the good children of Winnipeg, who Bob would call on their birthday live from the show. I recall playing in the sandbox on my fifth or sixth birthday, when mom called me: "Kenton - Uncle Bob's on the phone!"
The conversation:
Uncle Bob: Happy birthday, Kenton.
Kenton: Uh-huh.
Uncle Bob: What are you up to?
Kenton: Sand.
Even better, Uncle Bob had a cottage in Sandy Hook, where I'd go visit my friend from time to time. We'd hop on bikes and drive past the place, which had an Elmer the Safety Elephant flag flying in the front yard. If we were lucky, we'd see Uncle Bob mowing the lawn.
On one occasion, my friend's brother even got to go boating with his dad and Uncle Bob himself. Once on the boat, the kid couldn't contain his enthusiasm:
Kid: Uncle Bob! Tell me about Archie Wood. Does he live in your house? Would he like to be my friend? Is he friends with Tammy True? Where's Marvin Mouse?
At this point, Bob had had a lifetime of kids asking him these questions. Plus, he'd been consuming some "tasty beverages."
Uncle Bob: Be quiet kid - and pass me a brown one.
The kid shut up, reached into the cooler, and passed Uncle Bob a beer - his dreams dashed, but with a larger lesson about the importance of consuming adult beverages and telling kids to shut their pie-holes imprinted forever on his mind. Elmer would be proud.
When I was but a lad (see top photo), we had one TV with 13 channels and no remote control - not because we lost it, but because there never was one.
We weren't poor; in fact, what we had was state of the art, because we'd somehow figured out how to get the TV audio to play through those big-ass stereo speakers. Bigger stereo speakers meant louder stereo speakers and, therefore, better stereo speakers.
Meanwhile, the only distraction media to be found in the room was that box of Pizza Place pizza and smashing pair of argyle socks.
What a difference a decade or two makes.
DVRs, video on demand, streaming, laptops, iPads, video games, smartphones, the Internet in general and social media in particular have turned TV into a support medium, driving the audience more and more away from the TV and onto the Internet, in its many forms.
As AdAge's Brian Monahan recently said in this excellent article, people are turning to their smartphones and other "companion media" in droves when they watch TV, lowering their intellectual and emotional engagement with TV shows and ad content:
"Online video, with a less predictable cadence and an active user experience, does a significantly better job at holding attention. While distraction media is a threat to the value of video advertising, it also represents an opportunity to deliver a deeper companion experience to the on-screen content and ads. The consumers have the tools; it's up to the industry to give them compelling content."
I'd go one further and suggest that it won't be much longer until all of our TV networks stream all of their content on mobile devices for free at the same time they broadcast it on TV (as so many apps already do). After all, it's the audience networks that now tell the TV networks what to do, and in a mobile world, we want the flexibility to watch our content where and when we're ready to do it.
As consumption patterns continue to fragment across devices, it will be the TV content providers focusing on smart aggregation and intelligent-content networks that will ultimately rule the world by knowing what we watch and where, and allowing us to pick up where we left off on the device of our choice.
Brands (like Netflix, for example) will continue to develop their own content, merchandise, and transactions on their own branded platforms. The ultimate goal: to deliver all of the content, shopping, and advertising you want on a targeted, individual basis.
I would like to thank you for your e-mail. Here at HBO Canada, it is always a pleasure to hear from our subscribers and to address any questions or concerns that you may have.
Unfortunately, "Talking Funny" is no longer on our current schedule.
We were in talks with the producers of "Talking Funny" a few months back, and we were confident that he had acquired the broadcast rights to the comedy special. We were informed late last month that the rights were no longer available and we had to immediately remove it from our schedule. Although we have removed all mention of "Talking Funny" from our website, it is still reflected in Movie Entertainment magazine. Movie Entertainment magazine is put to press 2 months early, so unfortunately it was too late to remove the listing.
We apologize for any disappointment or confusion this may have caused you. Regardless, I have forwarded your comments to our Programming department for review.
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Should you get your game on when you get your learn on?
Imagine if school was more like a game: you'd "level up" when you master basic writing skills and other milestones, get five points every time you arrive to class on time, achieve a 10-point bonus when you deliver an apple to my desk, and lose 15 points every time I catch you downloading porn in a computer lab.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one:
With the U.S. educational system in the shambles, the idea of "school as a game" is getting more traction, especially as a way to address the issue of women outperforming men at every task and level of education, something that's often blamed on men's predilection for Xbox and PlayStation.
I discovered today that Red River College's Notre Dame campus has installed gaming consoles right there in the student lounge, as if to say, "Hey, kids, wanna play these video games? OK, but first...learn - learn like the wind!"
As a guy who plays more than his fair share of Xbox, I can say that I don't condone gaming as a way of life, but I understand those who do. As a member of the male species, let me just say: we're not a proud group. If it takes turning everything into a game for us to be interested, then so be it - just don't ask me to watch TV and have a conversation with you at the same time.
In the article, game designer Jesse Schnell makes the case that "a real-life game could be stacked on top of reality."
"You'd get points for, well, just about everything you normally do in the course of 24 hours. What were American Express points and frequent-flier miles but games that reward loyalty? Weight Watchers? A game. Fantasy football? A game stacked on top of a game that influences the way you watch a game. In the Ford Fusion, a virtual tree is embedded in the dash. The more gas you save, the more the tree grows. They put a virtual pet in your car, he marveled, and it actually changes the way people drive!"
I already use my iPhone as a "gaming layer" when I check in at a restaurant on Foursquare to earn a badge or get a discount, use the camera function on junaio to look around the Super Bowl stadium, or use the "monocle" feature on Yelp to find out what restaurants are nearby and which of my friends has reviewed them.
What are marks, anyway, but a "score" at the end of a game? And the famous Spider-Man sticker that one of my colleagues gives out to the most notable assignment in the class? Clearly an achievement badge if there ever was one (though the John Lennon in me wants to slap a Spider-Man sticker on every assignment I mark, regardless of the grade - "Nothing to kill or die for!").
Ad, PR, and promos, meet gaming
For this semester's PR proposal - a magazine launch plan - I've asked students to consider adding a "gaming layer," which is becoming more and more important in advertising, PR, and promotions, especially campaigns aimed at "the youth market."
I give you the Toyota tent at the most-recent Lollapalooza - Spin the wheel!; Take your picture!; Win a Prius and cool stuff!; Create art! And then, when you get an income at some point in the near future: buy one!
As the gaming generation grows up, games will continue to grow as a key entry point for product launches, advertising, and sponsorships, and as the key place where the two-way dialogue between product and consumer begins.
Video games have already begun overtaking time spent with other media, especially among teenage boys, who sometimes not only forget to watch TV, but to also eat and sleep when they're immersed in gameplay.
If gameplay is where the eyeballs are, that's where the conversation has to take place - just ask BMW.
"Hey, teenage boy: would you like to know more about how BMW is "making its commitment to sustainability throughout the value chain come to life?" No? OK, would you like to play some BMW Efficient Dynamics Pinball on your iPhone for free? Awesome!
"Now that you're done playing pinball, we don't need to have the conversation about BMW reducing carbon emissions - you've just had that conversation with the game."
BMW's experiment in brainwashing.
If you want to make money from your game, you do what those good pioneers of FarmVille did: start with a free app and get your users to spend "virtual dollars" on value-added extras in the game and make millions of dollars pennies at a time.
As games become more integrated into every aspect of our lives with more immersive controllers, more mobile layers, and more multiplayer-, GPS-, and network-based layers, we'll stop noticing that we're even playing games; we'll just think we're living something called "life."
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will play as one.
The game may be over, but the ads shall live in infamy. On YouTube.
The stadium has been vaccu-brushed, Jimmy Johnson has been hosed off, and the last of the facial blotters has been put away, so let's pause to remember the greatest football match in the history of mankind with a salute to America, the veterans, and this year's Super Bowl ads.
The first half of the big Super Bowl was a real barnburner, what with George W. Bush in the audience and...no, actually it was really boring.
We're just moments away from the Black Eyed Peas taking the stage, something that hasn't happened since...2005, when they did the same, damn thing at the Grey Cup.
The live blogging continues:
Halftime show:
It's nice to see Jimmy Johnson with his shirt on.
Oh, great: some local spots from Seattle. They're cracking down on parking ticket scofflaws, apparently.
Black Eyed Peas take to the stage on ropes. Phony fans run onto the field.
Band appears to be actually singing, though it's shitty as hell.
Tonight's Gonna Be a Good Night - if you've got the Cher "Believe" mic, apparently.
Background dancers look like extras from Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex."
Slash appears, Fergie sings "Sweet Child O' Mine." Sweet lord, deliver us from these trespasses.
Dick Dale happy to earn a few more royalties from Black Eyed Peas' bastardization of his pretty good song.
The choreographed phony fans go crazy when Usher appears. No, even they don't care.
There's something wrong with the mics - the band is singing into them.
This "rap music" is never going to catch on.
Black Eyed Peas drop the ball more than Pittsburgh.
Band segues into "I've Had the Time of My Life" from Dirty Dancing. Patrick Swayze spins in his grave.
Who are the other two guys in the Black Eyed Peas? They're not necessary.
HTC's ad features Holy Fuck's song, "Lovey Allen." Odds that HTC knows the music in its ad is by a band named "Holy Fuck?" Zero.
An ad for The Daily - the first iPad-only newspaper. I can definitively say that it doesn't hold a candle to the NY Times' app.
Joe Buck and Troy Aikman - the sexual tension in the room must be unbelievable.
Second half:
I've started marking ad "roughs" from last week's class. Waaaaay better than the Super Bowl.
Clever ad for Cars.com - great moments of learning from others' mistakes.
Another talking baby ad for E*Trade - not funny anymore.
Best Buy - Bieber and Ozzy together again. Not as good or amusing as one might expect.
Pittsburgh gets another touchdown. I get another beer.
New Pirates of the Caribbean trailer. Doesn't look much different from the other films.
MINI ad about cramming stuff in the back of your car. Ho-hum.
HomeAway.com ad features a baby slapped up against a glass. Interesting choice. View it here (embedding disabled).
Boring Hyundai ad.
Timothy Hutton in a pretty funny Groupon ad. Uhhh...if it's supposed to be funny:
Adrien Brody is a crooner in a Stella ad. OK. Another decent CarMax ad - but nothing compares to the over-the-top ad announcing Simon Cowell's return to the X-Factor. Read all about it here.
There are now officially more commercials than game. Fine by me!
Our second Super Bowl spot featuring Eminem. A long, expensive spot ostensibly about Detroit, but sponsored by Chrysler.
And back to the game. Zzzzzzz.....
I've been eagerly awaiting the Angry Birds ad. Where is it?!
Microphone on referee is accidentally on. Announcer: "Luckily, he turned it off."
And Americans complain about curling being boring.
Listening to these announcers talk about the game is like listening to my mom talking about her friends - I've never heard of any of these people, but I'm supposed to be interested.
An ad for the NFL featuring all of the sitcoms of today and yesteryear - reminds me of Weezer's "Buddy Holly" video.
Creepy Jack in the Box mascot tries to sell us on a disgusting combo bucket.
Thank God - we're in the fourth quarter of the game.
4/4 = one whole. The only math I can recall from grade 12.
I've got cheese on my head and egg on my face. Because I'm a Packers' fan who bet on the opposing team. Not really, but I'll bet that joke would kill at the bar.
"He was able to secure the catch." Translation: "He caught the ball."
Second Johnny Depp movie trailer - this one for Rango. Looks bad.
Talking car ad for Cars.com.
Dogs serve Bud Light. Someone finally posted this one:
Cute Hyundai ad about how crappy life would be if we settled for the first thing we invented.
Ad for animated film, Rio. Looks like every other lousy animated film ever. But...contains secret Angry Birds code.
Started paying attention again when announcer mentions someone "trying to get his hands on my balls." Oh, my.
Please no tie game. Please no tie game. Please no tie game.
Great Bridgestone spot:
And VW brings back the Beetle!
Mercedes needs Diddy for two seconds of its 30-second spot?! Didn't work...
Great House promo - parody of the classic Mean Joe Green Super Bowl ad.
Another po-mo ad - copywriters talk through their new spot for Dodge and it unfolds before our very ads.
iPhone Verizon ad - its USP: you can make phone calls on it now.
Glee does a Chevy ad - which is continued later on the show. Guess I'll never find out how it ends.
Angry Birds Super Bowl ad:
Horrible Skechers commercial with a Kardashian.
Oh yeah: someone won the game.
Update: Angry Birds code: go to screen 13, game 12. Shoot the white bird backward, drop egg on the hill. Get the golden football. Play the special level, beat it, and...watch the commercial all over again!
Just got back from the gym, which means I'm energized and ready to live blog the Super Bowl ads - in addition to eating my weight in chips and dip followed by a couple o' decanters of Innis and Gunn to wash it down.
Let it be said: I have no interest in either team, the NFL, or even sports - but I will suffer through the game in order to blog about the ads, which are the last 30-second TV spots that anyone cares about and/or bothers to watch anymore.
As they say on every newscast: the Super Bowl live blog begins now! Keep hitting "refresh" until your fingers bleed, OK? OK!
Pregame
I'm watching the game on the FOX digital feed, which means I won't have to see big, game-day ads from Dufresne.
What's more painful: the "witty" commentator banter or the tribute to America?
I'm reminded that football is a game of inches.
Jack in the Box reminds us that spicy chicken sure is tasty.
I'm bored. When will this game end? Oh, yeah. It hasn't started yet.
"They've traveled a long road to get here." Gag.
I heartily recommend the ADBOWL app (rate the ads as they go along!) and junaio - the app that gives you a 360 view of the football field.
Lea Michele reminds me: I hate Glee, the U.S. National Anthem, and lip syncing.
George W. Bush in the audience. The second boob we've seen on a Super Bowl Sunday.
A second version of the National Anthem by Christina Aguilera. Much sluttier than the first.
Wait a sec - that's not Christina, that's Cher. Very reminiscent of Rick Moranis:
Still no coin toss. I'm losing the will to live.
Ad for Livingsocial.com, a site that apparently has something to do with cross-dressing.
Today's game started in the great Dust Bowl with JFK and was narrated by Michael Douglas.
A shout out to my peeps watching Gandhi on the other channel.
"This is bigger than a football game." But seriously, it's exact size.
Strange pause on the name "Faulk."
First mention of Lombardi: 5:30 p.m.
Green Bay wins the toss. Crowd thinks Green Bay has won the game. There is no wind inside a domed stadium.
Where's the football game?
Interviewing an athlete is about as useful as interviewing a rabbit.
The Game
Giggle whenever you hear someone say, "end zone."
No use fussing over dropped balls.
Walt Anderson is a fine referee.
Sweet lord, this is boring.
I wonder what the Black Eyed Peas are doing.
First Super Bowl ads:
Decent Bud Light ad.
Doritos Spicy Nacho ad - not great, but top marks to the dog actor.
Great Audi ad - "Release the Hounds" Featuring Kenny G! Trailer:
Please Lord, make this game stop.
Funnier ads for Doritos. Guy sniffing things.
Chevy proves that old people are always funny.
Pepsi Max: woman throws can, hits woman in head. OK, funny - but...is there a racial undercurrent worth noting here?
Is there a game going on here?
More ads:
Pomo ad about an ad: product placement for Bud Light - Genius!
Another fine Chevy ad - the car can talk to its owner, just like Lassie.
Another ad for Fast Five - lost of booty interrupted by Vin Diesel.
Michael Douglas sits behind George W. Bush. Kill him, Michael, kill him!
Green Bay gets a touchdown. Yawn.
Another Pepsi Max ad in which people get hit in the nuts with cans of Pepsi Max.
Another Doritos ad. Price tag so far: $6 million.
Hyundai. Zzzzzz....
Ad for Cowboys and Aliens with Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford. I'll give it a "cool."
Expensive ad for KIA. Overkill!
Green Bay gets another touch down. The game is over at 6:08 p.m.
Animated Eminem spot for Brisk. I'm amused.
Why do football players always suck oxygen on the sidelines? That is oxygen, right?
I've been to Green Bay. It's like Regina with an NFL team.
The only autofail I ever had in CreComm: Pittsburgh. Spelled it without an "H."
More ads:
Awesome Bridgestone ad about hitting "reply all" by mistake.
Ad for Chevy Bolt - a plug-in car.
Another Super Bowl, another sexists GoDaddy.CO ad. Until Joan Rivers shows up!
"The Packers do a great job on the back end." Oh, my.
Bud's latest spot features Peter Stomare singing Tiny Dancer in the old west. Fun!
Pretty funny Teleflora ad - about a guy sending a message about his girl's rack because "his heart told him to."
Another Transformers movie...but this time it's North Michigan Ave. getting ripped apart. Please spare the Fairfield Inn!
Futuristic ad reminiscent of Apple's 1984 spot, except this time it's for Motorola's tablet. Ugh. I'll take the iPad.
David Bowie's "Changes" backs up the ad for BMW's new...diesel car?!
Long shot of stadium shows a Jumbotron displaying close-ups of players' butts.
Pretty spectacular animated Dungeons and Dragons spot for Coca-Cola.
Thor ad. Dull, dull, dull.
My favorite ad so far: VW Darth Vader.
Great Richard Lewis/Roseanne Barr spot for Snickers.
Careerbuilder monkey ad - good, as far as monkey ads go.
Preview for Super 8 movie. Very E.T.esque.
First email from student predicting sickness - over 12 hours from now. Uh, OK.
Why do you need to wait to announce attendance? Tip: count ticket sales.
Uh-oh. Green Bay touchdown. This game is really over.
Chevy has a car that gives you real-time Facebook updates. Creepy!
The first Captain America trailer has a quick view of the Red Skull. Wheeeeeee!
Awesome CarMax ad featuring the best metaphors ever. I feel like a kid in a metaphor store.
Pittsburgh gets a touchdown. Pittsburgh is surprised.
Just 39 seconds away from halftime. Fergie prepares her humps.
"What? All I said was, "Angelina Jolie is a plastic freak with no talent!"
Go Ricky! Go Ricky!
"As a comic in all seriousness," it's bizarre to ponder the hostility directed at Ricky Gervais for his emceeing gig at Sunday's 68th Golden Globes Awards; the general agreement among critics and viewers seems to be that Gervais was "mean," "disrespectful," and "not funny."
At this point, everyone knows what he said: Charlie Sheen hires hookers, Mel Gibson shouldn't drink so much, Tom Cruise (or is it John Travolta?) is lying about his sexual orientation, Tim Allen is washed up, the cast of Sex and the City is airbrushed on the movie posters, the Golden Globes hands out awards based on bribes, etc.
"The star-filled international ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel" was not overly impressed, as evidenced by the (mostly) unsmiling stares, "Ooohs," and occasional angry retort - pretty much proving Gervais' point: actors are self-important jerks.
Critics, of course, get paid to criticize, but "the regular people" defending the celebrities remind me a lot of "the regular people" who were recently against "tax cuts for the wealthy" in the U.S. - let the millionaires defend themselves!
As my therapist friend once said to me, "Does a lion need anyone to defend it in the jungle?"
Some more thoughts on "the controversy:"
1. The Golden Globes are mostly irrelevant anyway, and the organizers should be grateful for whatever "post-awards talk" they can get. When's the last time the Globes had "buzz?
2. As Letterman - famous for never being invited back to host the Oscars - asked on the Late Show last night, "When did this all become so sacred?" In other words: where's the memo that says that celebrities are off limits?
3. Folks should get a sense of humor. I saw one person on TV speculate that Ricky Gervais was actually under the impression that Bruce Willis is Ashton Kutcher's dad. Uh, no: it was a joke!
4. Like with any comic who's supposedly "off color," people tend to embellish what the comedian has actually said. Remember Sarah Palin saying that Letterman told a joke about her child being raped? Oh, sure. Likewise, Gervais never said that Tom Cruise was gay: that's what people who saw it are saying.
5. We always hear that America is the most free and open country in the world. But a beer-guzzling Brit can show up, tell a few jokes, and shock it to the very core?
7. Sarcasm, and dark wit in general, is celebrated in England and rarely works in America. As a drunk guy in a British pub once said to me, "Enjoy England. I don't."
8. In North America, it's a great sin to insult someone. It should be "not having a comeback" or - even worse - "not being able to take the joke."
9. Why would you hire Gervais if you didn't want him to be like Gervais?
I saw Gervais tape his HBO stand-up special in New York a few years ago (I took the blurry photo, above, at the taping), in which he reiterated the Richard Gere/hamster urban legend, and told jokes about a British anti-rape ad campaign, God's existence, and the first guy who contracted AIDS (given the choice between admitting to having sex with a monkey or eating a monkey, both man and monkey agree: "I ate 'em.").
When an alligator - or a comic - bites, no one should be surprised. It's what they do.
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