• by John Gaffney , November 18, 2002

Nickmmercials: Cartoons have gone into a new stratosphere of cyberlooks and bizarre plotlines. Saturday am Jimmy Neutron (new Nicktoon) took his classmates to the sea floor for a class project in oceanography and his crew mutinied. Get it? The commercials now running in kids TV came come light years. They use colors I've never seen, oversized heads, hyperspeed transitions. I was tired after an hour of Nick. But the kids love it.

Sponge Bob, What Do You Think Of The Ram's QB Controversy?: I'm all for effective product placement. But NFL pregame shows are pushing it. On CBS there's a Southwest Airlines screen that is in the right background no matter what camera angle is on. And while watching this my 7 year-old daughter says: "Daddy, there's Patrick." Yep. Patrick from Sponge Bob (a Viacom show)was waving outside the studio for all he was worth. I'm not sure you could actually calculate how much he was worth.

Stick To The Game, My Man: This was the NFL extreme on Sunday. On Fox (of course) Tim Green was the color commentator for the Giants-Redskin game. Couldn't find anything that didn't deserve his comment, including extolling the glories of Fox. After a lead-in for The Hannity and Colmes cable talkfest on Fox, Green had to tell us that Hannity and Colmes used to be liberal but now they're "real conservative." Dude, what down is it? Then, to highlight Giant's tight end Jeremy Shockey's demand for more playing time, the camera cut to the back page of The New York Post, which showed a photo of Shockey.Green actually said: In The New York Post, a paper owned by Rupert Murdoch....."

Surprise: Amazon is back running TV commercials. To me that speaks more to the company's health and commitment to the future than any stock report could.