• Networks Go Internet-Retro -- Way Back To 1999
    Networks are going retro with their online efforts. CBS will be producing user-generated-like TV promos to try to lure viewers. Not only that, but it wants to produce short-form clips of TV shows. Haven't we been here before?
  • TV's Version Of Piling On: How To Raise Your Numbers
    NBC will perform a superhuman trick in the first week of the season - giving more muscle with the re-airing of "Heroes" on Saturday night, and asking Nielsen to cume -- or add ratings to get a bigger number. It's yet to be determined if that trick -- being able to leap tall buildings at a single bound -- will become standard stuff for the network or anyone else.
  • Lame Political Ads In A DVR World: Fast-Forward To The Next Candidate
    TV stations are smiling in their sleep these days, dreaming about the nearly $3 billion in TV advertising political candidates and issue campaigns are estimated to spend next year. But those executives might have nightmares when all is said and done if hard-core political commercials flood their airwaves.
  • Cross-Platform Deals: Return To The TV Advertising Future
    The promise of big-time, cross-platform media deals has always started with television. But the reality was that TV needed a partner in crime to make cross-platform deals take off. In the late '90s, when these deals were often discussed, other media might have contended to be TV's chief wingman -- cable TV, syndicated TV, local TV, or maybe radio, print, outdoor, or out of home. But few of these individual media platforms stood out from the crowd. Now, it seems the widest form of cross-platform media deals now comes with just two platforms: TV and the Internet.
  • New Season Hits Viewers Over Head With More Marketing Tricks Than Ever
    Two marketing parades will look to move festively and with purpose this week: the new TV season and the fourth annual Advertising Week. But New York City won't have the advertising icons and parades of years ago. Still, there'll be a lot of advertising to consider as ad execs saunter among many events. For the new TV season, the small-screen march begins with trepidation. Will viewers line the streets to watch the clowns, the drama, and throw confetti?
  • Identifying Product Placement, So You Know The Writer Is Not Involved
    "Here it is -- your bottle of Aquafina," a lawyer on any TV crime drama might say to his client. Then with a quick aside to the camera: "Bought to you as a paid product placement by the fine people from Aquafina." For the slow and uninitiated, this would make sure product placement would be identified, once and for all, saying, in effect: "Oh. This is advertising. This is TV business."
  • 'Kid Nation': Kids Working Along Familiar Reality Show Lines
    The "most talked about series of the fall," according to the CBS promo for "Kid Nation," has now revealed the advertisers in its limited-advertising debut episode. And the first surprising thing about the show wasn't those 40 kids struggling to pull the wooden supply carts to the town or cook their first meal -- mushy macaroni and cheese. It was that the first commercial aired some 38 minutes into the show.
  • Cable Adds To The Triple Play, Juggling Local Advertising Ball
    Local advertising sales have long been the armpit end of the business for most cable operators. But now the biggest cable operator in the land looks to deodorize this ad sales business, which has been usurped by the Internet and other non-cable platforms.
  • TV Award Problem Solved: No More Goddamn Acceptance Speeches
    "No goddamn wars" seems like a group of strong words. But are those expletives? Oh, fork! Maybe. In fear of a reactionary Federal Communications Commission, Sally Fields' war words, as part of her Emmy acceptance speech on Sunday night, were eliminated. We knew something happened -- especially when Fox gave us an abrupt shot from the view of the Shrine Auditorium's ceiling. Nice chandelier, by the way.
  • Emmys Hope For Surprises; TV Marketers Make Peace With Predictable
    Those Emmy Awards always seemed a little low-rent in the world of entertainment award shows. But you always root for them, anyway -- even if you are let down by the lack of surprise.
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