• by John Gaffney , September 23, 2002

The Beatles Version of Media Riffs.

Drive My Car: Regardless of what you think of the concept, anytime you can even think about filling a cable channel with TV commercials, I’d say you’re on the right track. BMW announced yesterday that it’s getting its own TV channel. It has a deal with DirecTV for a channel on the satellite system to run its BMW film series for five weeks. You could argue that the channel is asking one hell of a lot of DirecTV subscribers. But I would argue that BMW took advertising to a new level with its Films series, for creativity, branding and plain intrigue. That’s all been said before. But let’s see how these films fare as entertainment. I think we’ll see surprisingly high viewership for the BMW Channel. And I believe it will fuel consumer interest in long form commercials.

Fool On The Hill: Gerald Levin told Reuters yesterday that it’s “certainly too early to judge” the quality and monetary quantity of the AOL/TimeWarner merger. If memory serves me correctly one year was plenty of time to judge CBS/Viacom a success. Even Levin should know that the hanging judge has an awfully quick noose in the media business. Looks to me like every bit of TimeWarner energy is being spent on undoing what Levin and Steve Case did.

Octopus’ Garden: When I see a survey on CNN/SI that asks readers if Monday Night Football has “jumped the shark” I know that www.jumptheshark.com has jumped the shark. Know what I mean?