Here's the second in New Era's series of spots featuring Nick Offerman, Cubs fan, squaring off against Craig Robinson, White Sox fan, in a battle of wits. I've said it before and I'll say it again: using funny people in well-written commercials may not get me to start wearing baseball hats, but it'll get me to watch your commercial. And that's got to be at least a partial victory for them, right?
In the ongoing battle to get Nielsen ratings to even somewhat resemble the reality of who's watching what television shows, a blow has been struck for verisimilitude! There's now a system in place to standardize ratings of television and online ads so that advertisers can actually compare who's getting their ads from which platform. While it may not make any immediate differences to ratings numbers, this new system will certainly mean more information – and when networks sometimes base their content decisions on only half the story (i.e., the live-TV-viewing half), more information is always a good thing.
A recent and super-depressing study showing that the percentage of female TV writers has halved over the last four years has prompted another round of asking everyone who might have an opinion: "Why Is Television Losing Women Writers?"
Turns out there are a lot of possible reasons! The bad economy and writers' strike fallout affecting women and minorities most. The intimidation women face when entering the male-dominated writers room. Genre trends leaning towards episodic shows about spies in fancy suits setting off car explosions rather than hourlong emotional feeling-fests (because, as we all know, those two extremes are the only possible types of television shows! Nothing [...]
Listen up, pal! You're gonna see Zookeeper this weekend whether you like it or not! Sick of the ads for it? Too bad! You can't even escape them by watching a TV show that originally aired two years before Zookeeper began filming.
Yes, an episode of How I Met Your Mother from 2007 has been digitally altered to include and ad for Kevin James' latest assault on comedy in the background. See it up there? Here's what that scene looks like on the DVD:
Ugh, Super Bowl commercials. These ads, which have become events worth paying attention to by virtue of their pricetags, pretty much provide a master class in what not to do as a comedy writer. They're full of lazy, sometimes-offensive punchlines, and they all follow unsurprising formulas that we've seen a million times before. If people tried to write crap like this into sitcoms, they'd never get work. Or maybe they'd get work on the most popular comedies on TV on CBS? I don't know, guys. Let's just look at some examples.
Ashton Kutcher is doing a new campaign for PopChips in which he portrays different characters in a bunch of "dating videos." One of them is "Raj," an indian man that you can see above. It's being called racist by a bunch of different people, most notably by tech pundit Anil Dash. Is it racist? He's wearing "brownface," which isn't the same as blackface, which is offensive and racist because of its history, not just because people are wearing makeup. And I don't like flinging accusations of racism or offensiveness at comedians unless it's really, truly warranted; comedians deserve the benefit of the doubt for the most part. [...]
Here is the sixth and final installment of New Era's series of ads featuring Red Sox fan John Krasinski and Yankees fan Alec Baldwin tormenting each other over their regional rivalry. In this spot, our two heros watch the end of a tense game between their two teams, with pausing the game to use the restroom just not being an option.
You might think that you saw the last of Doc Brown as he flew off in his time travelling locomotive with his new family at the end of Back to the Future Part III. Turns out that's not the case! Everyone's favorite lovable mad scientist apparently travelled to the year 2011 at some point, avoiding Hill Valley this time, and discovered Garbarino. He was so impressed with their selection of flat-screen TVs, cellphones and iPads that he made this commercial for them.
It's pretty well done and relatively amusing, but it seems strange that Christopher Lloyd would be legally allowed to reappear as the character, with his signature [...]
Ever since Gilbert Gottfried was fired from his job as the voice of the Aflac duck, his most prestigious role since Problem Child 2, there's been a mad hunt to find his replacement. Those are some big webbed shoes to fill, what with his horrifyingly grating voice being so unique! In this video, we see some potential superstars showing off what they've got. Woe be to the poor person sorting through all of these audition tapes! AFLAC! AAAAF LAAAAAAAAAC!
The Simpsons have been around for a very long time, but it can be sometimes hard to place those early episodes in their time periods. Sure, there are references to politicians, celebrities and events from the early 90's that date it a bit, but on the whole, it's aged incredibly well. So much so that watching this compilation of every commercial that ran alongside the premiere of the show is almost shocking. I mean, look at how old this stuff is! It's amazing to see how dated the rest of American culture looks to us now when compared to how relevant those Simpsons episodes continue to be. That's one [...]
"It’s the Kraft Product Placement Comedy Hour. Sponsored by Kraft Singles. Made with Milk. It's the cheese that won World War II (Don't ask how)." That's some pretty sweet, overt product placement action right there and Kraft didn't need to push at all for it. Adage explains that the 30 Rock producers came to Kraft with the idea fully formed and ready to go. Product placement is no longer dreaded, as many showrunners have been able to embrace it. It's just part of the territory now for shows, especially savvy shows like 30 Rock or Community, who aren't doing super well in the ratings and could use the [...]
Adam: Can we talk about these Whitney ads? Will anyone who has seen them watch the show? Because they are truly awful. I feel like they're going to kill the show off before anyone even sees it.
Halle: Okay, here's the thing. I understand that everyone has their own taste in comedy, and we can no more escape our own preferences than we can change them. Also, you and I are people who are (willfully) inundated with comedy all the time, so we probably have an even more specific view on many comedy-related things. Perhaps we are even, let's say, persnickety
Adam: I would say we are DEFINITELY persnickety.
[...]
Errol Morris’s hilarious new movie Tabloid premiered over the weekend to rave reviews. Morris is best known for documentaries like The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War, but my first encounter with his work (though I didn’t know it) was on TV. Between 1998 and 2005, he directed an extensive series of commercials for Miller High Life, starring “The High Life Man."
Morris himself considers the more than 100 ads, “his most impressive achievement.” All of the spots are available online, and they benefit from serial and even repeated consumption, preferably with a High Life in hand.
(I should mention: they are very effective beer commercials.)
So you know those god-awful Groupon commercials that made light of the suffering in Tibet? That whole campaign was directed by…Christopher Guest. Buh?
