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Super Bowl Commercial Skewer-a-thon
tunabomber writes: "Those planning on tuning in to America's Patriotic Sports TV Event of the Year to catch the new commercials will no longer have to sit through all that football filler. PBS, of all networks, is airing a postgame show in which the subject of discussion is not the game, but the commercials.
Super Commercials: A Mental Engineering Special is a beefed-up episode of the cultish Mental Engineering series where a panel of experts, including former Daily Show host Lizz Winstead and a Silicon Valley computer scientist, critique (read: eviscerate) Super Bowl commercials.
There are also blurbs about this at The Kansas City Star and The St. Paul Star Tribune." One thing you'll be able to look forward to: fewer sock puppet commercials, more anti-terror commercials.
I didn't think PBS would ever step into the realm of something like this. Television commercials and commercial sporting events have never really been the focus of PBS programming. But this could signal a change of direction maybe for PBS programming, especcially seeing its a post game show. As in right after the game. Not a program that will be aired in 3 months which is the usual PBS stuff, it's all researched and taped, it's never really live. This is an interestingf concept.
Your tax dollars at work. Seriously, I laughed so hard when all those dot-coms of a few years ago blew half of their money on a single ad, only to go out of business a few months later. The thing is, the government doesn't have to answer about its spending, it just has to strain its citizens a little more. In this case, it is using the money of the people it is supposed to protect and using that money to tell us(if you're a US citizen) what you can and can't do. That million dollars could help save the lives of understaffed police officiers or firefighters without proper equipment, but that doesn't make the news.
So back in the 80's the CIA thought it would be a great idea to help finance their terrorist war against the government of Nicaragua by selling guns to the Iranians and opening up drug trafficking routes from South and Central America to the inner cities of the US. Then they help out the "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan with sales of opium. The US government then declares a War on Drugs.
Back in the 90s, the KLA fought a dirty war against the Serbs with money made from drugs with the help of the CIA.
Now, in 2002, Americans have to pay over $3 million to watch ads linking drugs with terrorism. Well no shit...people have been saying that all along.
Check out a great short film that just won an award at the Sundance Film Festival called "Crack the CIA" produced by the Guerilla News Network. Quite revealing, featuring some footage from the Iran-Contra Congress hearings and a public confrontation between a former LAPD officer and the then Director of the CIA, John Deutch.
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I didn't want to leave this space blank.
Very little tax money, really. That's why they have all those moneyraisers.
As for the smart chips, do you really think that the content producers will ever let that go through? I don't. Especially since that commercials are required to NOT be louder than regular programming (maybe not all, maybe just broadcast?), but still are on almost every channel- my SciFi channel being particularly bad at this.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
In reference to the 'Anti-Terrorism Ads':
Does anybody else think that the ad juxtaposition will bea little off kilter?:
*A dancing/singing CG cow will say something like: "This Bud's for you!"
*Anti-Terrorism ad
*A dancing/singing britney spears will say something like "Mmmm, pepsi... It's how to be cool!"
:)
Actually, this year's winner is the Britney Spears/Pepsi add, which is running at (a record) $9 for 90 seconds, or a good 500K more per 30 seconds.
Wait, $100,000 per second!! There is something just so inherently wrong with that...
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
alas, here in Canada (at least in this chunk of SW Ontario), we never get to see the superbowl ads in the first place, 'cause they're typically substituted for cheesy local advertising by the Canadian broadcasters showing the event.
here's the CRTC's lousy explanation. (the CRTC is i guess a loathesome canuck version of the FCC, except considerably more pretentious and out of touch with reality.)
apple's big brother? sock puppets? anti-terrorism? nope, more like just another "Leon's No Money Down Miracle Event!". (and no, my building doesn't allow satellite dishes)
The other severely annoying bit that they mess around with is virtual ads. Basically, the broadcaster superimposes logos and other teeny corporate markers over top of crowds, the first down line, and billboard shots. It's usually quite glaring.
i just wish they would broadcast an unadulterated signal!!!
About 10% of PBS/NPR funding comes from tax dollars. Let's not compare their paltry slice to the amount of corporate welfare that funds AOL-Time-Warner, NBC, CNN, et al, as you might poop your pants.
Stations don't turn the volume up - the audio is compressed during production so the commmercials will play back louder. It's been done for years in pop music, which explains why your typical modern-rock station is completely unlistenable (from an audio standpoint).
mb
Welcome to the modern equivalent of these kind of misleading adverts.
no sig.
In, say, 1975, it may have been true that PBS showed a decent percentage of intelligent, out-of-mainstream programming--I certainly remember it being more high-minded when I was a kid--but that hasn't been the case for a long time.
Present-day PBS is devoted to promoting what used to be referred to derisively as "middle-class tastefulness," to stroking the self-satisfied "soft elitism" of a semi-rich, mostly white, baby-boomer audience who fancy themselves enlightened and cultured because they prefer light theatre to sit-coms (unless those sit-coms are British), pops concerts and soft AOR rock to "crazy modern music" and MTV, Julia Child to Martha Stewart, the thoughtless pseudo-leftism of the American university to the thoughtless pseudo-rightism of dirty blue-collar slobs, and the white-bread consumerism of the Crate & Barrel to the white-trash consumerism of the Home Shopping Club.
It's just another "lifestyle channel" with a superiority complex borne of its guaranteed existence regardless of its lack of popularity amongst the proles whom it deigns to "educate."
The specific show in question, Mental Engineering, has got to be the most miserable piece of shit I've ever seen. For those who haven't seen it, it goes like this: Attention-starved minor local media celebrities, failed academics, and a hack comedian play back a few tv commercials, and intersperse them with soft-spoken, moderately intelligent--if only by tv standards--commentary and slow-witted "quips," agree with each other about everything, and laugh dignified little fake laughs. Riveting stuff. It's kind of like a painfully drawn-out Daily Showsegment, but not as smart, not as critical of mainstream opinion, and not funny.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
But according to John stewart of the Daily show, it was a $26 Million dollar check to avoid famine, and the other 22 million was to get out of afghanistans contract with mirah carey......
And i ALWAYS believe John Stewart....