Posted on 05/19/2006 12:58:25 PM PDT by Mikey_1962
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - The major TV networks trotted out their biggest stars and presented their fall schedules to advertisers this week during lavish presentations in New York City known as the upfronts.
Media buyers were entertained, wined and dined at famous locales like Radio City Music Hall, Lincoln Center and Tavern on the Green. And they endured buzzwords like "content," "platforms" and "upscale audience" more times than they can possibly count.
But now that the partying and spin-doctoring from network executives is over, it's time to get down to business: negotiating ad rates and commitments for the upcoming 2006-2007 television season.
After all, that's what the upfronts are really about...getting big corporations to open up their purse strings. Chris Rock, the comedian and co-creator of "Everybody Hates Chris," summed it up best at the CW presentation Thursday.
"You better spend some motherf****** money!" he shouted to the audience.
DVRs: The elephant in the TV room Heading into this week's upfronts, many industry insiders were predicting that the top networks would fall short of the $9.1 billion in commercial time that they sold during the 2005 upfront.
And now that the networks have all shown their hands, there is still a sense that they may all have an uphill battle on their hands. That's because technology is wreaking havoc on the very existence of network television.
But the one piece of technology that has altered the TV landscape more than any other was not mentioned by any executive at any of the upfronts: the digital video recorder or DVR. More and more couch potatoes are using TiVo (Research) or cable boxes with DVRs built in to watch shows when they want and fast forward through the commercials.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
I haven't seen a commercial in 4 years unless I wanted to.
I love it when people ask me, "have you seen that funny commercial where the guy blah blah blah..," and I get to answer, "no, I don't watch commercials anymore. I have TiVo."
They're way ahead of you:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1618235/posts
Maybe that's why the commercials are getting better. Sometimes my husband and I enjoy the commercials almost as much as what we're watching.
Some commercials today are more clever and entertaining than the shows.
"Everybody Hates Chris" is hilarious. I am guaranteed to laugh out loud several times per show. (When was the last time you could say that about a TV comedy?) You couldn't pay me to see Chris Rock live, but his show is great family comedy.
I'm with you, I use a DVR from brighthouse, and I only watch commercials if they are in something I watch live. The only things I seem to watch live, now, are political, so I don't see too many commercials in the State of the Union.
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All the episodes from the '74 show, "The Night Stalker," are on a three disc set. A couple of days ago I watched all the shows, 20 episodes. Some were, well, pretty bad, but they were kind of fun, even the bad ones, compared to the shows today. All the episodes told one story, none of that story-arc crap and they just tried for fun, they didn't pretend at "social commentary" or "relevancy." I think bad writing is the only problem that Hollywood has now. |
I agree. I WATCH the funny commercials. The rest of the crud goes under the wheels.
Ha! I do the same thing.
I'm a recent TiVo convert (about 8 months) and I tell everybody it really changes the way you watch TV. I don't watch anything on time. I usually wait until about 20 minutes into the program then play it. Either that or program it and watch the program the next day.
What is this "commercial" of which you speak?
I know. I'm behind the times but I've got to get a DVR. It's not so much that the commercials irritate me as much as athletes and NASCAR drivers telling us about their favorite charities. If you haven't heard, Kurt Busch donated a million bucks to a charity.(I have already had to sit through two extended conversations about it!) Wow! I know he's trying to improve his image but I tuned in to watch qualifying and practice. I really don't care about charities right now. If I had a million bucks to give away, maybe I would. I turned down the volume on ESPN last night during the Suns/Clippers game. The two pixies working as announcers were driving me ****ing crazy with all their "human interest" stories about the players. I thought I was listening to Dr. Phil while trying to watch the game. The Leftist ESPN has gotten their Lefty hooks into NASCAR. That should about do it for NASCAR fans. I'm betting REAL race fans are going to lose interest and move on to something else.
Decision made....done deal.
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