CBS weighs gay dating site
Super Bowl ad
Other shorts: Survey: NBC should have seen this coming
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Jan 29, 2010
CBS weighs gay dating site ad for Super Bowl
Yesterday Go Daddy sent out another one of its over-the-top press releases to stir up controversy over one of its tired T&A spots being rejected by Super Bowl sponsors. But it's an ad for gay dating site ManCrunch.com that's really drawing the pre-Super Bowl attention. The commercial features a man-on-man makeout session. CBS is reviewing the 30-second spot in which two men watching a football game brush hands while sharing a bowl of chips, then begin kissing and groping each other. The shot pulls wide to show their surprised friend sitting in a chair next to them taking in the show. The site says it has been waiting more than a week to hear if its first Super Bowl ad has been okayed, and that CBS has now indicated the game is sold out. The network says nope, it's just a slow process. Meanwhile, CBS is still taking flak from women's groups for approving an ad from a Christian advocacy group, Focus on the Family, that's expected to carry an anti-abortion message. If CBS turns down ManCrunch, it could face protests from gay and lesbian groups as well.
Survey: NBC should have seen this coming
A new survey of advertising and marketing people confirms what readers told Media Life earlier this week: NBC deserves all the blame for the Jay Leno-Conan O'Brien fiasco. In a poll conducted by Round2 Communications, 94 percent said NBC management was to blame for the fiasco, while Leno was blamed by just 5 percent and O’Brien by 1 percent. As the oft-told story goes, NBC canceled “The Jay Leno Show” after affiliates threatened a rebellion over its low ratings. The network wanted to move Leno to 11:35 p.m. and push "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" to 12:05 a.m., but O'Brien refused and instead took a $33 million exit deal. Leno will regain his role as “Tonight” host in March. Media people think NBC made the wrong choice. In the Round2 survey, 47 percent said they would have kept O’Brien, while 41 percent chose Leno. What's more, respondents feel NBC should have foreseen the problems when it overhauled its primetime. Fifty percent agreed with the statement, “I didn't think ["The Jay Leno Show"] would work, but expected NBC to stick with it anyway,” with another 23 percent saying, “I expected something like this to happen.” Just 27 percent agreed with the statement, “I thought the new schedule would probably succeed.” Earlier this week, respondents to a Media Life poll expressed similar viewers, with more than half saying NBC handled the situation extremely poorly.
Study: TV ads are most emotionally engaging
TV is a visual medium, and one that tugs at your heartstrings with pictures that really are worth a thousand words. So perhaps it's no surprise that television towers far above other media when it comes to emotional engagement, according to a study by the Innerscope Research for the Television Bureau of Canada. The study, which included 100 adults 18-49, found that TV ads deliver three times more high emotional engagement and three times higher aided next-day recall than radio ads. Innerscope says that some media appeal to people more cognitively and others more emotionally, but that TV appeals strongly to both. Compared to online video ads, TV delivers 1.8 times more high emotional engagement and 1.4 times higher aided next-day recall. The study also found that TV ads deliver five times higher aided next-day recall than online display ads and 5.5 times more total emotional engagement and aided next-day recall than newspaper ads. For the study, participants watched a 30-minute episode of “Two and a Half Men,” listened to 15 minutes of Toronto’s CHUM-FM, surfed MSN.ca for 15 minutes and read the Life section of the Vancouver Sun for a half hour. Unconscious emotional responses were tracked using wireless vests that monitor sweat, heart rate, respiration and movement. Eye tracking was also used to help determine emotional engagement.
Comcast's FCC pledge: We'll play fair with NBC
Comcast, one of the nation's largest cable providers, promised yesterday in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission that it will continue to offer free broadcast television services and add more children's programming if a takeover of NBC Universal is approved, but critics are more concerned about the company's stance on the internet. In its filing, Comcast, the country's No. 1 high-speed internet provider, included this note: "It would be inappropriate for the Commission to impose any conditions on the transaction based on the possibility that online video distributors might one day emerge as direct competitors to Comcast's terrestrial cable business." Hmmph, snipped critics. They say that it's absurd, with internet video usage exploding, for Comcast to downplay the medium's importance. The filing also detailed Comcast's plans to continue to report news and increase the time that ratings information appears on the screen during commercial pods.
|
|
|
