BLOGTOBERFEST! SPENCER TILLMAN, MANNEQUIN EDITION.
We bring you prime, steaming slices of the internet, stored at improper temperatures for hours on end in the Stanford locker room couch. Enjoy.
–SMQ has the inside scoop on announcers’ off-the-field work. If nothing else gets you to read another screamingly funny piece from SMQ, this should: Spencer Tillman, mannequin.
Mannequin.
–Clock rules, smaller numbers, crappy 3-2-5-e invective, blah blah blah…
–Last night’s tennis match in Louisville shown in shocking detail here. Lots of long lines in both colors=ole! defense.
–Speaking of bright, unbearably tacky colors in one game: LSU plays Tennessee this weekend. Who loses? Good taste, as is always true when these two teams meet. The two teams playing on the same field look like what would happen if one could, in theory, vomit up an entire Mardi Gras parade on a single field.
–Michael Irvin doesn’t support Larry Coker? No, actually. But he does still love the Columbian party powder, so don’t let the name association confuse you. Michael Irvin still freaking loves the stuff. You may now return to your unjostled reality.
When the playmaker dreams…
–T.K. Weatherell is not hiring Norm Chow at FSU. “He’s got talent, and is not named Bowden, so we’re contractually barred from talking with him.”
They are considering Jefferson Lee Toby Keith Bass Pro Shops Bowden the 4th, who is only eight but “showing great promise as a playcaller,” said the FSU President.
–Texas/OSU will come to you this weekend “largely commercial-free,” courtesy of Phillips Electronics. (Miserly WSJ wants to to register and pay to view their stuff. Humbug!) Watch it, send the ratings through the roof, and encourage all other networks to do this so we can scrap rule 3-2-5-e.
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Damnit, I can’t spell my name right
Comment by MiseanAUFan — November 4, 2006 @ 8:52 am
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Here’s the WSJ article’s text (don’t tell on me):
Philips Ad Purchase Clears the Air
Buying Up Commercial Slots
For Football Game Lets Firm
Deliver Uncluttered Pitch
By BRIAN STEINBERG
November 2, 2006; Page B2
Ron Thulin has been doing play-by-play for college football games for more than 30 years. No matter how furious the action, he knows he is guaranteed regular breaks when the broadcast pauses for commercials. “Those timeouts are kind of our time to take a deep breath and figure out where we are,” he says.
He’ll have much less time for reflection this Saturday night when he calls the Texas-Oklahoma State game for Time Warner’s TBS cable network. Philips Electronics has bought all the national ad time on the broadcast but plans to give back most of it to TBS, ensuring the game runs far fewer traditional ads than usual.
Philips Electronics is trying to limit ads during a college football game set to air Saturday night on TBS. At right, ‘Bevo,’ a University of Texas mascot, will appear in a local Philips ad.
Philips will use some of the time to run sports-themed video promotions about its products. But the bulk of the time will be available to TBS to expand its sports coverage with more analysis of the game — which means more work for Mr. Thulin.
The ad deal is a reprise of one Philips undertook in October 2005 with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” when the consumer-electronics and medical-devices concern bought all the national ad time and let the program use most of it to air longer news segments. Both deals show the lengths Philips is going to in order to stand out from what marketers see as an overload of commercials on television.
By limiting the amount of ad interruptions, Philips hopes to reinforce its broader marketing message that its products make life easier for people.
Polling commissioned by Philips after the “60 Minutes” broadcast showed the unusual deal resonated: Viewers remembered the ads as recently as September of this year. Philips says research also showed the “60 Minutes” ads were better remembered than Philips ads that aired elsewhere. Whether the football play will have as much of an impact is uncertain: For one thing, “60 Minutes” draws a much bigger audience than TBS’s Saturday night college football games.
Extending the idea to a live football broadcast came from consumer feedback on the “60 Minutes” effort, says Eric Plaskonos, Philips’s director of brand communications for North America. Because football telecasts are famous for frequent ad breaks that can sometimes slow down the game, a viewer’s suggestion that Philips sponsor a commercial-free game struck a chord.
Philips isn’t intending to speed the game up as much as reduce the number of interruptions. A typical three-hour football broadcast carries roughly 39 minutes of ads and network promotions. Philips paid $2.5 million, the going rate, for the 33-minute block of national ad time and network promotions. The remaining six minutes — two minutes an hour — is local ad time sold by local cable systems. Philips also bought that local time in major markets such as New York and Los Angeles but couldn’t secure it elsewhere. As a result, viewers in smaller markets will see a few non-Philips ads during the broadcast. TBS is also contractually obligated to run “institutional” promotions from the two schools, which will air near the halftime show.
All viewers will see some Philips promotions. The company is using six minutes of the national time to run four 90-second videos that mention its products. For example, one focuses on how Philips medical devices help athletes prevent sudden cardiac arrest on the playing field, says Mr. Plaskonos. The rest of the national time will go back to TBS, extending its sportscast. Philips will run sports-themed ads in the local ad time it bought.
With fewer ads, the net result will be a slightly faster-paced game, all things being equal, says a spokesman for Turner Sports, which is overseeing the broadcast.
Arranging the venture wasn’t easy. Not only is ad time on most sportscasts sold well in advance — making it hard for Philips to find a game that would work — but Philips and TBS didn’t know which game was going to be televised until Oct. 24.
Because Philips wanted its ads and promotions to be relevant to the audience watching the game, some things couldn’t be prepared until the days before the match. Once the match-up was determined, Philips’s ad agency, Omnicom Group’s DDB New York, immediately started collecting footage of Bevo, a Texas Longhorn steer that is the University of Texas’s mascot, which is being used in some of the ads, says Catherine East, Philips’s account director at DDB.
Comment by MiseasnAUFan — November 4, 2006 @ 8:51 am
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Wait, FSU can’t afford Norm Chow??!! Is the economy in Floriday that bad that one of the most successful programs of the past two decades can’t afford an NFL assistant … an assistant … from a losing Titans team?! What, the insurance premiums after those stolen crystal trophies is killing the football budget?
Comment by BuckeyeDomer — November 3, 2006 @ 9:40 pm
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Spencer Tillman is a beautiful man. Glamour Shots did a great job with that portrait.
Comment by BJ Strykker — November 3, 2006 @ 5:40 pm
13
I think Cal losing to UCLA would be as big of a shock as the other games cited as sure things there.
Check out Bruins Nation today. Apparently it is Karl Dorrell’s fault that STUDENTS DRINK AT GAMES!!!
Obviously nobody ever drinks football games for any reason other than wishing the coach would be fired, right?
Comment by oc phil — November 3, 2006 @ 4:19 pm
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Also, if miserly types like the capitalist pigs at WSJ annoy you, you should use Firefox with BugMeNot.
Comment by Jackwraith — November 3, 2006 @ 3:59 pm
11
Jonas beat me to it! Wish I were back in Cancun right now.
Comment by Panhandler — November 3, 2006 @ 3:45 pm