A brief pause from reviews to discuss the passing of Beautiful Life, and the low ratings of Brothers. Both cases illustrate how much the extratextuals matter. After the fold …
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As I wait for more new shows this week to review, and as I find myself with little to say about the Emmy winners, largely because I agree with or can accept almost all victories (especially Michael Emerson. yay! About bloody time), let’s take a time out to look at some of the extratextuals surrounding the new shows:
I’ve been intrigued by the degree to which, in the wake of Gossip Girl’s past success, The CW has pounced upon the guilty pleasure label as being a great one with which to sell (and, of course, design) a show. Consider the following posters, for GG, Melrose Place, and The Beautiful Life, starting with GG. Analysis after the fold…
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I’m variously annoyed, depressed, and amused by spam. Annoyed because, well, it’s annoying. Depressed because it can only exist because some doofuses actually click through (“Do I wish I had a ‘trouser beast’? Why, damn it, I do! I’d better click through and buy me some of those pills, so that tomorrow I wake up with one that will, as this ad promises, ‘scare the neighbors’”) and thus it reminds me both of how stupid some people are and of how stupid many people think we all are. Amused when its inappropriateness can only be met with laughter.
Part of running a blog involves dealing with spam. There’s the whacked out spam that reads like clothing I’d often see when I lived in Hong Kong, peppered with English phrases yet designed by non-English speakers (“crazy pilot home run go anaphylactic shock heroes live for the best why Friends dig it barroom brawl cheese town tank boy”), and then there’s the stuff posing as real messages (a recent one is “I have been searching everywhere on the internet for this specific information. Finally I find it here! Thanks.” Maybe I’d believe it more if there was information in the post on which it commented, not just opinion/rambling). Both just want you to click through.
But around this time of year, I always get some new show / returning show spam that doesn’t want you to click through, but that wants to sell a show. It rarely goes into the filter, and seems not to have been delivered by a ‘bot. Rather, some poor intern somewhere seems to have the job of trawling through Google, and replying to all blogs that mention a specific show with enthusiastic plans to watch the new season. More after the fold:
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While unpacking and getting the new life sorted out, one of the things I’ve found some spare time for this summer has been catching up on (ie: watching from the beginning) Mad Men. I’m now intrigued by their advertising for the new season.
Before getting to the ads for the show, though, let me say how wonderful I think Mad Men is. I’m so impressed by the storytelling, and by how the show can shift focus to various supporting characters with skill, fleshing them out wonderfully over time. It’s also a treat to see a show that can critically examine a whole bunch of “issues” without feeling didactic, obvious, or hackneyed.
I’m also somewhat surprised by its relatively low ratings to date, which places its ad campaigns under the microscope for me. Yeah, it’s slow, it’s hard to crack if you missed earlier episodes, and it’s on a cable channel. But Lost is hard to crack, and has managed much higher ratings. And, like Lost, I would have imagined that its eye candy factor, both in terms of beautiful people, but also in terms of high quality filming, would have helped smooth over other perceived problems. Even more than Lost, too, it’s been a critical darling. Like 30 Rock, it’s managed the amazing trick of being full of product placement yet still loved and revered by TV critics and academics alike. It’s gotten a bunch of Emmy nominations.
So, if it’s so good, and if it has such good buzz, why aren’t more people watching it?
AMC is clearly asking the same thing, since they’ve put a major push into marketing it this last month. Two strategies in particular are interesting.
First, as many of you will have seen on Facebook, they came up with a Mad Men Yourself avatar creator. The Simpsons made such a splash with its avatar creator for The Simpsons Movie, as Facebook went all Springfieldian for a month or more. It’s a smart tool for getting your show out there, and I’d imagine that if the Yearbook Yourself site wasn’t competing with it right now, I’d be seeing even more Duck Phillips, Pete Campbell, or Rachel Mencken clones on Facebook every time I log in. Below is my own arrival at Sterling Cooper.
What I find somewhat amusing with these is that neither Springfield nor Sterling Cooper seem like particularly wonderful worlds to step into. I think of a friend who recently expressed concern that a Facebook quiz said that she was Betty Draper in Mad Men, and a friend of hers noted that there’s no particularly wonderful woman to be in the show. I’d echo that with men – sure, everyone wanted to be Lester or Omar for the Facebook Wire quizzes, but do you really want to be Don, Sterling, or Pete? If so, you kind of missed the criticism. I think the way to read these avatar creators, though, is not that they’re saying that you might want to step into these worlds, as much as they’re sending a message that one could, since they are immersive, expansive, tangible environments.
The other part of the Mad Men campaign that somewhat perplexes me is its joining forces with Banana Republic (hereafter BR). BR has designed a bunch of its summer items around the show, and its windows are full of ads (including a competition that would allow one a walk-on role in the show). Mad Men is full of product placement, but since it’s set in the early sixties, they’re all for brands that were around then. BR wasn’t, so already there’s a somewhat odd temporal disjuncture. It’s a smart relationship for BR, since Mad Men is heavily stylized, full of well-dressed and crisp looking people, and it’s a critical darling, so they can brand themselves as classy, chic, and sophisticated. But Mad Men seems to get very little textually out of the deal – how does that communicate to anyone a sense of what Mad Men is, other than saying it’s the classy sibling of the Gap and Old Navy (but which shows are the Gap and Old Navy in this metaphor?). Admittedly, what it does get is visibility – it gets into malls around the continent.
So what I’m left wondering is whether that’s ultimately all Mad Men really needs to get more viewers – visibility. Is a BR shopper a would-be Mad Men viewer? I’d love to see the demographics and research behind this campaign. Indeed, I’m left, ironically, wanting to know how this show about advertising handles its advertising.
A neat video that anyone interested in advertising and television should enjoy:
Finishing our tour through this Fall’s TV schedule, let’s look at the CW.
Remember when The WB network began and it had a fair amount of African American programming, but then it went for wealthy young white women? Then UPN also programmed a lot of African American content. Then the two merged, and African American shows were ghettoized into one night so that the wealthy young white women could hold court for the other nights. Well, with the cancellation of The Game and Everybody Hates Chris, the CW can now boldly announce that CW stands for Completely White. (Okay, there’s Tyra and there’s the kid on 90210, but not much else.)
Gone, too, are 13: Fear is Real, 4Real, Easy Money, In Harm’s Way, Privileged, Reaper, and Valentine.
What’s new? After the fold …
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CBS’s turn to unveil their schedule came yesterday. But first, fellow Extratextual Ivan Askwith just posted some neat thoughts about serial television, and I’d hate for them to be swallowed amidst my upfront posts, so please scroll down to read those too.
As for CBS, there’s no eleventh hour reprieve for The Eleventh Hour, Without a Trace vanished, The Ex List is now on the ex-show list, Worst Week certainly had its worst week, The Unit got a bullet between the eyes, Harper’s Island experienced a horrific end too, and Game Show in My Head will remain in the head.
However, Patricia Arquette went from speaking to the dead to reincarnating the dead, as her Medium, just a day after getting tossed by NBC, is now on CBS. It will be on a new Women Who Talk to Dead People Friday, along with Ghost Whisperer.
Below the fold are CBS’ new shows, and that whole “rescued from death” theme is prevalent:
ABC’s upfronts were on Tuesday, but here’s what happened:
Many of the cancelled shows were announced earlier, and I’ll discuss the dead pool in a later post, but let me say with joy that both According to Jim and Samantha Who? are no more. ABC killed Pushing Daisies this year and also yanked Boston Legal, so they have a lot to make up for; this is a start. Kill Grey’s Anatomy, ABC, and we’ll call it even. Alas, Grey’s and its negative effect on undergrads’ ability to spell my name carries on. Also gone though are Cupid, Dirty Sexy Money, Eli Stone, Homeland Security USA, In the Motherhood, Life on Mars, Opportunity Knocks, and The Unusuals (wow, that last one was quick! I guess Joan and God ain’t talkin’ no more).
There are also a whole bunch of new shows, especially on Wednesdays. Comments, embedded clips, and schedule below the fold.
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I’ve already discussed NBC’s new shows, since they already announced them. But the big news of the day, for me, is that Chuck was renewed. And in talks with journalists, Ben Silverman drew the line directly back to the fans’ and Subway’s campaign to keep the show around (see my post on the campaign here).
Law and Order was the other lucky survivor of the day, though Medium, Life, and My Name is Earl weren’t so lucky. Apparently, CBS might pick up Medium, and My Name is Earl’s Greg Garcia is also hoping to shop his show around. Garcia wasn’t a happy man, firing back at NBC that “It’s hard to be too upset about being thrown off the Titanic.” Ouch. I hope the show finds a new home, since I really like it (what’s not to like about Randy and/or Crab Man?), and it seems like it might be a good fit with FOX.
As for the schedule, more after the fold:
I found clips of some of the new shows, and I’m embedding them after the fold
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