Less is more

October 27, 2008


The CBS studio crew during football games consists of five people. Three former players, a former coach and a sports broadcast veteran.

The FOX crew is even larger. If you count the robot, it’s close to breaking double digits.

Post-debate coverage on the major 24-hour news channels turned into a rotation of several experts, pundits and other personalities. In one surreal television moment, Anderson Cooper sat in between a dozen people, squashed together behind two too-small news desks, shooting off questions like a semi-automatic firearm, fighting for space and for clarity.

Walter Cronkite would report on his own. By himself. No experts, or former employees, or anyone that would distract from the one important thing: the news. You listened to him as an expert. As a trusted voice. As a thick syrup of news, coating and lasting, irreplaceable, a true benefit to the station.

The more people you fit on a stage, the more watered down their message will become. They will receive fewer opportunities to talk, which makes them less and less important as individuals in the larger picture. And if they’re less important, then what’s stopping us from simply tuning them out?

My suggestion to television news and sports programs. Experts are good. But keep them at a minimum, please. Because when everyone starts sounding the same, it doesn’t really matter if your announcer is a former football player, or if your pundit is the premier historian in regards to presidential politics. They’re just another head on a 10-headed media monster.

And cutting one off doesn’t seem to matter.

Tags: Annoyances, Football, Politics, Television |

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The day after the Ad Bowl

February 4, 2008


Last night’s game - especially the fourth quarter - was fantastic.

It had everything. It had upsets. It had heroics. It had drama and excitement. It was everything a game should be - great until the last, bone jarring sack of Tom Brady.

As for the ads, well, let’s just say they weren’t the best.

The Super Bowl is the ad land’s greatest showcase, serving millions of captive viewers with over-thought, hyper-produced television commercials. For those of us who enjoy advertising - who work intimately with the industry or who still remember the first time they saw a great television commercial that changed their way of thinking - this is like a Super Bowl within the Super Bowl.

And like many Super Bowls, the hype outweighs the production.

None of the spots I saw were what I would call Super Bowl commercials. They were just commercials. Nothing that special, thanks. Some left me scratching my head. Others, I just rolled my eyes.

The GMC Yukon spot of a line drawing pushing a rock up a hill? Faux-sentiment; it’s a vehicle, thanks, and no amount of new age drawing will change that when your company is also known for putting out the GMC Sierra Denali. Pepsi gave us the same lame “trying to be cool” bullshit, and Budweiser ads continued the same path they’ve always gone: men are beer-hungry animals who eschew reality.

I should give Budweiser a little leeway, though. Of the three ads I actually liked, the Will Ferrell (as Jackie Moon) spot was pretty funny. I also enjoyed the E-Trade spots, featuring a talking baby, and I thought the Coca-Cola spot with the Macy’s parade balloons was brilliantly done. The NFL’s ad was superb - probably the best of the night.

That’s it. Four spots, three of which could have appeared anywhere and still been lost in the clutter. The only one that was really memorable was the NFL’s spot. And they were advertising the very product you were already watching.

In an industry that prides itself on creative thinking - on industry changing techniques and sudden twists of fate and beyond the normal humor - I find myself stunned each year to see the same batch of predictable television commercials, as if Ad Land’s biggest stage was just another way to pander to the same lowest common denominator they’ve always pandered to.

Great ads are made all the time. But because there’s no need to justify a multi-million dollar media budget, the ads can be made to perfection, without the nosy pokiness of a thousand different suits, joined together in one room to counter every last detail until the original idea has been drowned in corporate speak.

Really, you’d think we’d learn. The Super Bowl is no longer where great ads are finally revealed. You’ll never see an ad like Honda’s “Cog,” Sony Bravia’s “Balls,” or the beautiful Halo 3 spots. Those wouldn’t work. Maybe they’re too good. Maybe they’re too subtle - not enough breasts and not enough potty humor.

Maybe the difference between a great ad and a Super Bowl ad is similar to the difference between John Steinbeck and John Grisham - one is written to stand the test of time, designed as a heavy statement on the world around us, while the other is simply a form of entertainment, never considered as ultra-literary but perfect for the right demographic.

I’m not in the right demographic when it comes to Super Bowl ads. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised - I’m not in the right demographic for John Grisham either.

Of course, it could all change next year. Or, at least, that’s what I’ll be telling myself.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Football, Sports |

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Really? Eli?

February 3, 2008


Eli?Holy shit.

Really? ELI Manning?

I didn’t see that one coming. Not at all. But it was pretty great.

I thought I was ready to welcome the Patriots to the “Perfect Season” table with the 1972 Dolphins. I figured that we were cursed, that perfection had to be shared before the Dolphins had a chance. I was tired of Mercury Morris, of Don Shula, of Jim Kiick and Larry Czonka and the rest of the team, popping their champagne, rubbing their long past achievement in the nation’s collective face as if the team was somehow relevant again.

But when it came down to it, I ended up rooting for the Giants.

Let’s just say old habits die hard. Congrats, New York. You guys earned this one.

Tags: Football, Miami Dolphins, Sports |

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The New England Yankees

January 21, 2008


Super Bowl XLIIFor nine months out of the year, the number one story on the sports landscape seems to be New York Yankees versus Boston Red Sox. Both teams could be a complete non-story and they’d still make the first fifteen minutes of ESPN coverage. It’s a tired rivalry – one that surely has legendary history but lately feels like a distracting media whore; like a high school homecoming queen at her first college kegger, important because of who she was, not where she is now.

So you’ll have to forgive me if I’m callous to this year’s Super Bowl. The roles are reversed, but it’s still the same story. New York vs. Boston. New York as scrappy underdog, Boston as steamrolling Goliath.

Does that mean Brady is the game’s Jeter? Who is Manning?

* sigh * Let the hyperbole begin.

(And, let’s see how long it takes the No Fun League to notice my image and order me to remove it.)

Tags: Baseball, Football, Sports |

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Miami Sharks

January 7, 2008


Just catching up on a full week of missed blog entries (I was far too busy last week to open my aggrigator at work, and now I’m paying for it.)

I love this post from Where’s My Jetpack? regarding the woeful Miami Dolphins. They need more than a new General Manager and Coach - they need an entire re-branding campaign.

From the post:

We’re talking about dolphins. Gentle, playful, cute, always-smiling dolphins. This is not a good football animal mascot like a bear, lion, bronco, jaguar, bengal, colt, eagle, ram, charger, seahawk, panther or falcon. The only animal mascot in the NFL with a weaker image than a dolphin is a cardinal. And the Cardinals have sucked forever. One of the original names floated for the franchise was Sharks. That says football.

Well said. There’s more fun where that came from - check it out.

Tags: Football, Miami Dolphins |

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Lucky number fourteen

December 17, 2007


One win. Only thirteen games behind the Patriots now.

Well, so much for that.

I’ve been rooting for a hated rival to go undefeated. At the same time, I’ve been rooting for my team - the team I grew up following and still claim as my own - to lose every single one of their games. There is a curse, I’m convinced, that makes the Dolphins worse and worse every season. The Perfect Season Curse.

The only way to break it? A completely defeated season by the Dolphins, and an undefeated season by someone else.

Unfortunately, one part of that dream died today. The Dolphins beat the equally horrible (yet, in terms of wins, statistically better) Baltimore Ravens in overtime.

I’m sort of crushed. Now I really have nothing to root for.

Yet, at the same time, I feel bad for Ravens fans. How shitty must they feel?

On a more positive note - the Dolphins are only 13 games behind the Patriots for first in the AFC East!

Tags: Football, Miami Dolphins, Sports |

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Fantasy bullet points

November 26, 2007


I usually hate the Pittsburgh Steelers.

I always have. I remember at a young age ranking all of the teams in the NFL. I loved lists, and I was just beginning to understand football. I placed the Dolphins at the top, naturally, because that’s the team my father rooted for (and still does) and I placed the Buffalo Bills - the Dolphins’ natural enemy, obviously - at the bottom. Dallas was second to last. Pittsburgh was third to last.

Tonight, though, I’m rooting for them - both because I desperately want the Perfect Season Curse broken and because Ben Roethlisberger is on my fantasy team.

This is what professional football has broken into - both for good and bad. Sure, we root for our team. But we also root for everyone else, depending on the day - or more specifically, depending on who’s starting, or what the point spread is, etc. etc. Loyalties and rivalries are thrown to the wayside, with individual stats taking hold and Monday Night Football gaining even more momentum as the ultimate “make the lost bets back” game.

And as a football fan, I’m all for it. I’m rooting for Pittsburgh tonight. All because I have a drafted the rights to use the statistics of a handful of professional football names. All because I need 48 fantasy points from their starting quarterback. All because I am pretending - like a couple of kids playing house - that I’m a real life NFL general manager.

What a weird concept.

To think I usually hate the Steelers.

Tags: Football, Miami Dolphins, Sports |

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