NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Like many successful brands born of the digital age, Google hasn’t been known for advertising, and certainly not TV advertising. So its appearance in this year’s Super Bowl was something of a surprise. This is, you’ll recall, the company whose founders vowed that it would be a cold day in hell before they’d do a TV commercial and whose chief executive called advertising “the last bastion of unaccountable spending in corporate America.”
What Jesus-like figure at which of Google’s ad agencies had converted the company to a big-ticket TV advertiser? Had Google started to work with McGarryBowen?
Erin Mulvehill
Google Five: (l.) Tristan Smith, J. Smith, Anthony Cafaro, Michael Chang and Johnathan Jarvis.
No, the Super Bowl spot, “Parisian Love,” was created in-house by the “Google 5,” a handful of students recruited from ad and design schools. The 5 program is an experiment launched last year by the Google Creative Lab and its executive creative director, Robert Wong. The company sent a call out to 12 schools searching for interesting talent who would work inside the Creative Lab for a year and then be sent out unto the industry. So, with the Google 5, the company gets new creative blood and the industry gets young talent that is schooled in Google, and, by extension, the post-digital/new advertising way — tech-forward, open-source, collaborative, and smart.
Mr. Wong says the 5 initiative was motivated by two things: “getting fresh, awesome talent in the Creative Lab,” and “fueling the ecosystem of the industry.”
“It feels like every agency I talk to wants more digital expertise,” said Mr. Wong. “The thinking was that, ‘Hey we have great talent that can come in and play with all the tools here and then agencies will get people that feel confident about all the tools at their disposal.’ And of course it works for us because that way they know our tools and we can participate in the whole ecosystem.”
Mr. Wong and the Lab team received around 400 applications for the five spots in the program. The original plan was to recruit a designer, an art director, a writer, a filmmaker and a programmer, but after vetting the candidates in a process Mr. Wong likens to “casting a reality show,” the team selected two writers, Tristan Smith and J. Smith; two designers, Anthony Cafaro and Jonathan Jarvis; and a programmer, Michael Chang.
The team stood out for being talented and “multidextrous” and, in some cases, for their self-initiated creations: Mr. Jarvis wrote and directed an animated web film called “The Crisis of Credit Visualized” that explained the Wall Street meltdown in a simple, graphically compelling way and that’s been viewed over a million times online; Mr. Smith, while nominally a writer, impressed with a series of 3-D photographs he created as a side project. But the whole team demonstrated the key characteristic of, er, “Googliness,” which Mr. Wong describes as an amalgam of “ambition, humility, altruism, entrepreneurialism and sense of scale — big thinkers who feel like they can really impact a lot of people.”
In June 2009, the 5 arrived at Google and were immersed immediately in every project that the Lab had cooking and in the aggressively open, collaborative Google working style.
“It wasn’t like, ‘OK, here’s your little project and we’ll work on the important things,’” said Mr. Jarvis. “They were like, ‘We need minds on this problem, you guys come and work on it.’ So we were working on the same projects as the creative leads and working right alongside them; it was up to us to sink or swim, and to contribute as much as we could.”
Within the group and in the larger Lab environment, “there’s very little screen privacy,” Mr. Cafaro said. “There was always someone over your shoulder saying, ‘Ooh, what if we tried this?’” Fresh out of school, the 5 noted that this kind of collaborative environment was a significant change from their experiences to date. “I think ad school trained you to be very competitive; there’s this kind of killer instinct they try and create in you,” said Tristan Smith. “You’re always pitching your work against teams. I sort of had to reprogram myself here.”
The 5 ended up working on a wide range of projects, from launching the Nexus phone — contributing to all facets of the product including packaging, pre-roll ads on Hulu and the boot-up animation on the phone — to the Google Christmas card (”everything here scales!” said Tristan Smith).
And, of course, search.
How it all began
What eventually became “Parisian Love” and a Super Bowl hit started out as a key Google brief, to “remind people what they love about Google search,” but also to showcase some engine particulars they might not know about. “There were all these features that the engineers showed me that I think no one really knew about, like being able to type your flight number right into the search bar without going to an airline’s site,” said Mr. Wong. “So it was about showing people how they could search in other ways and how empowering that could be.” Mr. Wong said several different ideas were floated until something caught — the idea that it wasn’t just one search and one answer, but a lifetime of searches. The 5 team ran with the idea of a search as representative of a moment in a life, inspired by Mr. Wong’s maxim that “the best results don’t show up in a search engine, they show up in your life.”
They worked to keep the idea pared down to keep the resulting spot “like theater of the mind,” and presented it to the search-marketing team. Mr. Wong said, “Everyone loved it and wanted to share it.” The spot appeared online in late 2009. It was an engineer who originally suggested putting the ad on the Super Bowl. “For Google, it’s a crazy idea,” Mr. Wong said. “At the end of the day, the founders loved the spot and they were excited by the idea of more people getting to see it. It was a one off, it was random. But it was surprising and that’s what made it so cool.”
The tenure of the original 5 came to an end this June, at which time the Lab ended up hiring Tristan Smith. Messrs. Cafaro and Jarvis. J. Smith got a job at Wieden & Kennedy, Portland and Mr. Chang is a free-agent programmer who recently created the much-discussed “Google Doodle” that augured the September launch of Google Instant. He is currently working on projects for Barnes & Noble.
Up next: another group of “talented and nice” polymaths that includes Grant Gold, a designer out of School of Visual Arts; Chris Trumbull and Natalie Hammel, writers from VCU; George Michael Brower, a technologist from UCLA Design Media Arts; and Chris Lauritzen, a designer/”wild card” from Art Center College of Design’s Media Design program.
Mr. Wong says the fresh 5 have been thrown into a range of projects covering search, Google TV, Chrome and other undisclosed ventures.
“The Lab is very flat and open,” said Mr. Lauritzen, “which gives it a kind of chaos that can feel a little overwhelming at times. It’s also what makes it such a cool place to be, especially for someone learning how the creative industry works. There is a lot of amazing stuff going on, and it’s all accessible.” Already, Mr. Brower has contributed to one of the creative highlights of the year, interactive video “The Wilderness Downtown,” a collaboration between director Chris Milk and Google’s Aaron Koblin, The Lab, B-Reel, Radical Media and designer/developer Mr. Doob.
The Arcade Fire coup and the Super Bowl spot are part of a growing body of work out of the Lab created in collaboration with an array of partners, agency and otherwise. The Lab built on the success of “Parisian Love” with more Search Stories, working with Pixar to create a “Toy Story 3″-themed spot and launching a web tool allowing the public to create their own search story.
Quite a track record
Much of the Lab’s recent work has centered on the Chrome browser. In May, the group worked with BBH, New York, on “Speed Tests,” which pitted the browser against the likes of sound waves and a potato-gun-fired potato in a series of real-time, in-camera demonstrations.
It’s an admirable track record for a creative entity just 3 years old. Former Ogilvy co-President Andy Berndt was recruited in September 2007 to build the new unit; Mr. Wong, an ex-Arnold exec creative director and VP-creative at Starbucks, joined in 2008. But this is Google, after all, so when Mr. Wong tells you the ultimate goal for the Lab is to “win the Nobel Peace Prize,” both of you can keep a straight face.
The Lab is now a 50-person unit, working closely with Google marketing and with a growing roster of agencies including BBH, Cutwater and Johannes Leonardo among others.
Mr. Wong offers a long and a short version of the Lab’s mandate. “The Google Creative Lab is a small team that strives to rethink marketing across every kind of media, currently existing or not — with Google as its sole client. Our mission is to ‘remind the world what it is that they love about Google.’ Our job is to manage and steward the brand, find new ways to communicate the company’s innovations, intentions and ideals, and do work of which we can all be proud. We want people ambitious and crazy enough to think we can actually change the world.” The short version: “Do epic shit.”
The part about reminding people why they love Google, though, can be considered one of today’s more interesting brand challenges: to take a company that was built on and whose name represents one thing — search — and craft a brand persona as the company expands in size and scope. And occasionally scares people. “It’s human nature to root for the underdog,” said Mr. Wong. “When you become successful, it’s about, how do you exceed people’s expectations?”
The Lab, said Mr. Wong, wants to take the processes and philosophies that made Google’s engineers successful — intense focus on the consumer and user experience, flat operating structure, focus on prototyping and on an iterative process, scale and tech innovation — and apply them to the marketing process. If Mr. Wong could push further, industry-wide, he said it would be toward “more listening, less talking; more feeling, less thinking, more doing, less promising, more inventing, less polishing.”
I’ve seen this spot several times over the past week and decided to note it in the blog. It’s a very fun spot with a lot of color and great artwork all-around. It’s one of those rare spots that comes around every once in a while that makes you say “wow, that was a cool spot” once it’s over. I really enjoy it, but will it sell cars?
Here’s a cool “The Making Of…” video I found for more details into how much it took to make these :30 spots.
I was out to lunch with Dave and Wendy last week and pointed out a SportsCenter commercial that was playing on one of the TVs in the restaurant. It sparked a pretty entertaining conversation about how consistent the ESPN commercials have been over the past decade or so. It got me thinking that I should post a blog about the spots and highlight a few here. So here ya go, my Top 10 ‘This Is SportsCenter’ Commercials (as usual, in no particular order).
1. Y2K Test
This is one of the most memorial spots in my mind. I love Steiner at the end…”Follow me to Freedom”. Mark McGwirer smashing computers is a pretty nice touch as well. (Guess it’s not too soon to say it, but, Roid Rage?)
2. D. Patrick
Dave’s personal favorite.
3. The Complete Show
4. Betrayal
Great spot that highlights the Yankees/Sox rivalry.
5. Good Luck. Finding. Your Chair. Lebron
Good ole King James and Van Pelt.
6. The Perfect Show
Love the old Dan Patrick/Kenny Mayne spots!
7. Yahtzee!!
8. The Conditioning Coach
How can you not laugh at Richard Simmons?
9. Slumps
10. Three of a Kind
I’m sure I’m leaving some great spots out, but all of these really crack me up. They never seem to run out of ideas up there in that ESPN creative department. Post any other funny spots here in the comment section!
Car makers are constantly looking for new ways to make their products more appealing to the public. While some use creative concepts and popular trends to impress viewers, other manufacturers use a more conservative approach.
It is no secret that the world of auto advertising is very diverse and cluttered. I have never been a big car buff, so I usually see through these commercials. I am not impressed by the spots with the new sports car that drives young and hip teens around town through all hours of the night. Nor do I care for the ridiculous truck demonstrations that show off the super powers of today’s new truck lines.
Yet, when I do catch a car commercial that impresses me, I am willing to give credit where credit is due. I personally believe it is one of the most difficult genres to advertise creatively. Once again for your viewing pleasure, here are my top auto commercials in no particular order:
This Toyota commercial is great. I have never seen in on TV, I actually saw this for the first time in one of my Intro to Advertising classes in college. I love the ‘human touch’ angle and the fact that they aren’t afraid to get a little cheesy. Good stuff!
This one really made me laugh. I saw it for the first time with one of my roommates. For those of you who don’t understand this reference, World of Warcraft (the game that this ad spoofs) is a very popular computer game. Hundreds of thousands of kids log on to this game daily and interact with each other. How do I know this? The very roommate who saw the commercial with me used to be one of these “WOW” addicts. There is also an episode of South Park that spoofed the video game. One of my personal favorite episodes by the way.
You have to love the art direction here. Using the car parts to create this concoction - great. Plus, who in their right mind doesn’t like concoctions? Seriously….
And finally, my favorite car commercial of all-time. There is no real reason why it’s my favorite - I’m actually not even a VW fan. It may have something to do with the peacefulness. Or possibly it’s the fact that I’m a Nick Drake fan and this song gets stuck in my head constantly. Nonetheless, this is the car commercial that has always stuck out to me.
I’m sure there are some great spots that I’ve left out. If you can think of any great auto ads, go find them and post them on the blog! I’m interested to see what’s out there that I’m missing!
Network television has taken another step towards releasing its content online, for free, and I like the sound of it. Thanks to a story at Forbes.com, I have been alerted that “Hulu’s Here”. In case you weren’t aware, Hulu (which sounds like the name of Uhura’s and Mr. Sulu’s space-aged love child) is the new Internet video service of NBC Universal. The site will feature full episodes of TV shows mostly from NBC and FOX, with programming from sister networks such as F/X, The Sci-Fi Channel, and USA. According to the article, you won’t just be able to get most of the programming from those channels, you’ll also be able to get TV classics such as WKRP in Cincinnati (one of my all-time favorites) and the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Movies from several studios, such as Sideways and The Breakfast Club, will also be available.
Even though the service is free, there is a price to pay. Unlike content on YouTube, there will be the occasional commercial messages on Hulu. Once you start playing a selection, a banner ad will be featured at the top of the screen (unless you select the “full screen” viewing option). Brief commercial breaks will appear about every 22 minutes, and like most network-driven online content today a quick commercial at the beginning or end of the broadcast will appear. And apparently the “overlay ad”, those annoying ads that just glide across your computer screen with a cleverly-concealed “close” tab will show up from time to time.
Despite the commercial interruptions, I think most web viewers will ignore (or at least put up with) the commercials. Banner ads, while not as annoying as the old-fashioned pop-up ad, are everywhere on the internet any way. And network television (cable networks included) invade the screen with overlay promos for upcoming shows on a regular basis. I think they do it too often, but over the past few years I feel most people have gotten over the intrusion (except when it covers up a graphic pertaining to the show like a chyron… I hate that). What is conspicuously missing from the Hulu “about us” page is any mention of advertising which I feel is a bit misleading to the consumer who isn’t totally clued in.
I’m also a little miffed at the service in general simply because following a press conference announcing its launch, and the nice pub from Forbes, the site isn’t ready yet. After signing up for the beta test version, the only e-mail I’ve received from Hulu is that yes indeed I signed up for Hulu. But even with the delay I’m curious about a couple of things regarding how successful Hulu can be.
Louis Hau, who penned the article about the site, seems to wonder if Hulu will be as big as YouTube. To me, I don’t think it has to be. In fact, I know it won’t be. But that shouldn’t make anyone think Hulu will be a disaster in the making. Hulu will be the only legal place streaming shows from NBC and Fox, and the other networks I mentioned earlier. If a niche audience is willing to go out of its way to watch an episode of Monk orMy Name is Earl, than the advertiser is being taken directly to the person it wants to reach during a regular network broadcast. YouTube may have 2.5 million views of Chris Crocker crying about Britney Spears (sadly, it does), but who’s watching that garbage? Even if ONE show on Hulu has one-percent of that audience (25,000 viewers if you weren’t a math major), that’s 25,000 potential clients exposed to whomever advertises on that stream. And Hulu is unique in that unlike YouTube it will NOT accept user-generated material. The reason is simple: the minds at Hulu don’t want crap on their website. And you have to admit that 98% of the original, user-generated video on YouTube is indeed crap.
Finally, what really intrigues me is how a site like Hulu will affect the DVD market. Nowadays it’s cool to have seasons one through ten of The Simpsons on DVD, taking up valuable space on your entertainment center but showing your friends you’re a fan and you have enough disposable income to buy all of those box sets. But what if one day you could stream all of those episodes, and still get the bonus goodies that sell most DVDs today? Keep in mind just ten years ago people used to show off CD collections with towers of discs in their living rooms. Then came Napster, which begat Kazaa, which begat Apple iTunes. Who shows off stacks of CDs in their jewel cases any more? For 99 cents a song you build your library on a chip in you mp3 player.
So I’m still waiting for my personal “invitation” from Hulu that says they’re ready for me. I’m ready for them and I’m curious how eager the rest of the world is ready for a similar service.
While scanning today’s edition of The New York Times, I came across a rather interesting article regarding a whole new look for casual dining chain Applebee’s. In an attempt to pump up sagging sales, Applebee’s is launching a whole new ad campaign featuring the voice of comedienne Wanda Sykes as the company’s “spokesapple”. The spots, part of Applebee’s annual $180-million ad budget, features a feisty apple convincing people who are eating alone to get together with friends and family at Applebee’s for a meal. But the chain isn’t just stopping there. The entire chain will undergo a renovation in terms of a new logo, new uniforms, new building designs, and an upgrade on interior decorating.
Now at first I have to give Applebee’s some props for this massive public relations overhaul. Their recent ad campaigns, under former agency Draft FCB (Applebee’s is now with McCann Erickson) didn’t make the chain stand out from other casual dining chains such as TGI Friday’s or Chili’s. And with the economy to blame mostly for slumping sales (higher gas prices and a shaky housing market means less disposable income for the family to eat out), why not shake things up with a new look and a new feel to remind customers you still exist.
I also have to commend Applebee’s on how it has built up to this weekend’s unveiling of the ad campaign by taking out a full-page ad in USA Today on October 9th, directing readers to a website featuring “tryouts” by other types of apples for the Sykes apple that was eventually chosen. Applebee’s then allowed the videos to spread virally through websites such as YouTube to create a buzz. With Applebee’s wisely buying commercial time during TV programs such as “Desperate Housewives” and “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”, the chain is hitting it’s target audience– the moms of these families who ultimately decide where the family will eat.
But the biggest problem I have with Applebee’s has nothing to do with the new ad campaign or the refreshed logo and look of the place. To me, it all comes down to the food. Now maybe it’s because I’m a 30-year-old man and I don’t play on the emotional pull of “Together is Good”, but for a place like Applebee’s I’m just thinking about what I’m getting to eat. To me, a basket of boneless chicken wings at Applebee’s will taste just as good (or bad) as the same order of boneless chicken wings from Chili’s, TGI Friday’s, Ruby Tuesday’s, or Bennigan’s. With all of these aforementioned chains offering essentially the same line of food (burgers, chicken, sandwiches, fattening appetizers, and 2-for-1 drafts), there’s just no good reason for me to select one over the other. And most importantly, and this is what kills casual chains from the male point of view, I can think of several local or regional restaurants here in the Tampa Bay area (such as Tank’s Tap Room or Beef O’ Brady’s) who offer food that taste BETTER than a national chain and cost just about as much.
Applebee’s isn’t too worried about the smaller restaurants, rather it’s the fast food giants who have helped dragged down the casual dining market a bit. MacDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s, now offer healthier top-end choices along with their traditional greasy burgers. Kentucky Fried Chicken (trying to wean itself from the “KFC” moniker) is trumping how their low-priced combo meals are in fact meals and not fast food. Sister company Pizza Hut claims their family meals of pizza and bread sticks, or big servings of pasta, cures all ills when it comes to cooking for the family.
So it’s going to take more than just a new look and an altered menu for Applebee’s to pull ahead of the crowded, yet lucrative, casual dining market. Bennigan’s plays up the Irish pub angle (although as an Irishman I’m not buying it) while TGI Friday’s plays up the “flair” card with wacky outfits and drink specials. Red Lobster cornered the chain seafood market while Olive Garden snagged the middle-class Italian market. Applebee’s will have to come up with something creative with their cuisine, not their logo, to really make the other apples in the casual dining bunch look like oranges.
There are tons of stories floating through cyberspace about how television network news is dead. While the ratings for network television news have declined sharply over the past several years, the forum for the 30-minute nighttime newscast is hardly dead in America. However, the television networks know that in order to keep the younger end of the crucial 25-54 demographic interested in the network news, especially the tech-savvy 18-34-year-old crowd, a little reinventing of the wheel needs to be done.
Now I’m not saying the wheel is network news broadcasts themselves. Networks have tried over and over again during the past few years to bump up ratings by changing hosts such as CBS and NBC have done, or by switching to a two-host system which ABC tried briefly in 2006 before Bob Woodruff was seriously injured while reporting in Iraq. I’m talking about “the wheel” as network newscasts on line.
Up until now a network’s website, which was heavily promoted throughout the newscast, featured repackaged news segments. Basically the website served as a dumping ground for features you may have missed or would like to see again. But that begs the question, if you didn’t see the feature the first time around are you really inclined to go searching a website for it? It’s the old “tree in the forest” adage at play here. If you’re not watching the network news in the first place, are you going to go out of your way to find a network news feature on the network’s website? Probably not, and I highly doubt anyone has been so moved by a network news feature recently they e-mailed all of their friends and said, “You’ve got to see this piece on Medicare from NBC!”
ABC News is trying to change that, and I love their approach detailed in this article from the New York Times. ABC’s internet webcast, titled simply “World News”, features regular ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson as host (most of the time). What’s unique about this though is Gibson merely isn’t cuing up eight or nine feature already shown on the ABC World News report that night. Instead, this 15-minute webcast features stories shot by the ABC News staff specifically for the webcast. What’s really interesting to me is how these stories are presented.
Jason Samuels, the senior producer of the webcast, takes a fresh approach to presenting the news to a generation of people whose lives don’t fit the network television schedule like generations past.
“I don’t have to count the seconds,” he said. “I just try to put in a good show that’s around 15 minutes. Do one long stand-up, do much longer sound bites, play an interview,” he said, summing up his advice to the staff. “Produce a story in any way you think is engaging — there are no rules.”
That right there sums up EXACTLY what network news programs have to do with their online content. Break all of the rules– the same rules that have been dragging down network news ratings for more than 20 years now. Reporters aren’t tied to 90-second or 2-minute packages, and unlike most newscasts stories aren’t bogged down with network promos masquerading as news stories or celebrity gossip. And staples of newscasts from the past, or newsmagazine shows prior to Chris Hansen busting one pervert after another, in-depth interviews are featured.
My favorite part of this webcast is the lack of commercials. There’s only one commercial, 15 seconds long, at the start of the webcast. After that, it’s laid out for convenience. The webcast on October 11, 2007, was a mere 16:27 long, and starts with updated headlines. The remaining 14 minutes starts with Gibson giving “signposts” to upcoming stories. Those same signposts are featured underneath the video player screen. Not only are there no commercial interruptions, you know exactly what you will get in that newscast, something someone my age (soon to be 30) appreciates greatly. Instead of dressing up reporters, sets, or story ideas with 53-year-old adults trying to look hip, ABC manages to deliver the news straight and without the bells and whistles others in the past have tried.
The big question is, will the coveted 18-34-year-old crowd actually tune in on a regular basis? To date, ABC averages 4.5 million downloads of the World News webcast per month. That averages to only about 150,000 a day, or roughly the amount of households watching a major market local newscast on any given night. ABC has a great product here, but the trick is to tell those 18-34-year-olds who don’t watch the network news on a regular basis to actually sign on and listen to a guy they probably remember as the host of Good Morning America 15 years ago.
While killing some time during a lunch break, I stumbled across an interesting column from ESPN’s Pat Forde regarding the antics of two college football coaches at press conferences. The first came from Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy, who spent several minutes ripping into a columnist for The Oklahoman after she wrote a column regarding the toughness of OSU’s starting quarterback Bobby Reid. The second story referred to Navy head coach Paul Johnson challenging an unnamed fan (and indirectly the reporter who asked the question) to come to his house and talk football, or find one instance in the past four years where Johnson praised his coaching ability when the team won. If someone could do that, he would kiss the person’s butt at city dock.
With the overzealousness of both coaches at their individual press conferences, it’s easy to see why Forde would be upset with what both gentlemen did. Gundy spent a considerable amount of time ripping into the columnist instead of praising his team in beating a tough Texas Tech team. Johnson got a little graphic when trying to deflect the thought that when Navy wins he pats himself on the back and when they lose he blames the kids. Throughout the column, Forde brings up several good points including the double-edged sword of praising and criticizing a player in the media, calling out coaches who claim they don’t read or listen to the local media (trust me, they do), and asking for a little more professionalism from coaches in a public forum such as a scheduled press conference. The problem with Forde’s criticism is while he makes some very valid points, the company he is working for (ESPN) is making what Forde is criticizing perfectly acceptable.
In it’s 28 years of existence, ESPN has turned the sound bite or the incredible piece of video footage into a sportscasting art form. When it comes to coaches losing their top, ESPN has seen its fair share of antics. And I know this because ESPN KEEPS SHOWING THESE ANTICS OVER AND OVER AGAIN! Whether it’s former Dallas Cowboys‘ coach Bill Parcells leaving a press conference regarding Terrell Owens in a huff, former Indianapolis Colts‘ head coach Jim Mora snarkingly screaming, “PLAYOFFS?!?” when his team was in a tailspin several years ago, or Tampa Bay Lightning head coach John Tortorella claiming the idea one of his defensemen purposely injured the opposition’s defensemen as, “BULLS–T!”, ESPN doesn’t mind showing an expletive-laden press conference when one comes along. And it’s not just press conferences.
Sometimes, a coach just melts down, like Asheville Tourists manager Joe Mikulik did in 2006, or Mississippi Braves manager Phillip Wellman did in 2007. Hal McRae has thrown telephones, Lou Piniella has launched bases, and even the usually even-tempered Roger Nielson once through a stick on the ice because he didn’t like a penalty called against his Philadelphia Flyers. The grand master of all meltdowns is Bobby Knight, who could single-handedly have an ESPN show devoted just to his blowups in the 40 years he has coached college basketball. As big of a sports fan as I am, I didn’t just think up of these legendary mental lapses in judgment– I saw them on ESPN (or other sports highlight shows and networks to be fair to ESPN).
But in today’s culture, and really since the early 1990s, showing these meltdowns as “highlights” only adds to the problem. The videos have never been shown to teach someone a lesson, or to get the idea across that “this is a bad idea folks”. Instead they were lampooned and laughed at, and we the viewers laughed along. Along with the coaches going bananas we were treated to football players doing silly end zone dances, bench-clearing brawls in baseball, and wackier attempts at dunking a basketball in the NBA and NCAA. With the endless looping of these “highlights” the idea of showing how a team won or lost a game has turned into how one guy said, “LOOK AT ME!” louder than anyone else in the game. ESPN is not the only guilty party in this issue, but it has certainly led the way the past 15 or 20 years. And if anyone doubts me, please remember ESPN once put together a Top 10 video list of the biggest coaching meltdowns for crying out loud.
Whether or not you agree with Forde is not the issue here. The issue is Forde is panning something ESPN profits on. More outrageous moments in sports, especially in a controlled environment like a press conferences, equals higher ratings which leads to higher ad revenue. In the crystal-clean Disney World ESPN lives in, it actually pays to be nasty. And in a world like that, a guy like Forde needs to realize he falling on a double-edged sword when he tells coaches to behave better in public.
One of the few network TV shows I’m looking forward to is a FOX creation called “Back to You” starring Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton. My main interest in the show comes from wondering if it will be based on true stories or situations from TV news rooms, much like “Frasier” and “WKRP in Cincinnati” had some truth to the hilarious plot lines. Whether the show is actually funny and entertaining is yet to be seen though, as some people are hoping this sit-com can save the sit-com genre.
In an interesting article at Forbes.com, “Back to You” producer Christopher Lloyd (no relation to the actor) lays out why sit-coms have suffered in the ratings and in the general interest of the public over the past few years. Lloyd hits one component of this fall from grace right on the head: sit-coms became cookie-cutter shows in the late 90s and early part of this decade. Thanks to the success of NBC’s “Friends” and “Seinfeld”, and ABC’s “The Drew Carey Show” in the mid 90s, the stereotypical loser main character and his/her friends would sit around a coffee house/diner/bar and complain about their lives. One or two wacky jokes or plot twists would make the 22-minute shows entertaining and ratings winners for years. Then came the impostors: “Caroline in the City”, “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place”, and the rather forgettable “It’s Like, You Know…”. Add to the fact that numerous sit-coms earlier this decade featured role players spun off from hit comedies (Jason Alexander, Michael Richards, Matt LeBlanc) the sit-com over-saturation was bound to collapse as the TV drama experienced a revival (CSI, Cold Case, the various spin-offs of “Law & Order”).
But it goes much deeper than just over-saturation, and Lloyd hints at this point here. It all comes down to great writing and character development. “Friends”, “Seinfeld”, and “The Drew Carey Show” all featured distinctly (and no exactly stereotypical) different personalities in situations you or I have been in before (or know of someone who has been in that situation). While the situation may have turned out differently for us in the real world, on TV it either comes out all good in the end or leaves us hanging for the next episode or next season.
Lloyd points out that the “new comedy” approaches of single-camera TV isn’t necessarily the answer to the problem, and he’s right. While comedy shows such as “My Name is Earl” or “The Office” feature a different style of comedy, it still comes down to writing and character development. We all know someone like Jason Lee’s Earl character, or his ex-wife Joy played by Jaime Pressly. We also all work with someone like Steve Carell’s character Michael or Rainn Wilson’s Dwight on “The Office”. Humor and personalities we can relate to is a winner. That’s why shows like CBS‘ “Everybody Loves Raymond” and ABC’s “According to Jim” hung around so long.
I can’t say if “Back to You” will be a hit, or the default “savior” of network comedies, but the writers of the show and other new comedies can take a lesson from current hit network comedy shows and from history. I already mentioned “Earl” and “The Office”, but even “The Simpsons”, “Family Guy”, and more and more “American Dad” manage to make the audience laugh, think, and feel despite the fact they are adult cartoons. And the sit-com has been through this routine before. Everyone thought it was dead in the early 90s when the success of “The Cosby Show”, “Family Ties”, and “Growing Pains” led to a glut of feel-good family-friendly shows. But with “Friends” especially, and the maturity of “Seinfeld” and the quirkiness of “The Drew Carey Show”, network sit-coms were refreshed with new ideas that were vastly different from the kid-tested, mother-approved programs of the 80s.
With a few new ideas in 2007 and 2008, the sit-com can be revived simply because in times like these America needs a good laugh.
