Please, No Skipping...

To learn something of interest in TV/Media, check out this article in Business Week about a new device that monitors which ads people skip and which they watch or at least absorb when using TiVO.

What has marketers scratching their heads is that so many of the winning campaigns are direct ads, like CORT's (Furniture Rentals). Ask execs at some top-flight creative agencies (who are responsible for some big-budget, glitzy Super Bowl ads), and they'll launch into the type of spin used by oil companies when they say more study is needed on global warming. (One exec asked me: "Do we know that this machine accounts for when people fast-forward but then rewind to watch the ad?") If there's one lesson learned from TiVo StopWatch, it's that relevancy outweighs creativity in TV commercials --- by a lot. The ads on the "least-fast-forwarded" list aren't funny, they aren't touching, and they aren't clever. And they don't have big budgets.

Before you know it, we're not only seeing shows set in the 50's (a la Mad Men), we're gonna see TV ads looking like the 50's again ('cept no one will be smoking, of course)...that's news, isn't it? (And that's only a line that could come from an ad exec).


And to kill some time, go peruse this list of the 100 Greatest Film Directors over at the Total Film website. 100-51 IS HERE; 50-1 HERE.

The entire list is a nice stroll down film school memory lane -- some bang on (Coppola in the top 5) and some big huh's? (Alan J Pakula way down at 93?!), with the top three being Spielberg, Scorcese, and of course Hitchcock takes the number one spot.

See if you can match the quote to the director:

a) “Growing up, I saw power exercised in two ways: the power of the church and the power of the street.”

b) "Some films are slices of life, mine are slices of cake.”

c) “I always like to think of the audience while I’m directing. Because I am the audience.”

Okay. Enough tomfoolery. Back to work.