January 24, 2012
The potential blackout of the Super Bowl on DirecTV in Boston has got lawmakers fretting and dashing off letters. Both U.S. senators from Massachusetts, Scott Brown (R) and John Kerry (D), concerned that their constituents have become collateral damage in a business negotiation, sent letters to DirecTV and Sunbeam Television. The state's 10 congressmen also sent a letter.
In the letters, lawmakers urge the two companies to put aside their differences and clear the Super Bowl...
January 19, 2012
History is placing a big wager on the Super Bowl, plunking down millions for a 30-second spot in the NFL’s showcase game.
The high-flying cable network will air a promo for the unscripted series Swamp People, which returns for a third season on Thursday, Feb. 9. Per Nielsen live-plus-seven-day ratings data, Season 2 of Swamp People averaged 4.95 million...
May 8, 2011
Sumner Redstone isn’t exactly a giddy man, but this week one could detect an unmistakable ring of joy in the media mogul’s voice as he introduced his network TV chief.
Kicking off CBS Corp.’s first-quarter earnings call, the Viacom chairman made a glowing reference to the CBS president and CEO. “Let’s hear from my good friend, a man I rightfully and faithfully call a genius, Les Moonves,” Redstone said.
Moonves was characteristically...
March 1, 2011
(The Season 12 Dancing With the Stars cast in an ABC photo by Adam Larkey.)With only two weeks left in The Bachelor, we know another...
February 7, 2011
Departing The Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels appeared in ads for GoDaddy that aired during the Super Bowl last night, as did Celebrity Apprentice winner Joan Rivers. Like most of the company's ads that objectify women for absolutely no reason at all except to be edgy and drive traffic to its web site, the ads featured both women partially naked--and Joan Rivers insists that the body in the ad was her own, not a model's....
Fox's fall singing competition The X Factor will award its winner a $5 million record deal with Simon Cowell and Sony Music's Syco, a prize Fox calls "the largest guaranteed prize in television history."
NBC's Treasure Hunters gave away $3 million, but it was $1 million per person and also given as an annuity, which is how America's Got Talent...
February 6, 2011
Former American Idol judge Simon Cowell has been absent from TV for less than a year, but in this Super Bowl ad that aired during the third quarter, he gets reassembled to the tune of "O Fortuna."
A lot of the pieces that fly through the air in the ad are Xs, because this is a commercial for the fall debut of The X Factor, but I'm not sure what the metaphor is. Maybe that Fox is a mess without Simon, who is a super-human Terminator-like being who can...
February 4, 2011
January 26, 2011
- The Super Bowl is a shoot-out between the NFL's two best teams, but only slightly more than half of the game's viewers will be watching for the football, according to a new report from Lightspeed Research, a unit of WPP's Kantar.
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