TVSquad

Advertisers are starting to bail on the controversial CBS drama Swingtown.

This is predictable, if a little confusing. What exactly did the advertisers think they were sponsoring? (In the case of Dannon Yogurt, actually no - they just bought rotating advertising on CBS and didn't know when their ads would appear.) When they were told the show was about swapping, did they think it was recipes? And isn't the show on at 10 PM and come with a warning at the beginning? Proctor & Gamble won't advertise on the show at all.

Let's do a little "Whatever happened to..."

Commercials can be a really strong jump start for memories and nostalgia. In fact, I think they can sometimes trigger a certain feeling in us even more than TV shows because they were repeated 700 times when we kids and we remember them strongly, even though we don't see them any longer.

After the jump we catch up with three classic commercial icons from the 80s. One famous for swinging a hammer, one famous for getting confronted by his dad, and one famous for fishing.

Our pals over at AOL have a fun new list up featuring their picks for the Top 25 ad icons of all time. As with any list, you can debate the results. I'll not spoil the list for you, but my pick was bumped all the way down to number nine. I bring it up here for two reasons. First, it's a fun trip down memory lane watching all of the old commercials. Seeing a young David Naughton singing and dancing about Dr. Pepper, or David Leisure pitching for Isuzu, is certainly a better use of your time than anything your boss had planned for today.

More importantly, given that this is Buffy week, a familiar face pops up on the list -- it's the one and only Anthony Stewart Head. If you're not of the Hanna Montana generation, you probably recall the series of spots for Nescafe from years gone by. They featured an ongoing story about a couple, Head and Sharon Maughan, tracing their relationship. It had all the classic bits. There was another woman, jobs getting in the way of their courtship, and even a Three's Company-style misunderstanding that gave him all the wrong ideas. In the end ... well, you can watch it all unfold, after the jump.

Have you ever noticed that men are often the butt of jokes on television? Whether it's the goofy, lazy husband on sitcoms or the incompetent, oversexed guy on TV commercials, men are often shown in a bad light (I know, I know, woman only make 70 cents for every $1.00 a man makes, but it's almost Father's Day so let's talk about this, OK?). AskMen.com has a list of the 10 worst male-bashing commercials on television.

TV viewers will remember the series of commercials that featured the animated law enforcement icon McGruff The Crime Dog, the ones that told us to "take a bite outta crime." He now has a blog.

Yup, the crime-solving (or crime-preventing) canine takes his paws and taps out blog entries for the kids to read, handing out advice about safety, health, and life in general. You can also read stories on how McGruff became a crime dog (he used to hang out at the local police station and listen to cop stories and asked cops how he could help - the cops said "what's a dog going to do to fight crime?" - I guess a talking dog was OK but a talking dog that fought crime was completely unrealistic) and play McGruff games.

Sure, we always talk about NBC, how they are usually fourth in the ratings and and they don't give shows a chance and they show Deal Or No Deal way too many times, but they are number one in one important area: selling ad time for this fall.

The network has already sold $1.9 billion (yes, that's with a B, as in Bionic Woman) of advance advertising sales for this fall's prime time schedule. And they did this even though they didn't do a regular upfront and didn't have pilots to show. That's $100 million more than they did last year.

The relationship between the viewer and the network is one that requires a delicate balance. As the numbers for DVR penetration continue to climb, it's pretty clear that a great many of us are successfully dodging more and more commercial breaks. And the networks continue to push back, trying different things to get eyeballs on ads. Some are merely annoying. For instance, as much as I like both Kyra Sedgwick and The Closer, I'm annoyed every time Brenda walks out of the corner of my screen while I'm watching another show on TNT.

While that one is annoying, this latest adventure from TBS crosses a line. During an episode of Family Guy (video after the jump), Bill Engvall walks out on the screen, much like the Brenda spots for The Closer. The difference is that Bill holds up a remote and actually pauses the episode before heading into his pitch for his show. When he finishes, he unpauses the show, which runs for two more seconds before going to the regular commercial break. Please, if it's not too much trouble, strap on your sturdiest combat boots and join me in sending a theoretical kick to the crotch of anyone at TBS that didn't think this was the dumbest idea since starting everything at five minutes past the hour.

Back in 1987, the cast of M*A*S*H had a reunion featuring cast members from all eleven seasons of the show. Now, before you go searching the Internet for this show that you apparently missed, the reunion wasn't part of any television special. In reality, the reunion of eight of the shows ten main cast members was on a series of commercials for the new IBM PS/2.

You remember the PS/2, don't you? It was IBM's answer to take back the PC market from companies like Apple and Commodore. In order to get the word out about this breakthrough in personal computer technology, IBM scrapped the "Little Tramp" character they had been using since 1981 in favor of putting the M*A*S*H actors into a white-collar, corporate setting. About a half-dozen commercials were produced featuring Harry Morgan, Gary Burghoff, Loretta Swit, Wayne Rogers, Larry Linville, William Christopher, and Jamie Farr. Like in M*A*S*H, Harry Morgan was the boss, Burghoff was the assistant, and Linville was the guy no one really liked. Eventually, Alan Alda, who was under contract with Atari around that time, joined the ad campaign as well.

After the jump you'll see four commercials that were made to promote the PS/2.

One of the many problems facing broadcasters as we move into the future is the proliferation of DVRs and their fantastic ability to allow people to blow right through all of those bill paying commercials. In the continuing effort to thwart quick fingered viewers, networks are turning to live commercials.

The idea being that the live commercial offers something different enough that it will be worth your time, while your 300th viewing of Cisco welcoming you to the human network no longer even registers. The New York Times has a good article on how this latest incarnation of what is a very old idea is being implemented. They talk about spots that Kimmel and Leno have done and also give a peak at Spike's plans for a live three-minute game show that would run during commercial breaks.

Invented a new product that you'd like to pitch to millions of sports fans? Think you could pack all your thoughts into one second? Got a hundred thousand dollars kicking around?

Didn't think so.

According to Reuters, NBC (they're airing Super Bowl XLIII in Jan. '09) is expected to announce that the starting rate for a 30-second spot during the big game will be $3 million. Wow. That factors out to a hundred grand per second. Last year's going rate was a mere $2.7 million.

While I'm sure this comes as no surprise (I mean, c'mon - the rates jump every year, don't they?) to the big companies known for their Super Bowl commercials (think Budweiser, Coke, Pepsi, Fed Ex, etc.), it still makes you wonder how some of these smaller random companies can afford it. Every year there's some new Internet start-up you've never heard of and they'll end up having one of the most talked about commercials - like GoDaddy.com from a few years ago. It just seems like a real gamble. Rather than put all of your footballs in one field (eggs in a basket, get it?), I would think that spreading your money over numerous smaller ad campaigns would make more sense.