I originally posted this as a comment to Dougal's "Commercial Preference" idea, which I thought was great. Taking it further, I am suggesting a new cable network - the Commercial Channel. It would be free/low cost to cable operators since advertisers would pay to have their commercials on the network. In return, not only would they get the "eyeballs" watching their adverts, but valuable Nielson data. I know that people already pay to watch old commercials - at the Museum of TV and Radio in NYC, an extremely popular feature is the ability to call up any old TV show or commercial. I finally got to see the famous Apple Computer "1984" commercial, and that alone was worth my $10 admission fee.
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One of my favorite shows of the year is when they broadcast the year's best commercials. (Arsenio Hall was the host last year.) The only propblem was that the commercials dring this show were terrible!
The website http://www.adcritic.com/ is a great place to see the world's best spots. I must have watched John West's "Bear Fight" 20 times. A must see if you haven't caught it. adcritic.com is now a paid site but you can see Bear Fight else for free at www.pocketmovies.net
As much as I like to turn off commercials, I think this would be an interesting idea. (Didn't Nick at Night show "vintage" commercials at some point during breaks?) Some ideas for how to implement:
Continuous Theme Blocks - The Mother in Law, the Newborn, parodies, etc.
A Year in Commercials
A product throughout the ages
Celebrities in commercials (domestic and international)
Crazy Japanese commercials
Election year - Candidates spots throughout their career, all spots from one candidate
Name that Ad game show
Viacom already has experience with getting paid to play ads (videos on MTV), the precedent is (sort of) already there.
Along this lines, how about a dedicated TV channel with movie previews, i.e. prelease and oldies?
I was going to post this idea myself. With the following variations.
1. Fundementally DESIGNED for use with TIVO and other PVR's - i.e. "shows" which are one or more commercials which you would actually be able have TIVO record (i.e. "classic ads"; "funny ads"; "international ads" etc.
2. Run a mix of ads, both current campaigns and "classic" ads (such as Apple's 1984.
3. Run some ads (and all Public Service ads) for FREE - i.e. build up interesting content, run historic ads etc.
4. Run POLITICAL ads (watching legal rules), but imagine the pop that being able to TIVO for "all the presidential candidate ads" might give this channel in the upcoming year.
5. Run ads of vary lengths, all the way up to "infomercials" (but don't forget that TIVO is the intended user, so ads will probably watched time-shifted, which "breaks" many infomercials that have a "call now" portion.
I love commercials and think this would be a good idea. To the person who suggested movie preview shows, there is already a 30 minute show on INHD, a high definition channel that does just that. I think the medium is extremely underappreciated as a viable creative form.
here in the philippines, wherein network companies make profits through sponsorship of the advertisements they have... if there comes a time that a commercial channel would be established... poor philippines!!! more companies (specially network companies) will stop operations. and in the context of filipino lifes wherein we love to wath the tv!!! whoa!!! we don't want it to happen... this is why i am proposing the basic ways of advertising... let us all go back to the 'word of mouth' type of advertising. here in the philippines, it is still very much practiced, and i mean it. it depends on the creativity of the speaker if he or she is able to convince the consumers. one more thing is that it's not costly... you won't be paying any advertising company and airing time to different channels.
One never knows what will work. I personally would not watch or advertise on such a network. But then I never watch any of these shopping networks on tv either.