“For a simple comedy sketch, the Saturday Night Live takeoff on the new ‘black backdrop’ Apple iPhone ads carries an awful lot of corporate baggage,” Phillip Elmer-Dewitt reports for Fortune. “The bit aired Nov. 3 and the video was posted the next day on YouTube… But by Sunday afternoon, NBC Universal (GE) had scrubbed the free version off YouTube.”
MacDailyNews Note: The fake commercial focused on a husband who uses the iPhone to be unfaithful to his wife. He boasts of how the iPhone lets him zoom in and pinch the picture of the other woman’s butt, store her under another name in his address book and erase all evidence with a swipe. (Thanks to MacDailyNews “scg” for the synopsis.)
“If you want to see the SNL sketch today, you either have to go to hulu.com, NBC and News Corp.’s invitation-only (while in beta) answer to Apple’s iTunes Music Store, or visit the official SNL page on NBC’s corporate site. Either way, you must sit through a 15-second TV-style commercial before you get to the clip — a chilling vision of what the Internet would look like if it had been invented by the folks who run broadcast television,” Elmer-Dewitt reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Futilely attempting to pull it from view – yeah, that’ll help the ratings. The suits at NBC simply do not get it: show it widely, everywhere you can, you dummies. The more people who see it, the more chance you have to connect with people who actually think it’s funny and might then be more likely to tune into and even – gasp – buy your programs (via iTunes Store). (Plus, it’ll spring back up on YouTube and elsewhere within 10 seconds, anyway.)
Oh, yeah, yeah, we know, make ’em sit through ads at hulu and whatever other NBC ghetto/debacle you’ve concocted is what you think you want, but, as we’ve already explained, CEO Zucker and the rest of the NBC dinos in suits just don’t get it. They still think they need to control everything; that they need to program, and schedule, and broadcast one-way out to the masses. Those times are gone forever. Old, tired, backwards, wrongheaded, shortsighted, and just plain moronic thinking like Zucker’s will sink NBC even deeper into the muck at the bottom of the ratings barrel.
Hey, Jeff, give Anne Sweeney a call: she understands it perfectly. Maybe she could explain it to you, you big dummy.
Pass.
You know what is really funny? NBC’s ratings. I grew up watching SNL and have even downloaded a few best of episodes off of itunes. The past few years of SNL have been HORRIBLE, I can’t even make it through an entire sketch. This network is going down the tubes.
NBC SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!
I stopped watching ……
tell your advertisers wont you?
The sketch wasn’t funny at all. As evidenced by the lack of audience laughter.
we’re loud, uh huh, say it again
It was also a jailbroken iPhone
heh. At our house, the official SNL page on NBC’s corporate site plays the ad and then announces that the requested video isn’t available.
damn, I was gonna show that to 15 of my friends today.. guess I wont now…
It was an “ad”, they never have laughter, dumbass, they put them in one of the advertising slots after a skit but before they go to “real” ads.
Think before you write next time, ‘kay?
Well, little balls are to be expected when you have a pea cock….
MIght have been pulled also because it showed a jailbroken phone with installer.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/clips/nbc-hacked-iphone-video-318646.php
Thanks Anonymous!
I thought it was pretty funny.
NBC sucks, man!
I stopped watching when Cheers went off the air.
I agree SNL hasn’t been watchable for several years as I usually fast forward TIVO until the Updates (which have only been the funny parts, ironically)..
However, this weekends episode was actually NOT that bad. I wasn’t laughing out loud but it didn’t suck compared to how it did for the past few years…but I’m not holding my breath..
but the TV show “Lost” quickly fell off the iTunes top selling list when ABC, a Disney Company no less (Steve Jobs a major shareholder too) started airing the show for free (with advertisments of course) on their own site.
Steve Jobs said something to the effect that they would try video, not expecting it last long.
Only a dumfuck would write “‘kay?”
Tard.
NBC is desperate to be relevant (as is SNL), so anytime they finally, actually cough up something funny, it makes sense they would try to make eyeballs go through NBC channels to see it. Because, frankly, SNL seems to only be about 5% inspired, 95% dreck these days. Hardly must-see TV anymore.
This is the same idea behind Apple reserving their coolest stuff for the Apple stores- they want to generate foot traffic.
I’m reminded of Conspiracy Theory Rock. It was a Schoolhouse Rock spoof about media conglomeration and deregulation and how you never see any huge parent companies criticized in mainstream media… Oh, just go see it.
If I recall correctly, it aired on SNL during the live broadcast on the East Coast, but was pulled before the West Coast airing and banned forever.
Except, then the internet happened.
Okay, this speaks volumes: I decided what the heck, I’d like to see the SNL snippet, so I went to their home page and selected the iPhone clip to watch. Then I waited as the thing hung. So I reloaded the page, and it hung again. And a third time. So now I’m getting a bit POed, so I copy the URL, close the tab and try again, pasting the URL in. Nope. So I go back to the SNL home page and click the link again–ahh, this time it decides to work. After buffering for almost a minute (and I’m on a shared T-1 here!) it loads the ad, and then–finally!–the video itself. Only I discover that the audio is so low on the clip that I can’t hear it, even with my external speakers jacked all the way up.
So… 10 minutes of my life wasted trying to watch a stupid 45 second clip that I could’ve gotten off of youtube in about… well 45 seconds.
Gee, NBC, nice work there. I’m _very_ likely to return to your web site in the future.
Dumb, dumb, dumb!
MW: Music. As in, I wish I could hear it when I watched the clip!
SNL stopped being funny years ago – about the same time as they stopped having people with talent as regulars on the show.
It’s a complete waste of time.
Well, this coming from the 4th (and sometimes 5th) network in the ratings. And they pulled out of iTunes? Maybe one day they’ll see the err of their ways. Stupid fsckers.
And I watch SNL out of nostalgia, since the beginning in the 70s, and this is the worst, most unfunny year in history. I do have to say for those who saw Brian Williams show his funny bone last Saturday were treated to a funny host – he completely surprised me. But the material is lame.
Never mind that. NBC Universal sucks and so do most of their shows.
SNL is supposed to be comedy ? I thought it was just a bunch of overgrown high school kids trying to being mean to people they think deserve to be cut down to size in a pitiful, sophomoric way. It’s so hard to watch. Who’d pay for that anyway ?
A modern SNL video that might actually be funny? DEFINITELY don’t want that circulating around the net….
The 4th (by a mile) place network got double digit millions from iTunes… when most iPods (nanos) had no video. Which means they were probably on their way to a $100M business. Plus the promotional development for their shows of being available to tens of millions of portable players.
Well you can’t blame Apple for making you the last place network…