“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.
Sorry to serial comment, but….
Someone out there who knows the TV biz (unfortunately I don’t) should start a ZUCKER DEATH WATCH web site. I suggest a running tally of the number of days NBC has been in last place, under his tenure. A fun web site for all!!
Add a news article every time he blames Apple, Jobs, or some other entity (writers guild?) for his woes…
…just tells me I need flash 9 eventhough I hav it. A week ago I was able to watch heroes, but not anymore. Not that I can sit through a whole episode at once anyway.
?\”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.”
‘Nuff Said.
Not to mention that videos on NBC sites are available in North America only. I tried to watch the SNL iPhone snippet and all I got was…. the advertisement. Yes, they played the advertisement and then showed a message saying the video was not available from my location. How stupid and malicious can corporations behave, before they get what they deserve?
SNL is nearly as bad as it’s ever been.
1) Maybe three, at most four, of the cast members should be there. The rest should be fired, and they need to find much better replacements.
2) Make the show into an hour. Get rid of those horrible “music” acts by getting rid of the music act section of the show. Lots of people go channel surfing when those come on.
3) Run a laugh meter during the show, and start firing writers when the sketches they write routinely fall below average on the laugh meter.
4) Stop bringing on sports stars and anchormen to host the show. Whenever they bring in a non-actor, I just roll my eyes and brace for a bad show.
NBC sucks… their a bunch of liberels. I hate liberels. If Al gore lived in my house I would knock him up and make him wash the dishes all day. I would be like smell this green house gas out of my butt Al!! Now go wash dishes.
Yeah, way to go, Steel Fart. You are obviously a Southern Conservative. Welcome to the brotherho-what? Why are the dogs barking? Steel is really a lib? He seemed so real….
oops: “2) Make the show into an hour. Get rid of those horrible “music” acts by getting rid of the music act section of the show. Lots of people go channel surfing when those come on.”
====================
Well, they did have Spoon on the other week, so the acts aren’t all bad. Quite a few are though.
MAD TV is much better than SNL
Pulling video clips of your shows from places like YouTube is pretty much like trying to generate a word of mouth marketing campaign by cutting out people’s tongues.
Stupidity doesn’t even begin to describe the intellect prowess of network suits.
Let’s start a poll.
Who’s dumber, network TV or music execs?