Chicago -
By Julia Gray
Advertisers paid a total of $260 million for ad space during the Super Bowl XLIII and I’m wondering if we got the best Madison Avenue could give. Here are the ones – both good and bad – that I found most memorable.
1. Bud Light (Meeting)
Comment: I’d like to fire this commercial and toss it out of a window.
Grade: F
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Posted on February 2, 2009
By Steve Rhodes
Rod Blagojevich is about to be convicted in the state senate and thrown out of office, but his PR gambit is paying off in the arena of public opinion because he’s found a cohort stupider than state legislators: the national media. Excerpts, with commentary. First Greta Van Susteren, then Rachel Maddow.
On The Record with Greta Van Susteren
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, you and I actually agree on that. I mean, I’m a lawyer, you’re a lawyer, and I think that everyone should be able to present his or her defense, calling witnesses, not partial tapes, but complete tapes. And so you and I are on the same page on that. But as a practical matter, you’re in a heap of trouble. You know, any time you’ve got the possibility of an indictment breathing down your neck, you got trouble.
COMMENT: C’mon, Greta! If you made an impeachment a criminal trial it would be a criminal trial. Not only that, but it would undoubtedly harm the criminal case; you can’t have potential witnesses in the criminal trial brought down to Springfield to testify in an impeachment proceeding, nor preview the full tapes for the defense – especially when the criminal trial is ongoing and witnesses are still coming in to the feds. Besides that, the impeachment is based on a lot more than the most recent criminal allegations.
Posted on January 28, 2009
By Steve Rhodes
Now we know how easy it must have been for the Bush administration to sell its war to the national media. Watching them try to get their heads around the Rod Blagojevich story – following their dismal failure in doing simple research on Roland Burris’s peculiar and controversial background – has been nothing short of mind-boggling. For starters, will someone please send out a memo informing our illustrious pundits that an investigation of the governor has been going on for years and allegedly trying to sell Barack Obama’s senate seat is really just the least of it? This is about so much more. People are in jail. You’d think that after a two-year presidential campaign in which Tony Rezko’s name at least came up briefly, before being swatted away by a media cohort that chose to think more pleasant thoughts than the facts forced upon them, would at least have learned that the now-imprisoned Rezko threatened to taint Obama because of the same investigation into state government that has now snared the governor. The wiretaps and children’s hospital and Tribune editorial writer – this is the frosting on the cake. The cake itself will be huge; multi-layered. And the impeachment proceedings, likewise, are not just about the governor’s behavior these last few months. It’s about an accumulation of behavior – abuses of power large and small – that finally reached a state of intolerability. This means you, Geraldo. Do your homework. You too, Whoopi.
Posted on January 27, 2009
By Scott Buckner
I missed presidential history as it unfolded live during my workday Tuesday, so I had to catch up with it 12 hours later courtesy of ABC-TV affiliate WLS-TV/Channel 7 while attending the inaugural Jagermeister Ball at my neighborhood dive bar. Near as I could decipher from my notes this morning, here are a few things I noticed:
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While everyone else spent their entire Tuesday basking in the historic moment thinking incredibly profound thoughts, I couldn’t help but think of the highly amusing scene in the film Little Big Man where that fine American Indian actor Chief Dan George goes to the mountaintop to scream at Death and wait to die, only to discover that The Grim Reaper is either too busy to fight an old Indian, or is just plain deaf.
Posted on January 21, 2009
By Kathryn Ware
Our look back on the debut season of Ironside continues.
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Special Note: This installment of our Ironside Episode Guide is dedicated to the memory of Don Galloway (Detective Ed Brown), who died January 8th at the age of 71.
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Episode: A Very Cool Hot Car
Airdate: 30 November 1967
Plot: Years ago, when I saw Spinal Tap for the first time and laughed my head off at the song (Listen (shhhhh) to the) Flower People, I had no idea there was a hippie faction that actually called themselves the Flower People. And according to this episode of Ironside, they also named themselves after flowers and dressed like rejects from Willy Wonka’s candy factory. But how many of them were trafficking in stolen cars?
Guest stars: Bernie Hamilton (Capt. Dobey on Starsky and Hutch), Arch Johnson, and J. C. Flippen.
Posted on January 13, 2009
By The Beachwood Ad Affairs Desk
What a 30-second spot cost on 10 randomly chosen TV shows in 2008, according to data from Ad Age.
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Show: America’s Funniest Home Videos
Cost: $90,044
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Show: 30 Rock
Cost: $104,178
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Show: CSI: Miami
Cost: $182,101
Posted on January 5, 2009
By The Beachwood Warm Holiday Feelings Affairs Desk
1. The Lost Ending
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Posted on December 24, 2008
By Kathryn Ware
Our look back on the debut season of Ironside continues.
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Episode: The Man Who Believed
Airdate: 23 November 1967
Plot: A Twiggy-esque folk singer’s body is found floating under the Golden Gate Bridge and her death is quickly ruled a suicide. Ironside refuses to believe that world-famous songbird Samantha Dain would take her own life. He insists on increasing the San Francisco homicide rate by one when he overrules the coroner and cracks opens a murder investigation. His reasoning? One heartfelt anti-suicide get well card sent to him by said victim when he was recovering from the gunshot wound that landed him in his wheelchair. Nope, Ironside is certain his pen pal didn’t take a “200-hundred-foot shortcut into the bay” – she must have been pushed! And Iron-tuition is never wrong.
Posted on December 19, 2008
By Scott Buckner
I had a few things on my plate just before lunchtime Friday morning, but I ended up putting them aside when – like I was able to put them aside early Monday morning – I was drawn to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s expansive news conference surrounding her decision to ask the state’s supreme court to keep Gov. Rod Blagojevich from doing state business out of the back seat of his SUV until his lawyers prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Sunshine didn’t wake up all pissy one morning and decide to fuck a children’s hospital out of $8 million.
I have no doubt the governor needs to have his loose screws tightened if he thinks he can run a state when his phone has become as useful as a banana in his ear. At this point, I don’t care whether Lisa Madigan or Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn might be capitalizing on Mr. Sunshine’s misfortune to further their own public service careers. Given the governor’s conduct and job performance even before this pay-to-play business arose, there are less reliable coat racks than those two to hang our hats on.
Posted on December 15, 2008
By Scott Buckner
All in all, there are worse ways to spend a Saturday night than watching Svengoolie on WCIU-TV/Channel 26. Being pinned under a car that’s fallen off a bumper jack is one. Having your legs chewed off by a shark is another. Last Saturday night’s feature presentation of the 1960 film Brides of Dracula came pretty close though, because as it turns out, Brides of Dracula is perhaps one of the most boring, plodding horror movies ever invented. Movies like this might have inspired ABC to create the afternoon goth/vampire soap opera Dark Shadows in 1966, but as feature films go, this is the sort of horror-movie mess you get when you let the British go wild with sophisticated movie-making equipment.
Posted on December 12, 2008
