I noticed this more and more now a days, but a lot of these promo for shows suck totally.

take for example the latest Fox plug for the O.C. they have the song by Junior Senior playing in the back ground and though I dislike the turning of an ad to a music video, I can understand how it works as a marketing device. But these are some totally miss used sounds and video clips. It seems that the promo department now a days sucks. Another ad for Pirates of the Craibbean (Sp) plugging the movie.. and the ride at the magic kingdom(disneyland and disneyworld) was awful. So.. have you folks notice any bad plugging lately?

I thought the combination of a pirate film mixed with the tasty goodness of fast food burgers was marketing genius. When I think of pirates, the first thing that comes to mind is burgers.

Promo departments suck. You could probably tie the failure of countless television shows to their marketing campaigns. It's no wonder so many great shows have a hard time building an audience. Prime offenders last season had to be NBC's promotion of The West Wing and UPN's promotion of Buffy. I think The West Wing is the best series on broadcast network television, and even I was dreading some of those episodes after the previews. Of course, the episodes proved to be nothing like the preview, so all was good, but it seems stupid to so repeatedly mislead your audience.

ESPN's promotional department is so annoying I probably won't even watch Playmakers, and if I do (who am I kidding), I'll be expecting to hate it. They do this with all their stuff. The promos for Season on the Brink and The Junction Boys made me lose all interest in the content by the time it actually aired.

The Alias promotion is annoying ("double oh-yeah"), but I guess I can see what they're trying to do over there, so I won't fault them too much for it.

Overall, if I depended on these promos for any indication of the quality of a series, I'd likely never watch anything.

das

I'll have to agree with Alias. I've watched more then my fair number of shows, but only after using a "time shift" law to bypass all the ad's in order to enjoy it since the promo's I've seen just made it out to be a Bay watch turned spy.

Simply awful marketing campaigns in most of these shows.

"Hey, lets put this current hot song in the background of random clips not in any order of this show and hopefully people will watch us"

Don't forget NMCs horrible eR ads. The worse promo I have seen to date are the stupid Tomb Raider 2 commercials for things other than the movie, I do not think they actually made a promo for the movie by itself.

TR2? you mean those jeep ad's?

"People actually fly!"

TR2 has the most idiotic tagline I've ever seen in a TV ad.

D

UPN has always been bad. I remember one preview for Voyager where it looked like Janeway became a whore to save her crew. The actual episode was nothing like that, but they in actual fact, made a preview where it looks like that.

Yeah, UPN really does a number on those Enterprise promos. The promo makes it look like the episode is going to completely suck, but in reality the episode completely sucks ... but in a much different way.

das

Yes the promos suck badly. No one has bashed WB so I'll chime in that whoever puts together the promotion for Gilmore Girls just screws everything up. I actually started to think they don't actually watch the show before putting the commercials together. It could be worse though: every show could have 24's promotion department which spoils the entire freaking episode in their commercials!

To answer the original question, I can't say they've gotten worse. I can't remember a time when promos were generally good. Usually it's reviews, the cast, or the time slot that gets me to watch a show for the first time.

Ack they all suck most times, I never tune in to see the what happens next week on ER or whatever.

But watching MI-5 on A&E is terrible as each time they go to commercial they are showing you clips of what happens in the rest of the episode. I am watching the show, I am not going away, it is good enough and I have enough attention span to sit through it.

FOX is the worst at advertising. They advertise the worst jokes from Simpsons episodes and spoil the big twist of every 24 episode.

F/X has begun running promos for "The Shield" season 3. Only problem is that they're exactly the same as the ones for Season 2. Well, they are slightly different: some random guy comes in and dubs the word "THREE" every time they said "TWO" a year ago.

I just hope I can get to McDonalds in time for a Big Mac before the PIRATES EAT THEM ALL!

ARe you kidding me, they now have promos DURING the shows. NBC and FOX are the worst offenders. remember the promos for race to the alter and the bride and groom racing across your screen as someone on fear factor grosses out on some pig innards? I don't know which is worse.

OK, well I will give you that. The crap at the bottom of the screen must go. I didn't think those were what we were talking about. E! and Spike do this all the time. I hadn't noticed it on the networks because I haven't been watching them too much in the Summer. I quit watching Fear Factor this season as they continued to try to top themselves in the gross-out department.

FX is awful with the lower third advertisements.