Thursday, February 7, 2008

The Real Reason


In the interest of fairness, below you will find reprinted, an email I received from Mark Birmingham of MCV regarding the real reason they don't show commercials during the Superbowl and many other live sports broadcasts.

Bob Coldeen and Jim Barry also rang in to let me know what is going on. Some of you may not know and some of you may already understand the reason.

As both Bob and Mark point out, without the AFN feed, even though restricted, we would not have live sports coverage at all so they, I and probably you should be happy to have what we have.

Anyway, here it is from the horses's mouth:


Hafa Adai Bruce,
The reason you do not see SuperBowl ads, or any other national ads for that
matter, on AFN is because AFN does not show them. They substitute their
own Military commercials (you may have seen the start of some
inadvertently) and we are restricted from showing those commercials, so we
must cover it up with our own ads (preferable because we make money) or
"filler" ( just some filler stuff, logos, and stuff). The filler was a
static screen that said "Stay tuned for more Sports", but we wanted
something with a little bit more movement. Our Graphic Artist is always
looking for ideas, so if you have one let me know (Note: It cannot be
camera video due to certain issues, but we can do graphic motion, which we
do now.) The music is what is called "Music Bed" and is available for
free. I cannot tell you how much trouble we can get into if we start
putting Beyonce or Nickleback as the background. Unfortunately, Music Bed
is basically elevator music.
I wish we would sell more advertising and cover up the graphics with ads,
but you know how that is. Maybe when the economy improves a bit.
Mark

4 comments:

scubatripp said...

How much are they charging for supper bowl ad space for local commercials?

Seems to me at least in the beginning of the game these might be worth some companies getting into the game unless they are way off on what they charge.

By all the comments about having to watch the team logo graphics and elevator music it's obvious people are sitting in front of the TV so any commercial would probably be worth something even if it was low budget.

Bruce A. Bateman said...

Therein lies the problem, Mike. The charge is not bad, but the audience does not watch, in fact they shrink in revulsion (or boredom). No voice over is allowed and no video motion is possible so there is nothing but a silent slide with attention diverted elsewhere.

I'm sure they know the problems and are trying to correct.

glend558 said...

Bruce: I bitched endlessly about the terrible 'music' on MCV Sports and got a stupid story about copywrites...

4 comments:
Mark Birmingham said...
Hafa Adai,
We use basic music called "Music Bed" which is free music that can be used for purposes like this. If were were to use some Led Zep we would get in trouble with copywrite laws. Furthermore, you will not see (hear) any commericals run on MCV that have Music that might be considered copywrite. We could also get in trouble for just running the spot. We have had other music in the past (the drumbeat was especially unpopular so we removed it), but most of the music is like something you hear now.
Mark Birmingham
System Manager
MCV-CNMI
October 8, 2007 9:17 AM

There has got to be a way to play at the least a radio station like they do when they run their programming announcements. I just can't accept that this is the best they can offer. Oh well don't have to bother till next season. Guess thats the benifit of a monopoly, do whatever you want...

Brad Ruszala said...

"No voice over is allowed and no video motion is possible so there is nothing but a silent slide with attention diverted elsewhere."

not true. pti and budweiser aired commercials during the super bowl...