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DirecTV Ad Uses Farley and Spade from ‘Tommy Boy’
You may have already seen the above television commercial for DirecTV (big fan and customer, hiiiiieee!) during some of your own television-watching, but if you haven’t take a look. When you first see Chris Farley back on your TV, it’s a little off-putting, maybe shocking, maybe just slightly surprising. But then you realize, oh!, it’s just one of those clever DirecTV ads where actors and actresses revive one of their classic movie roles to advertise for the satellite television provider. No big thang! Apparently, using a scene from a film with one of the deceased stars is not okay with some people. David Spade, Farley’s close friend and frequent co-star, has received a lot of backlash for participating in the ad campaign. Reports from Gawker and the Inquisitr accuse Spade and DirecTV of sullying Farley’s memory by trotting clips of his films out in an effort to profit off of his memory, the commercial is in poor taste and so on. Spade told People magazine, “The movie is important to me, and I would hate to offend [anyone] because that's one of my favorite things I've ever done. So, I would apologize to someone who took it that way.” I admit that I was shocked when I first saw the commercial, but mostly just at the fact that Chris Farley was on my TV again and I wasn’t watching Black Sheep on Comedy Central! I think this ad campaign from DirecTV is wonderful and entertaining (I thought that long before this Tommy Boy ad). I mean, it doesn’t involve cavemen or geckos so it’s a winner in my book. Do I think it’s weird and awkward to see a dead man advertising a company that was just starting out when he died? Sure. Do I think Spade and the DirecTV ad execs sat around a table drinking champagne plotting how to make money off of Spade’s dead friend? Certainly not.
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The Miley-Leaves-Twitter Aftermath Still Reigns
This is real. I repeat: This is real.* The aftermath of Miley Cyrus quitting social networking site Twitter is still going strong! One creepily zealous Miley Cyrus fan has decided to sacrifice her pet—and by “sacrifice,” I mean cook and eat her cat, Fuzzy—if Miley Cyrus does not give in to her demands and rejoin Twitter by November 16. Otherwise, and this is a direct quote from the website, “Fuzzy will part with his life and become a meal.” Look, I can’t even begin to describe the crazy that is going on here. It is imperative that you visit the Miley Save Fuzzy website yourself to read the entirety of this chick’s tirade on why she needs Miley to come back to Twitter and what she will do if Miley does not. Seriously. You will either laugh forever or call PETA. Either way, you need to know this is the kind of world we live in. For realz.
*Note: Obviously, it would be 1. a huge relief and 2. hilarious if this turns out to be an elaborate internet prank. But the girl specifically states, “This is NOT a prank or a hoax. I am not joking, even if some will choose to interpret it that way. Cooking a cat is not illegal in my country, in fact it's part of our culture. I'm not asking for money or any other benefit. Fuzzy is my cat and I will not entertain any offers of selling or giving him away. If Miley doesn't tweet again, this WILL happen, and I'm as serious as a heart attack.” For Fuzzy’s sake, I am taking her word for it.
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BBC Wants to Make Their Shows Available Internationally
When I started reading this article from the Telegraph, which starts out by stating that the British Broadcasting Company is developing a plan to make their television programs available on the internet for non-UK viewers via a global iPlayer, I was pleased. It’s about time TV stopped being held in by geographical borders! And then I continued reading. BBC wants to charge for this service, which is fine and makes total sense (read: not a Hulu situation) considering the fact that British cable companies and advertisers cannot profit from international viewers. I can definitely see people, especially those living in countries that do not develop a lot of original programming, signing up for a subscription service to use this BBC iPlayer to watch programs in real time rather than waiting the months or years it typically takes to get UK programs in their own countries. Then I read even further: “Executives say that global audiences would be prepared to pay $10 for an episode of hit programs like Torchwood, the Doctor Who spin-off starring John Barrowman.”* Um, NO, Executives, no they would not!!! Nowhere on this planet will you ever find anyone who would be willing to pay more than $1.99 to download a single episode of a television program and even those people would be unwilling to pay even that much just to STREAM one episode of a television program! You have to be out of your fucking minds!!! And what a perfect segue into our next WTF item…*Note: That sentence from the article refers to this direct quote from a Mr. Luke Bradley Jones, who leads digital operations in the US for BBC Worldwideand serves as the managing director of BBC.com: “Millions of people love Torchwood and would probably pay 10 bucks an episode rather than two bucks.”
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The Hulu Debate Goes On
Last week, some sound bytes hit the wire from a Deputy Chairman at News Corps during a conference in which he discussed the prospect that Hulu will start charging for its services as early as 2010. Now, anonymous “Hulu insiders” are running to leak information to the media to calm the internet TV watching public’s fears. In the wee hours of yesterday morning, I came across this article from Entertainment Weekly that states, “Contrary to widespread web reports, the wildly popular TV and movies streaming website Hulu is not planning to start charging for all its content — although you would certainly be forgiven for thinking so.” First, the reason people, especially those who read EW.com, should be forgiven for thinking so is because EW.com published an article that said rather definitively that Hulu will start charging in 2010 and then added shadily, “some content will probably continue to be offered free of charge,” which completely twists the actual statement from Deputy Chairman Carey published at B&C: “Carey says that while throwing up a pay-wall around all content is not the answer, it doesn’t mean there wont be fees for some specially-created content and TV previews.” The vagueness of EW’s reporting aside, I am here to say that these anonymous insiders are neither calming nor aggravating me anymore than I was last week. I have a pretty good idea of what will happen to Hulu eventually. I’m confident that most television shows from the Big Four networks and even some big players from the cable networks will still be free—at least for a limited time (it might be smart to only offer currently airing season episodes for free for a limited time and then make them subscribers-only after a certain point). And this morning when I was streaming Legend of the Seeker from Netflix, I got to thinking how nice it is to stream something without commercials. There are definitely reasons to pay for a subscription to a site like Hulu, but this game is turning into an internet versus cable face-off. If people have to pay to watch TV on their televisions and online, then that forces them to chose one method of viewing. The average consumer is smart enough to avoid double-dipping as blatant as that. If Hulu and its competitors want to move toward this model of charging for their unique online content like exclusive clips and what not, great! I never watch that stuff anyway. If they want to charge to watch shows from premium channels like Dexter and True Blood and charge less than it costs to actually get those channels with your cable package, super! Plenty of people would be into that. But if they ever think they will get people to pay for basic cable shows as they air, they are out of their minds.
And THAT was the Week in WTF!
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