Pontiac chooses TV movie to market cars
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We love to see aging stars bought off. Remember when Michael Jackson paid “friend” Marlon Brando an estimated $1 million just to appear in his “You Rock My World” video? Now we can add Dennis Hopper to the list, who headlined Pontiac’s 84-minute commercial airing tonight at 8 on USA.
The Last Ride, a car-chase TV-movie produced specifically to highlight Pontiac’s line of cars, was never billed as anything but a marketing deal, admits the network. The New York Times says the plot is actually decent, to match the acting – it’s just the awkward prevalence of an entire line of GM cars that makes the film stand out as a sell out.
But Virginia Heffernan makes the layman’s mistake of claiming advertising seeping into television is a recent phenomenon. Sure, American Idol may be making love to AT&T and Fear Factor may perhaps be taking it in the ass from NetZero, but way back when the term “soap opera” was coined, it was indeed marketers and not network producers calling the shots on the set. Unilever’s wallet funded the programs that became so popular we now have an entire channel – Soap Net – for them.
If we’re going to be forced to watch full-fledged advertisements as entertainment, however, American audiences deserve something thrilling like The Last Ride and not a show with dramatic long pauses before a commercial break.
Jossip
