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By Root 918 0

into programming snippets. In addition to original programming, CBS has original “Innertube” content on its Web site, and in the past year some of Saturday Night Live’s most popular skits were viewed by more people on YouTube, the NBC site, and other viral outlets than when they originally aired. For AMC’s popular Mad Men drama about Madison Avenue admen of the early 1960s, the network cut a deal in which Jack Daniel’s whiskey is integrated into the lives of the booze-loving characters as well as into commercial breaks. For the 2008 season MTV Networks is wooing advertisers with a series of “Podbusting” short films that resemble content but are actually commercials, as well as a screen-within-screen technique that will allow viewers to stay tuned to shows like its popular TRL broadcast.

Fine ideas all, but not the game changers that the industry needs. In fact, much of the networks’ added-value promotional efforts to date feel more like one-off, desperate gimmicks than like a new economic model that will save the networks and the advertisers that sponsor them.

Some people will tell you that TV is dead and the future is digital, but really, what does that mean? Saying today that the future of TV entertainment and advertising will be digital is the equivalent of saying in 1907 that the future of entertainment will be all about electricity.

What genre of digital? Based on what creative and economic model? Who will make it, who will pay for it, and who will reap the benefits?

Despite the preponderance of emerging entertainment options, people still really like to watch television (to the tune of 8.7 hours a day in the average household, up from the previous year, according to August 2007 Nielsen numbers), but given a choice, they do not like ads with their television (DVR ownership is doubling every six months). And every day it is becoming far easier for people to avoid having to watch ads on TV.

Because of and despite all of the above, it has become increasingly fashionable to talk about the death of the thirty-second spot. Sure, audience numbers are continuing to go down, and online media are getting an increasing share of advertising budgets. But dead?

The Death of the Thirty-Second Spot (A Media-Neutral Dream)

This is how I imagine it will go down. Just before dawn they will kick open the door to Thirty-Second Spot’s subterranean Madison Avenue holding cell and jerk him to his feet. “And now a final word from our sponsors,” one of his executioners—let’s say it’s TiVo—will mock. And then another—the Nielsen Box? the Webisode?—will sneer, “Let’s go, old-timer: it’s time to make the donuts.”

Then they will shackle Thirty-Second Spot’s once-lavish production values, put a black hood over his mandatory product shot, and lead him by his call to action out into the silent canyon of Madison Avenue. As they hustle the media legend toward a carriage drawn by the Budweiser Clydesdales, high above the street iconic advertising creations will press their maudlin caricatures against the dusty windows of the great agencies that Thirty-Second Spot made famous. “Don’t cry, Mr. Whipple.” “Chins up, Keebler Elves.” “Jumping won’t solve anything, Crash Test Dummies.”

They finally tracked him down on the day after the Super Bowl, unshaven and disheveled in the large-screen-TV section of Circuit City, repeatedly humming the once-ubiquitous Alka-Seltzer jingle, “Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz,” waiting for a commercial break that would never come. Technically, he had been on the run since an unconvincing Upfront Week with the networks in May, followed by an absolutely miserable showing in the November sweeps that not even commercials embedded in storylines, a show inspired by, of all things, cavemen from an insurance company commercial, or a humiliating series of teasers that directed viewers to “the good stuff on the Web” could help.

Of course, industry leaders and shepherds of the world’s leading brands will come forward to make a final, halfhearted round of appeals. “Thirty-Second Spot is still a unique and viable marketing force,” they