Networks Add New Meaning to Ad Nauseam

Television audiences have become inured over the years to the notion that commercials are the price they pay for the free entertainment that beams into their homes daily.

As broadcasters find their once-unique franchise diluted by new technologies, however, viewers find commercials intruding into the very programs themselves, with on-air promotion for other network shows growing increasingly desperate and occasionally shrill--determined to make an impression before viewers can zap elsewhere.

Virtually every TV set in the United States (94% at last tally) is now accompanied by a remote control, and the average home receives almost four dozen channels. That combination has compelled programmers to try grabbing people wherever and however they can.

For the networks, this amounts to a delicate balancing act, if one that’s often handled indelicately. ABC brought the art to a distasteful low last week by running a “Storm Watch” crawl across the screen during its Wednesday comedies as a last-minute plug for the miniseries “Storm of the Century,” a miscalculated ploy that distracted viewers and rightfully irked the producers of those programs.

While that marked a breach in promotional etiquette, the networks have danced up to this line for years, including UPN’s use of on-screen “Dilbert” images in the middle of programs, which preceded ABC’s “Storm” strategy. If those promos failed to generate equal furor, it’s only because one current acronym translation of UPN would be Under Public Notice.

If the networks have become more aggressive in prime time, the most annoying invasions of advertising continue to occur within sporting events.

Promos spring up like weeds during every tiny break in the action, filling the screen between plays. Announcers punctuate sentences by urging viewers to tune in that night. Even when the cameras pan the crowds, anorexic-looking actresses from shows on the host network are conveniently in the line of fire, munching on hot dogs in the stands.

NBC has frequently led the charge in terms of creative and sometimes clever marketing approaches, including its well-conceived, now ubiquitous strategy of seamlessly switching from one show to the next while running promos next to the credits.

Still, NBC has also been prone to various excesses, such as a misleading on-air ad last month for the drama “Providence,” one that so selectively quoted critic Tom Shales as to make a brutally negative review sound like a rave.

More recently, NBC heralded George Clooney’s final “ER” appearance (at least as a series regular) as an event of “the heavens are parting” magnitude. Even the show’s producers are said to have fretted about whether the buildup would prompt an unavoidable backlash in the episode’s aftermath, making people perceive the program to be more diminished than it is by Clooney’s absence.

John Miller, NBC’s executive vice president of advertising, promotion and event programming, acknowledged that the challenge posed by increased competition, declining ratings and a trigger-happy public has made networks view every second of on-air time as precious, but he stressed there are limits.

“You use whatever tricks you can . . . [but] I don’t think there’s ever been a time when we’ve invaded the integrity of a show,” he said. “We’ve gone up to that line.”

What no one can answer, at this juncture, is where “the line” is drawn in terms of the public. At what point do people grow sick of hearing football play-by-play man Pat Summerall wax poetic between plays over that night’s “The Simpsons” (has Pat Summerall actually ever watched the show?) or weary of “Monday Night Football’s” Al Michaels and Boomer Esiason banter about the next night’s “Spin City.”

“There is a [point] where you piss people off,” noted Vince Manze, NBC’s senior vice president of advertising and promotion.

Ads Keep Creeping Into Programming

If people aren’t angry yet, rest assured, the encroachment of advertising spots into every cranny of programming will only get worse. Fees for major events such as the Super Bowl and Olympics keep soaring higher at the same time the ability to regularly amass such huge audiences has become increasingly rare, making those showcases ever more valuable.

In addition, the tendrils of huge corporations now reach into every aspect of the entertainment business. If Fox’s Rupert Murdoch can find a way to promote diverse assets--the Dodgers, “Ally McBeal” and the next “Star Wars” movie simultaneously--don’t expect a love for the game, commitment to art or a guilty conscience to impede him.

According to NBC’s Miller, the public does ultimately have a say in all this. If enough people made clear they were turned off by seeing an ad for “The ‘60s” between free throws during the Lakers game, the network would respond.

“If sports got some adverse comments they would pull back very quickly,” he said, insisting such complaints seldom arise.

In similar fashion, the networks defend the manner in which they advertise series, walking the line between trying to draw people in and over-hyping what a program will deliver that week.

“You always want to try to get the most you can out of every episode,” Miller said, regarding the latest “ER.” “We wanted to make it seem important, but we didn’t want to make it seem like the show ends here.”

Fox, in a recent two-part “The X-Files” and, for that matter, the feature film based on the show, certainly appeared to overstate how much would be revealed about the program’s arcane “mythology” episodes--pledging “full disclosure” regarding the conspiracy surrounding extraterrestrial invaders.

Such tactics have grown common during the heat of the battle, the crush for that extra tenth of a rating point that allows executives to crow when the rating sweeps are over. Slip a promo or two between the sneeze and the gesundheit. Insist people must watch this week’s episode of “Dawson’s Creek” or the world will end as we know it.

Actually, the sky may indeed be gradually tumbling down upon network television as we know it, and the understandable desire its trustees harbor to preserve its past helps explain the clawing being done for every last viewer. Yet amid the constant din this creates, can anyone even hear what all the shouting is about?