Despite another dreadful season, the Knicks want to prove they still have plenty of diehard support, by showing 30-second TV spots featuring fans talking about their devotion to the team.
Apparently the Knicks couldn’t find enough devotees, so they ended up using actors.
The NEW YORK POST reports that the team sought the services an agency called Impossible Casting to dig up faces for their ads. Agency owner Craig Lechner said that MSG gave him “explicit orders to seek actors, as long as they weren’t SAG members or recognizable character players.”
One of the knock-off Knicks fans described his experience.
The NFL is seeing red over movie theaters showing Green Bay’s playoff game this Saturday.
The MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL reports that the league has sent cease-and-desist letters to three Wisconsin cinemas over their plans to put the Packers on their big screens.
The NFL argues that the theaters showing the game are violating copyright law. One movie house - the Fox Bay Cinema Grill in suburban Milwaukee - has already conceded to cancel their showing. However, the two other theaters in question - the Rivoli in Lacrosse & the Majestic in Madison - say they haven’t received any letters from the league.
And owners of the Rivoli say their presentation will go on as planned.
Did a Dallas Mavericks TV commentator drop an f-bomb during a recent game?
Above is video of Brad Davis possibly mentioning a naughty word while calling the Mavs’ Dec. 28 home game against the Atlanta Hawks.The audio is a little garbled, but what could make out sounds like a possible FCC fine in the making, as picked up in progress:
After releasing a YouTube video and making statements through lawyers, Roger Clemens finally met with the media to discuss accusations of his steroids use.
The Rocket held a press conference Monday to talk about Brian McNamee and his allegations of shooting up the baseball star with illegal drugs. Clemens even took time to play an audiotape of the phone call he had with McNamee on Friday.And Roger had some angry words for his ex-trainer.
NBC really lucked out on this one. The network somehow found someone who is a human chemistry set (in our opinion) while still somehow retaining fully functioning reproductive organs. Eureka!
PATS-GIANTS TV COMMERCIAL SPOTS GOING FOR $200,000: As the 2007 Patriots pursue perfection, ad sellers for New England broadcasts are pursuing higher profits:
MEDIAWEEK reports that TV commercial spots for the Dec. 29 Pats-Giants game are going for $200,000 per 30-second space - more than double the normal asking price.However, the Pats’ possible clinching of a 16-0 season will be airing on the NFL Network - a channel many households don’t receive.
So, is it really such a shrewd investment by companies like IBM, Miller, Universal, and others to shell out such dough for ads no one will see?
WARRIORS WINS HELPING HIKE HAWAII’S HDTV DEMAND: High Definition TV sales in Hawaii have hit the roof, thanks to the success of the Warriors’ football fortunes:
The HONOLULU ADVERTISER tunes in news that the demand for HDTV by Hawaiians has tripled since Colt Brennan & crew started chalking up wins this season. Fans have been flooding Best Buys to bring home a big screen TV to watch their Warriors.In fact, demand has been so high, that the state’s cable provider Oceanic Time Warner has run out of HD boxes. But a Time Warner VP says not to worry, as 5,000 to 6,000 new boxes are scheduled to hit the shore this week.
Hankerings for HDTV in Hawaii is expected to remain high up until the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day, when UH is set to face Georgia.But after January 1, what’s there to watch in Waikiki? Well, there’s always season DVDs of “Hawaii Five-0″, or Elvis Presley’s “Aloha From Hawaii” TV special.
And who could forget that exciting two-part episode of “The Brady Bunch” when the family heads for Hawaii, and Bobby uncovers an evil Tiki doll?Now that’s good TV - made even better by HD!
COMMERCIALS DELETE DOLPHINS TD FROM L.A. VIEWERS: The Dolphins won’t be joining the 1976 Buccaneers in the record books, as Miami won for the first time this season, thanks to a 64-yard touchdown in OT.
Too bad TV viewers in L.A. didn’t get to see it.As we watched on a SoCal set on Sunday, the Jaguars had just smacked the Steelers, when CBS switched over to the Miami-Baltimore matchup. Within a few plays, the Ravens were already in field goal range.
As Matt Stover lined up to kick the Fins to another loss, play-by-play man Kevin Harlan mentioned on-air that the Baltimore booter had never missed in overtime.
As you would expect, Stover’s shot sailed to the left. After the miss, CBS’ coverage went back to their New York studios, then quickly on to a commercial break.When we were returned to the action, there wasn’t any action left. Instead, the first thing we saw was a graphic reading “Miami 22, Batlimore 16, Final-OT”, followed by slo-mo replays of Cleo Lemon’s TD pass to Greg Camarillo.
(What CBS viewers in L.A. missed)
We didn’t even get to witness the Dolphins’ game-winning, misery-ending play live. Amusingly, it’s not even the first time the network missed a final game-clinching play in order to collect ad revenue.In 1986, CBS was broadcasting Notre Dame rallying from a 37-20 deficit to USC. When it came time for John Carney to attempt the winning field goal, the Eye was shut on the Coliseum, as they took a commercial break instead. Like Dolphins viewers in L.A., fans didn’t see the final kick live.
Even though NBC has the ‘Heidi game‘ to their discredit, at least the Peacock only made such a programming mistake once.• Back to the Bucs, it turned out to be a historic day for Tampa Bay, after all. During Tampa’s 37-3 declawing of the Petrino-less Falcons, Micheal Spurlock ran back a kickoff for a TD - for the first time in the franchise’s 31-year history.
And it only took 1,865 tries by 141 different players to finally make it to the end zone.
Although there’s no question about the great runback, there seems to be debate about the correct spelling of Spurlock’s first name.
On the Buccaneers’ official website, #17 is listed on the roster as “Micheal” Spurlock:
But when a click on the name takes visitors to the player’s personal page, he’s now known as “Michael” Spurlock:
We’ll take the roster’s word for it, since the personal page’s designer seems to also have trouble spelling “Mississippi”.
