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Every year, I decided to skip the Oscars but end up watching them for lack of nothing to do. With the significant other away at a conference, all the more reason to lie sprawled on the sofa with a beer [others preferred 'Oscar-ized' martinis]. BongoPondit attempted and greatly succeeded in live-blogging the Oscars and I echoed one of his observations that the ads this year during the Oscars seemed pretty good; almost as good [or probably better] as the hyped Superbowl ads. Some of the notable ads were that of iPhone [video], Microsoft Vista ‘Wow’, Coca-Cola, American Express [video] and Loreal.
A lil Googling later, I found out that this was indeed a concerted effort by ABC. The TV network charged a record $1.5 million for a 30-second slot [as opposed to $2.3 million for the Superbowl]. However, the cost wasn’t the factor that caught my attention, it was the set of rules for kind of commercials that would be allowed. This was done apparently to ‘maintain standards’. For e.g.:
- No beer or alcohol products
- No female hygiene products
- No pharmaceutical ads especially those for erectile dysfunction.
- No car companies with the exception of Cadillac or even showing any other car in commercials for other products.
- No mention of Oscars or any other awards show or use of an Oscar nominee or presenter or mention or use of clips from nominated films. In fact, no movie ads were allowed.
These rules were set by the Academy and enforced by the network. Most of the rules I understood were to protect trademarks and copyrights. The decision to exempt beer companies was to avoid the gross and often physical humor ads that are associated with the product. However, I didn’t understand the restriction on female hygiene products considering women are more likely to watch the Oscars. It may have also cost the network quite a bit of revenue for enforcing the rules but frankly the end product was quite tasteful. I was actually sitting down to watch the ads instead of taking bathroom breaks which I did during Ellen’s charades.
Will the Oscars be the next stop for commercial lovers after the Super Bowl? We’ll see next year.
Technorati Tags: Oscars, television, ads, commericals, tasteful, Academy, ABC
by Patrix | on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 3:08 pm | 
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February 26th, 2007 at 3:19 pm reply
Beer and alcohol ban would be to uphold the supposedly ‘family’ values - whatever that mean ! I don’t get the restriction on female hygine products either ? Additionally I assume that people watching the show late night on Sunday would be mostly adults !
February 26th, 2007 at 4:21 pm reply
So a Cadillac is “tasteful” while any other car is not? Talk about elitism.
February 26th, 2007 at 6:24 pm reply
Bongo, I don’t suppose family values were at play here. Probably it was the assumption that beer ads are crass. But the ‘female hygiene’ ban was baffling. We usually don’t have the chup chup baithe ho jaroor koi baath hai type ads here.
Santosh, of course! The Oscars are elitist. They always have been :)