Word: plugged
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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WHAT WERE those hokey dancing taco-and-bell doing on the premiere of Dana Carvey's new comedy show two weeks ago--was this a plug or a parody of lead sponsor Taco Bell? It was hard to tell as the fast-food duo sang, "We're paying him a fortune to use our name, 'cause he's a shameless whore...
...fact, this was an odd TV moment when parody and plug became one. The Taco Bell Dana Carvey Show was intended to be an ironic resurrection of 1950s-style brand-name TV shows like The Lux Video Theatre or The U.S. Steel Hour. The deal originally struck between ABC and Pepsico, Taco Bell's parent company, was that each week a different member of the Pepsi family would serve as "both title and target" for Carvey's wry satire, positioning the sponsor as quite the cool dude for rope-a-doping a few edgy punches...
...writers, actors and producers who must do their sponsors' bidding feel used? Not necessarily. Carvey says the parody- as-plug idea was his. "It was just kind of boring to call it The Dana Carvey Show," he says. "The idea came off of sports shows like the Doritos Cotton Bowl." Actually, it was the Mobil Cotton Bowl, so maybe in-show product placement isn't as effective as advertisers hope. At any rate, Carvey isn't quite the "whore" his show alleges. Though Pepsico pays ABC extra for the special treatment, "if they were paying me more, I wouldn...
...which costs less than $500, plugs into your television set for you to use as a monitor. It probably won't include a hard drive either; instead, it will plug into your telephone line and connect you directly to the Internet...
Look for NCs from several vendors to hit the market around Christmas 1996. But if you want to plug a computer into your television set, don't waste your money on one. I'd recommend you drag out your old Commodore 64 instead...