It was nothing that we didn't already know: Dave's producer called up Jay's producer and asked if Jay would want to be in the spot. Jay said yes and the two recorded the ad in a super-secret shoot with Oprah last week.

Some have wondered what Leno could possibly have to gain from appearing in a spot for his soon-to-be rival (again). Tonight, Leno spun the ad as a very public move to clear the air of any leftover fog of Late Night War in advance of his move back to The Tonight Show:

I walk in and I see Dave, and he puts out his hand and we shake hands. And you know, whatever happened for the last 18 years disappeared. It was great to see my old friend again. It was wonderful—he was very gracious, we talked about the old days, we told some jokes... you know, it was really good to see him.

But if the Late Night Wars spectacular ratings boost are any guide, Leno should be throwing darts at a picture of Dave's face right about now.

In Undercover Boss, a CEO goes undercover in his own company to get the real scoop on how hard it is...to work for his own company. Last night's premiere featured Larry O'Donnell, COO of the thoroughly unglamorous, dirty, occasionally union-busting multibillion-dollar trash company Waste Management. Larry met many hardworking employees in heartstring-tugging situations, and was able to help them, by vowing to form a committee to address their concerns about their shitty jobs!

CONSIDER: In the olden days of television, companies would sponsor an entire block of programming—The Colgate Variety Hour, or whatever. In return for their name on the show and some in-show plugs, the audience got about an hour of entertainment content. THEN, the 30-second commercial reigned. In return for minutes-long blocks of commercial content, consumers got (more) minutes-long blocks of uninterrupted entertainment. THEN, Tivo came along. Many advertisers moved towards product placement—they paid to have their products and branding messages integrated into the shows themselves. The 30-second ads remained! So, in return for the same lengthy advertising breaks, consumers got a bit of advertorial-type entertainment content.

AND NOW, with the advent of Undercover Boss, we find we have come to a new stage in television: An entire prime-time show that is, in effect, an hour-long corporate public relations message, broadcast to a far larger audience than the corporation could ever hope to reach itself, courtesy of one of our nation's premiere television networks. Can you even begin to imagine the amount of money that an unsexy company like Waste Management, for chrissake, would have had to spend to buy an amount of media exposure equal to a full hour of prime time directly after the Super Bowl? It quite literally could not have been purchased with all the money in Waste Management's coffers! But, in exchange for what was no doubt hand-and-foot service from Waste Management's PR team in setting up logistics and tracking down appropriately engaging employees for the boss to interact with, CBS gives the company an advertainment opportunity unparalleled anywhere else on television. SO, The deal for you, the television viewer is now this: in return for sitting through lengthy blocks of ads, you are treated to one hour of a trash company's employee morale-boosting video, writ large.

Waste Management played it well: they had the boss admit some mistakes and act humble. Future participants should take notes. This is the best deal corporate America's gotten on CBS since the network dropped that 60 Minutes tobacco story. Don't fuck this up, guys.

What isn't there to enjoy about this?

Seeing as how Apple's commercial game is already far evolved over anything Google's got—this is a spoof of Google's "search stories" campaign—at the very least, they couldn't do too terribly by culling some inspiration, here. It perfectly captures any number of universal Google experiences: shadily searching out How-To information for things pre-established How-To information shouldn't necessarily exist for, the trial-and-error process of using Google and the various misspellings the rest of the world makes with you, the whimsical nature of search results Google will "guess" for you, and finally, the widespread use of Google to search patently innocuous information, which, essentially, is what the internet (and Google) is more or less for. It's witty, it's funny, it's topical, and most important: spot-on. Might as well embrace that shit.

We've cut out most of the boring parts; as Wonkette notes, the "absolute most terrifying" part comes toward the end, about 35 seconds into our video above, after the black fade. As you can see, the future of the nation's largest state may well be decided by actual furries.

When consumers click on the icon, a white "i" surrounded by a circle on a blue background, they will be taken to a page explaining how the advertiser uses their Web surfing history and demographic profile to send them certain ads.

It feels much better to put the responsibility for these on your shoulders.
[Copyranter. He's had this problem before.]

News from the world of "magazines!" Last year, magazines, in total, lost 1/4 of their ad pages. How bad is that? Mathematics tells us that were that to happen for four years, there would be no more magazines except Adbusters! We were going to make a nice chart with all these figures but we cannot afford the monies—and even we are doing better than magazines! Fear and gloom!


Former NYTer Vivian Schiller pipes up to defend Jon Landman from the posthumous assault of Gerald Boyd: " I offer this revision to Boyd's characterization: there is no man of GREATER decent and integrity than Jon Landman." See what she did there?


Just as you were getting unreasonably (sexually? Goodness) excited for a Ted Koppel comeback on ABC, Lloyd Grove says that the network is "cooling on the idea." If 100 Ted Koppel fans don't protest naked in front of the ABC offices soon, well, you'll have no one to blame but yourselves!


Variety is for sale. Maybe Nikki Finke will buy it.

UPDATE: Joe Revitte from Dollar Van Demos sent this note telling his side of the story.

Hello Mr. Nolan,

Thank you for the opportunity to respond. We would like to inform your readers the we are part of a community movement between independent creative artists and local Brooklyn businesses (Black Street Van Lines, Highbrid Outdoor and Dollar Van Demos plus others) whose collaboration results in the unique artistic expression on display. Rather than pursue out-of-reach dreams of major record deals and cable television broadcasts, we've all taken a step togerther with a major advertiser to bring this talent directly to a nationwide audience. We made it possible to cut out the middleman and we're proud of this achievement. For Dollar Van Demos, the deal has made it possible to continue its mission of making more Dollar Van Demos. And if any of your readers want to see what Joya Bravo and Wordspit are truly about, please visit their respective MySpace pages.

Best regards,
Joe Revitte
Dollar Van Demos

Google want to find billboards, posters, signs and any other areas that might be suitable for the hawking of free online poker or male enhancement or whatever. They will then link the area and replace the image for anyone who gives them enough money. Here's a paragraph from the patent application:

The link can be associated with a property owner, for example the property owner which owns the physical property portrayed. The link can alternatively be associated with an advertiser who placed the highest bid on the image recognized within the region of interest (e.g., poster, billboard, banner, etc.). Any portion of the geographic display image in which the region of interest is located can be selectable (e.g., hot-linked). For example, the image of the coffee shop can be hot-linked to an advertisement for the coffee shop.

Obviously, this throws up some interesting difficulties. Could a coffee shop owner buy the link to a rival's establishment and link it to negative reviews? Could a movie theater buy the space on a nearby movie theater's posters to outline the ways in which that theater sucks? Could adulterers have their homes linked to Flickr accounts filled with compromising pictures? We don't know. But it'll be fun to find out.