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As part of the massive marketing effort to promote to Baz Luhrmann’s new flick Australia, the Nine Network has been running a series of line-ups and idents themed around the movie. The odd combination of an epic film, and a line up featuring Two and a Half Men doesn’t exactly make sense, but very little does on Nine.
The Panics featured on Ugly Betty.
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At 6:29pm tonight Freeview came to Australia. The new digital platform (aka marketing ploy) launched across the five free to air networks in an effort to band together and promote the benefits of digital terrestrial television.
The Freeview concept has been a strong part of the digital take up in the UK since its launch in 2002, with New Zealand following with a similar campaign in 2007.
I’m sure Australia’s equivalent of Penelope Keith will be spruiking set top boxes and multi channel goodness to a confused public in no time.
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Ninety second promo for the BBC’s latest batch of new drama. Featuring the likes of Survivors, Little Dorrit, Spooks, Einstein and Eddington, Consuming Passion, Apparitions, Wallander and In Love with Barbara.
All set to the Elbow’s tune “One Day Like This”.
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Shot using 200 cameras, and costing £3 million, this new commercial from Toshiba employs a new filming technique dubbed “timesculpture“, an evolution of the “bullet time” method made famous by The Matrix.
Like any good ident, I like a commercial to be elaborate, ambitious, and just a little bit pointless. Toshiba ticks all the boxes with this new ad, and while clearly a play to get the kind of buzz generated by the brilliant Sony Bravia commercials, this spot is a notable effort, and reminded me that Toshiba actually made televisions.
And although I’ve suddenly find myself in the market for a TV, I’m not sure it will be a Toshiba yet. That said, I started drinking Schweppes after this amazing commercial, so maybe I’m more susceptible to advertising then I thought.
The ABC announces its line up for 2009, including a new season of the Chaser.
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The occasionally highest rating news service in Australia, the Nine News (formerly National Nine News) got a visual refresh this month.
Unfortunately the new look is huge step down from previous incarnations, with superfluous lines flying everywhere and ever classy solar flares, accompanied by a confusing combination of orange and blue, its less flagship-news-bulletin and more lifestyle-travel-show.
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Long time morning television rivals Sunrise and Today will face new competition from Monday morning, with the much anticipated launch of ABC News Breakfast.
The new service fronted by Virginia Trioli and Barrie Cassidy (formerly Peter Lloyd) will run weekdays between 6-9am on ABC2. With the resources, and the reputation of the ABC behind this new program, its likely to carve out an audience under whelmed by the commercial networks offerings.
It should also do wonders for the publics increasing recognition of ABC2 as a distinctly separate offering to ABC1, with the recent Paralympics also helping the networks impressive audience growth.
All this of course showing that one thing, and one thing only is going to drive the take up of digital in Australia: content!