TVSquad

Apparently the folks at Giant magazine have a lot of time on their hands. After last week's feature on what they thought were the 50 "greatest" commercials of the eighties got a big response, they decided to dig up 50 more commercials from that era and list them along with embedded YouTube videos of each.

Again, this list suffers from the same problems last week's did: their definitions of "greatest" and "eighties" are a little loose. In fact, two of the ads on the first page, for Lifecall ("I've fallen and I can't get up!") and Encyclopedia Britannica, were both from the nineties (the Britannica ad even clearly displays a 1991 copyright date... pretty sloppy, Giant!). But the main complaint I have is that not all the ads are worthy of the name "greatest." For instance: of all the Miler Lite ads to chose, they chose an obscure one with... Joe Piscopo?

ABC has decided that their streaming video experiment from this past spring was so successful that they are going to continue it this fall. Of course, they're going to make a few little tweaks first. The player will be improved a bit, and there will be a few more commercials during each show than there were in the spring. But the biggest change is that the network has decided to shrink will be the time window in which each episode of a series will be available for four weeks (some episodes during the initial two-month trial were available for that entire time period). Episodes will become available just after they air.

Desparate Housewives and Lost will be available, just as they were last spring. There will be additional shows added, but the network hasn't announed yet what they will be. But the number will be more than the four that were offered in the spring. Any guesses?