Remember when Tivo was going to be the death of TV advertising because you could edit out/fast forward through ad breaks? Tivo never really caught on in the UK but there’s an interesting new development in the US which I spotted on www.pvrblog.cm. Even if you fast forward through the ad break (or the programme, I assume), Tivo can superimpose a pop-up ad on your screen. It looks like this:

A writer on the blog says:

This morning, I started watching Ghostbusters 2 on Comedy Central and, as I always do, paused it for a while so I could FF through commercials. At the first commercial, I used my trusty FF button only to see an ad for The Interpreter smack dab in the middle of the screen. Seems Tivo has started placing ads on your TV when you FF or RW live TV. To me, this is quite obnoxious because it takes up most of the TV screen!

I have to agree. This does look like a particularly intrusive and annoying form of advertising. Malcolm White, my old chum and former Planning Director of Partners BDDH, likened this sort of approach to a skinhead battering on your front door. The advertiser is like a skinhead who belives that if he knocks on your door often enough and hard enough then you’ll open the door and welcome him in. The consumer just thinks, the more he knocks, the less likely I am to open the door.

This is going to be our ‘shop window’. We’re putting a glass wall here on the Hanbury Street side.

This is the first floor. The green rubber flooring has gone down but it was a bit gloomy today so you can’t really see the colour. It’s redolent of hospitals.

The second floor.

We never noticed this blue plaque above the caff next door until this morning.

According to the bbc.co.uk guide to comedy:

The Crazy Gang was a collection of zany comedians: three double acts – Jimmy Nervo and Teddy Knox, Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen, and Charlie Naughton and Jimmy Gold – and, perhaps the most comical of them all, ‘Monsewer’ Eddie Gray, a slapstick maestro and comedy juggler of the first order. The acts had enjoyed individual successes but together they were a comedy phenomenon, packing theatres and appearing in a number of films, starting in 1938 with Okay For Sound (director Marcel Varney). ‘Crazy’ was the right word for them: their antics combined verbal gymnastics with farce and elaborate physical comedy, and it all seemed totally unstructured – lunatic stream-of-consciousness complemented by custard pies. Off stage too they developed an infamous reputation as practical jokers, and played many pranks on one another and fellow guest stars; hoaxes that ranged from the harmless to the cruel and, on some occasions, the downright dangerous. The team remained hugely popular for many years, Flanagan in particular being adored by the British public.

Seems kind of appropriate that Wieden + Kennedy is moving in next door to the home of the leader of the Crazy Gang.