GM won't buy advertising time for 2009 Oscars: report

Source: Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. automaker General Motors Corp. has pulled out of its longtime sponsorship of the Academy Awards, one of the biggest annual events on broadcast television, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

The move, which comes amid a sharp downturn in automotive advertising on television, will leave Walt Disney Co.'s ABC without one of its biggest advertisers for Oscar night in February, the paper said.

The auto maker has long been one of the biggest spenders on the star-studded program, the paper said, adding that it paid out $13.5 million for advertising time on the broadcast this past February, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSN1738914620080818

---

now that's what I call a "trickle down" theory in action

To quote Bubba Sparxx:

"It's gettin' ugly, ugLY, UGLY up in here."

The Oscars are crap. They were fixed elections long before the Republicans learned how to do it. They certainly don't reliably award quality, and these days the stars and their movies get better exposure through the whoring magazines like Entertainment Weekly and suck-up shows like Entertainment Tonight.

The ratings on the Oscars have been declining, year after year, like all award shows. (You think the Oscars are bad, check out the Tony Awards; you may be the only person watching.)

Why GM paid money to allow the media megacorporations to pat each other's backs was a stupid idea to begin with. Maybe, with their future in doubt, GM finally started to get wise.

of the "new car season". The entire annual car cycle is tied to the fall television cycle.

Oscars = "new car launch"

which is then pimped through the football, and "new television" season. It's actually fairly obvious once you watch it.

GM cutting Oscar spending is huge. They aren't throwing money at the beginning of the season.

and edited within an inch of its life.

And no, I'm not the only one watching.

That is, I would if Broadway theater was doing anything good. The last good thing I heard of out of Broadway was <i>Assassins</i> and <i>Sweeney Todd.</i> Mostly, Broadway does revivals and imitations of Hollywood movies.

ON EDIT: But...the ratings of ALL award shows have been steadily dropping for the last 15 years. Oscars, Emmys, Tonys, Grammys, American Music Awards...the only thing keeping them on the air is that they show a few celebrities and they're cheap to broadcast. The networks don't have to pay those troublesome, cranky Jewish writers to produce drama when they have the "drama" of whether Britney Spears will pass out in the middle of an awards speech.

Dropping award show advertising makes perfect sense. It's putting advertising on advertising; as Triumph the Insultingly Unfunny Dog says, it's like putting poop on poop.

Of course, this means cutting out the self-congratulatory hand-job tribute numbers that take up more time than the actual award presentations.

In truth, the televised show could probably be completed in 1 hour to 90 minutes when you consider that the majority of viewers are only interested in the big awards which are the best actor/actress, best supporting actor/actress, best director and best picture plus a few production awards (costuming, set design, special effects).

As it is, the viewers have learned that you can tune in at the beginning to get the supporting awards and turn off the show until the last 30 to 40 minutes to catch the remaining glamour awards.

This goes for all of the other industry award productions as well.

I'm watching the local chain department stores ad-spend themselves out of existence. They have no choice but to keep printing flyers trying to lure people in, but the advertising is killing them all quicker.

I think that will turn the company around.

When they cut back on major advertising. They are trying to reach out to the People Magazine and ET watching crowd who follow every major movie star gossip.

If they cut back on NFL and MLB Playoff ads then we really need to pay attention.

They once made an EV which they only leased. They refused to sell them, then at the end of the leases, they crushed them. See "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

Meanwhile, my Saturn still gets 38mpg on the freeway and 32 around town. 211,000 miles and it looks and runs like new.

Thanks for helping support the UAW. Not.

How "progressive" of you.

What's good for GM is good for America.

I'm not sure what to make of that, but it seemed somehow pithy.

An evening of vacuous television going underfunded!

I'm sure "The Clapper" will fill in any gaps.

yet another award and GM wont be supporting it. Maybe GM should use that money to pay their workers instead.

I know people. This will happen.

SOOOOO Who still does not think this is class warfare....

There are still a bizillion farmable acres in America
There are still blue skys and purple mountains....

SO WHY ARE WE ALL GETTING POORER..... someone must be getting RICHER.....

.........oh look......... A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WITH A DOZEN HOUSES.......

skip the wedge issues.... the GOP would love us to Hillary/Obama divide..... or Gay/Straight divide..... or OWN A GUN divide......

..................ANYTHING DIVIDE...... so long as the WEALTHY GET MORE

ABC slapped on the wrist.

Not by GM, but through the consequences of their own sucking.

Trading the EV-1 for the Hummer killed it.

And don't want to kill the planet - probably based in Beijing, Tokyo or Seoul.

Detroit has been trying to kill off the US auto industry for 40 yrs. This is just the final death spasm.

and Beijing and Tokyo in the same sentence. You forgot about 15 sarcasm tags on there.

they should stay employed in a poorly run, short-sighted company that is out-managed by its competitors.

Business is business, no one deserves anything. Even a well run company with a superior product isn't guaranteed success in the marketplace. Surely a poorly run company that sells products nobody wants anymore should be shown the door.

And worry endlessly over the workers' plight have ever had a UAW union card?

I did. So have my father & my sister, and my brother still does today - and he's on the verge of losing his job right now.

Like the old saying goes: We didn't leave the company; the company left us. I've seen my jobs go to Mexico and the Philippines and China - then have the company complain about the quality of the work they get from those places. Union busting is company policy - anything they can do to cripple & destroy the UAW they will do. Like it or not GM has the blood of its workers on its hands. There's absolutely no reason to defend them for anything at any level.

Of course they would NEVER EVER DREAM of bringing back work here. And it's not because of the workers *really* being paid too much, or the local & state govt *really* taxing them too much, or the unions *really* being too powerful. That's all just corporate propaganda.

I've seen factories go silent due to deliberate mismanagement by GM. They allow them to decay; to become old, unproductive & unprofitable (they claim) - then they hit the union up for concessions to "pay" for upgrades. They pit one factory against another for a particular contract, and give it not the most efficient, most profitable or most modern - but to the one with the weakest union.

GM is failing because of an unAmerican and undemocratic corporate mindset that denigrates work.

and wow do my peeps have a different take on it than yours.

The Volt should be the real deal. I guess you just don't care about the 100's or 1000's of people that will lose their jobs or the fact that this will pretty much destroy unions in this country for a century.

I guess all those families and cities whose very existence depends on GM are just collateral damage in your way of thinking, huh?

Come visit Flint Michigan some time, and see what the progressive fashion statement mentality has done to actual people.

Hummers are buggy whips.

GM killed itself when it decided to sink it's billions into developing & marketing that & other monster SUVs rather than efficient hybrids & electrics. They could have INVESTED in Flint and made billions & ensured the future of America as a leading industrial giant in the world. Instead they closed it down.

Another movie you should look at is "Roger & Me".

and yet people swarm to their products like an iphone that can't connect to 3G. GM is invested in multiple technologies. The real problem lies in the fact that people are unwilling to pay a premium on any vehicle for hard working union labor. A few dollars means more than supporting an American company.

It's easy to talk the talk about supporting the working people, blah blah blah. But actually supporting UAW workers by purchasing what they build - hem, haw, umm, too bad. Buggy whips and survival of the fittest and all that, right?

Meanwhile Red State America keeps putting its money where its mouth is. Kinda ironic, isn't it? The progressives are the reactionaries, and the reactionaries are the progressives.

I see this disconnect here all the time. :eyes:

STELLA: I got a nose for trouble. Can smell it ten miles away. You heard of that market crash in "29? I predicted that.

L.B. JEFFRIES: Just how did you do that, Stella?

STELLA: Oh, simple. I was nursing a director of General Motors. "Kidney ailment," they said. "Nerves," I said. Then I asked myself, 'What's General Motors got to be nervous about?" "Overproduction," I says. "Collapse." When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country's ready to let go.

if it's still in business by the time those ads air.

GM is, contrary to popular belief, primarily a finance company rather than a vehicle manufacturer. And it just so happens to have an incredibly high level of exposure to just the kind of loans which are most likely to go into default.

So there is indeed an open question as to whether it will survive to Oscar time in 2009. I bet it will... but only due to a government intervention. Either way it will be in no position to buy prime ad space.

All this doom and gloom talk about how GM will not be in bussiness withen a couple years is bugging the shit out of me. Despite not selling real well here in the state, they're still selling real good in other countries. Currently they are improving their products ALOT as of lately and they are working hard on the Cehvy Volt.

It's due to the fact that they are mainly a financial institution, one that is holding a huge amount of bad paper.