Seen the new Carl's Jr. ad?

[ShadOmega]

Not ones to shy away from pushing the envelope, Carl's Jr. has released an ad with the following message:

"In the battle of Waterloo, the French surrendered.
In the French-Prussian war, the French surrendered.
In World War II, well, the French surrendered.
Don't be a big chicken, eat one."

And they go on to describe their chicken sandwich...

I thought it was rather funny, being a not overly sensitive sort, but part of what I find so funny is the ridiculously brazen way they run their ads. It's the "hoo-boy are they gonna get complaints for this one!" factor.

Anyone seen this yet? What are your thoughts?

[Jeff]

Wow. That's definately different!

Right now, it's pretty safe to make fun of the French though, unfortunately. They'll probably get more business just for doing that

What the heck is Carl's Jr, by the way? I've never heard of the place/product.

[ShadOmega]

Za?!!

They don't have Carl's Jr. restuarants in the greater Cleveland area?!

It's a fast food chain. I thought it was third nationally behind BK and McD's. Maybe I was wrong...


*stunned*

[Jeff]

Weird.


I've lived in New York (Tri-state area) and Pennsylvania (middle of nowhere) as well, and I don't think I've ever seen one.


It amazes me how many restaurant chains there are out there that I barely know. I've seen one Jack-In-The-Box in my entire life, for example, and I just discovered Waffle House this year.

Incidentally, I'd be amazed if this place ranks above Wendy's, Arby's, and KFC/Taco Bell. They're pretty much everywhere, aren't they?

[ShadOmega]

We have two JITB's here, never heard of Waffle House, although we used to have an International House of Pancakes. I actually thought I'd heard it was bigger than Wendy's. I'm not sure if KFC was considered in the rankings. I had thought Carl's was everywhere... They're based out of Texas or someplace like that. Their ads for the last few years have pushed the envelope on level of disgustingness they can attain, showing people stuffing their faces, sauces dripping all over the place, lots of munching, chewing, slurping sounds... My station regularly receives complaints about their ads.

[Jeff]

I can imagine

So you're sort of the censor person for your local ABC station?

[ShadOmega]

Not supposed to be. At least not in that capacity. I oversee what's going out over the air and make sure that it's what paid to be on at that time. Really, I'm the one who puts it on the air as well, and I could censor stuff, but I'd get in trouble if I did. The people complain about commercials all the time, but if it paid to be on at that time, and isn't something blatantly against station policy, the money talks, and the viewers can squawk. We don't take down ads simply because they're tacky, no matter how many people don't like them. I can explain station operations more in detail if you can't follow what I mean. I tend to take for granted all of the exposure to the tv environment I've had over the past few years and forget that most people have no frame of reference to what I'm talking about. Silly me...

[Jeff]

Nah, I understood.

Sounds like a fun/incredibly unfun job all at the same time. How'd you fall into it?

[ShadOmega]

Gravity. Seriously.

I followed an ad at the local community college for Production Assistants at the local ABC station, put together a very ballsy resume with the assistance of college personnel, and managed to get hired in a couple of months. (the original position had already been filled, I came in with the next round of new hires)

I started with running teleprompter, and worked my way up through the various production positions before being sidetracked with editing video for the news department. That eventually progresses into news photography, which I was particularly good at, but doing photography for work sucks the fun right out of it, and after a little more than a year of that, I was pretty burned out on the whole "stuff the camera in somone's face and get them to say something intelligible that we can write a story around" aspect. Then an opening became available in Operations. Having a natural affinity with technical jobs, I looked into it and liked what I saw. Basically, I gravitated to it, and it gravitated to me. It is the best fitting job I've yet held, giving me the best of many aspects. My creativity and intuition come into play heavily when I have to figure out on the spot how to resolve any of numerous problems that can interfere with program transmission. My experience with customer relations from the news translates well into how I must deal with coworkers from all other departments in the way thier jobs relate to what we send out over the air, among other things. The fact that I am quite accustomed to dealing with stress and remaining functional, which I really honed down sharp in the editing role, has also helped quite a lot.

I have a trainee tonight, and as I started this message 3 hours ago, I'm finding that I'm too distracted to keep my train of thought on this, so I'll just send for now, and try to catch this up later.

[Jeff]

That's some gravity. Wow.

So where will the next promotion take you, or are you comfortable with where you are?

I just find this fascinating. No one ever really discusses this side of the business. I always kinda' wonder what's happening on the other end when a commercial suddenly cuts out right smack in the middle. You know someone's having a sh*t-fit out there, but you can't really put a face to it

[ShadOmega]

What I'm hoping for is a promotion within this department that allows me to primarily maintain the same funtions, only adding some responsibilities to reflect the increased position. There isn't a system of internal promotions in place for this department, so it takes some imagination and good pitching to make something like that take place around here. Otherwise you get stuck in the little yearly raise rut, and it takes forever to get anywhere. I certainly have no aversion to taking on additional responsibilities. Sometimes I have too little to do here to keep my attention as it is.

As to what happens when a commercial gets cut into right in the middle, it kinda depends on a number of factors. More than likely, where you live, you watch a Cleveland station, right? If that's the case, it's most likely that somebody programmed the automated playback system with a bad timing for their breaks. Most larger market stations are run off a computer that fires things off at prespecified times that an operator inputs, and then proofs. If they are given a bad time from the program producer/distributors (which happens more than you'd think) then they may intrude on a national break without realizing it in time. A typo could cause it if the times they were given actually were correct, but that's why they are supposed to proof the list, make sure all times were entered according to the timing sheet provided by whoever produced the program.
At smaller stations, things are run manually, and there are a whole host of errors that can occur due to the operator not being on his/her game. They may have looked down at the wrong time and missed their cue. If they're supposed to be covering network promos, say, and they missed when they were supposed to roll their paying local break, they will likely interrupt when they realize so they can get all of their payed clients to air, and then return to program a few seconds late. If they read the time wrong, they may barge in on a national break, thinking they were supposed to, in order to get their local payed spots on the air also. Or they may just be nervously waiting for their break to come up and accidentaly bump the switch to roll their break (like if it's their first time soloing at the switcher). If the board malfunctions, it could take off on its own, too. their are quite a few ways things can go awry, and what separates the good operators from the not so good is the ability to make things right in a tight situation without going nuts.

[Jeff]

Wow. I think we needed a Mr. Rogers episode on this while growing up. Screw the darn crayon factory, this is fascinating

[ShadOmega]

Boy wouldn't that have been an entertaining one! ;D

[Beaver99]

Oh my...never heard of Carls?! Gads....I always assumed they were a National Instutution.

Television operations are indeed fascinating....It's especially cool when Shad Omega provides me an opportunity to watch a news broadcast behind the scenes.

It's great to be back after a week's vacation! After reading episode 53, Optimus is starting to worry me:)

[ShadOmega]

Heh heh heh!

hmmm, too bad there's no evil grin smiley here. Oh well.

Hey, glad to hear you got back okay. Let me know if things work out for this weekend. Oh, and I'll have some work for you if you're available Sunday. We can discuss it ad nauseum IRL.