NFL's East Coast/Cowboys Bias may be crushed Sunday night, which would be sweet justice for NFL fans! If Redskins beat Cowboys, strong chance no team from 5 of U.S.'s Top 6 TV markets will make NFL playoffs: No NY, no LA (not even Chargers!), no Chicago, no Philly, no Dallas. Plus, we'll finally be free of analysis of Romo & Roethlisberger's angst! Hooray!!!

NFL's East Coast/Cowboys Bias may be crushed Sunday night, which would be sweet justice for NFL fans! If Redskins beat Cowboys, strong chance no team from 5 of U.S.'s Top 6 TV markets will make NFL playoffs: No NY, no LA (not even Chargers!), no Chicago, no Philly, no Dallas. Plus, we'll finally be free of analysis of Romo & Roethlisberger's angst! Hooray!!!

It's all up to the Redskins to make this reality come true Sunday night when they host the Cowboys in a battle for the NFC Eastern Division title that I believe may well be a Redskin rout by the middle of the third quarter, a result that should lead to the Cowboys making major changes that are long overdue, including a change at head coach.

If the Redskins win Sunday night, the only team from a Top 6 U.S. TV market will be the San Francisco 49ers, at number six.
http://www.stationindex.com/tv/tv-markets

That will mean that what seems like the majority of the teams that the NFL and Madison Avenue have foisted upon us this past season via nationally-televised Sunday Night, Monday Night and Thursday Night football ballgames will be completely absent from the playoffs: Cowboys, Giants and Jets. Buh-bye!

For the Cowboys, this absence will mean that the following is now true: the Cowboys have won one playoff game in the past 16 years.

Now say it over to yourself and ask yourself whether this self-evident fact will prevent the NFL and Madison Avenue from force-feeding the Cowboys down America's throat next year on the tube?
No, more likely, they will front-load many of those Cowboys games at the beginning of the season and cross their fingers to get some games at the end of the season on the flex schedule.

As I've written here before, one of the few conspiracy theories in America that is actually TRUE is that the NFL props-up the Cowboys in ways that it doesn't seem to for any other team.

At one point in this past season I had figured out that over half of the Cowboy 16 regular season games had been on national TV broadcasts, and with the flex schedule going into effect for Sunday night's Redskins, I believe that makes either 8 or 9 Cowboys games out of 16 that will have been nationally-televised.
Why so much pushing for such a mediocre team?

A few years ago, ESPN commentator and NFL Hall of Fame QB Steve Young succinctly tore into the Dolphins and the Vikings organizations as THE most over-rated NFL teams of the past 10 -or 15?- years.
To that he could have added the Jerry Jones Cowboys of the 21st Century.

No, contrary to what is said perpetually on ESPN, especially by Jon Gruden, the Cowboys are NOT one of the most-talented teams in the league, they are one of the most under-performing.

As a matter of fact, as far as most NFL fans are concerned, the Cowboys and Giants don't need to always have one of their two games be a nationally-televised game, or even rate a 4:15 p.m. Sunday kickoff.
It's not the 1990's anymore, capisce?

An exciting team on the rise like the Seattle Seahawks needs to be on national TV more and I don't mean 1 p.m. Eastern kickoffs against the Dolphins, either.

But don't kid yourself.
The Cowboys will be on more national TV broadcasts next year than the Seahawks even if Seattle gets to the Super Bowl. Even if they win it.
Rest assured, the powers-that-be at NFL HQ will see to it.

NFL Odds & Ends

When he was still head coach at Texas Tech, I used to wonder what a brilliant mind like offensive-minded coach Mike Leach would do if given the keys to the Cowboys, the Chargers, Jets, Bucs or the Ravens, five perpetually under-performing NFL teams, none of whom have made the Super Bowl despite having had numerous opportunities before collapsing. 

I still wonder about that now that Leach is at Washington State, but only re the Ravens.

My January 6, 2009 post on Leach going to the Bucs was titled, 
So THAT'S why newspapers are dying? BORING!; Jon Gruden must go!

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/so-thats-why-newspapers-are-dying.html

As someone with a few Ravens t-shirts and jackets in my bedroom closet and who's rooted for the Ravens since they moved to Baltimore -and who came this close to becoming a Ravens season ticket holder that first year when I lived in Arlington County, VA- while it might be heresy for some to hear, while I think he's a good coach, I believe John Harbaugh's era at Baltimore could and should come to an end if they lose in the playoffs against either the Colts or the Bengals. 
http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/ravens/ravens-insider/bal-updated-ravens-nfl-playoff-scenarios-20121224,0,345461.story
At home. 
Mercifully.

They no longer have the number and caliber of defensive playmakers to mask his bad coaching decisions:

Ravens Have Underperformed During John Harbaugh’s Tenure
By Zach Wilt
ttp://baltimoresportsreport.com/ravens-overvalue-john-harbaugh-35505.html


Bloomberg News
Oakland Pays $17 Million for NFL Raiders as Cops Fired

By Darrell Preston & Aaron Kuriloff - Dec 20, 2012 5:58 PM ET

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-20/oakland-pays-17-million-for-nfl-raiders-as-cops-get-cut.html

Poor Sally Draper! Years from now -in the past- 'Mad Men's' Sally is going to tell her own daughter a true story about getting a hit of Sec from Grandma, of crawling under the couch to avoid killers, and her daughter is NOT going to believe her!; Kiernan Shipka shines!

AMC-TV video: Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner on episode 504 and its themes of sexual violence and what it takes to be a man. April 8, 2012. http://youtu.be/oEbQyd78k50

Poor Sally Draper! 

Years from now -in the past- 'Mad Men's' Sally is going to tell her own daughter a true story about getting a hit of Sec from Grandma, of crawling under the couch to avoid killers, and her

daughter is NOT going to believe her!; Kiernan Shipka shines!

The 1966 newspaper headline about serial rapist and killer Richard Speck that Sally had been forbidden from reading, which she later fished-out of the garbage can and read under the covers of her bed with her flashlight. Reading the accounts of how the women were tortured by Speck caused Sally to get anxious and made her unable to sleep. April 8, 2012 screenshot by Hallandale Beach Blog.

An antsy Sally under the covers, flash light still on. April 8, 2012 screenshot by Hallandale Beach Blog.

This angst eventually caused Sally to temporarily make peace with her disagreeable babysitting step-grandmother Pauline for a bit, and later, accept a hit of Seconal from her so she could sleep -under the couch, where nobody like a homicidal killer would find her, since she'd read that the only one of the nine kidnap victims to survive had hidden underneath a bed. Above, the scene greeting her mom and step-father returning home late from a trip the next morning: a sleeping Pauline, and a completely wide-awake Sally hiding under the couch. April 8, 2012 screenshot by Hallandale Beach Blog.

For someone like me who has had a well-worn paperback copy of Madison Avenue's iconic treatise "Ogilvy on Advertising" on my bookshelves since I was about eleven years-old, someone who still remembers what the old advertising agency acronyms used to stand for, and who, somewhat  mischievously, when conversations I had while working for influential D.C. law firms were getting stale, would drop those agency names into the conversation to see if people were actually paying attention, and thus knew that DDBO and Young & Rubicam (Y&R) were NOT the same as Piper Marbury or Williams & Connolly or Winston & Strawn, I thought that Sunday night's episode of "Mad Men"on AMC , "Mystery Date" was by far the best I'd ever seen.


Mid-1960's TV commercial for Milton Bradley's "Mystery Date" board game.
http://youtu.be/XHsQpTbQ9Uo


AMC-TV video: Talked About Scenes Episode 504 Mad Men: Don's Fever Dream. April 8, 2012. http://youtu.be/PYRdALzZgKI


Vanity Fair
Seconal Is the New Bugles! Mad Men Introduces Sally Draper’s Nascent Pill Addiction
by Juli Weiner 9:28 AM, APRIL 9 2012

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/04/Seconal-Is-the-New-Bugles-emMad-Menem-Introduces-Sally-Drapers-Nascent-Pill-Addiction

I knew I was right today when I turned to Slate's Monday morning rehash of the show here, where lots of smart people paying attention share their hunches and interpretations: 
Don's Mystery Date Goes Bad
By Julia Turner, April 9, 2012
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/tv_club/features/2012/mad_men_season_5/week_3/mad_men_recap_don_and_the_body_under_the_bed_.html 

and lots of fans of say, a more typical Conventional Wisdom mindset, were thrown for a loop. Good!  

See the archives at http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/tv_club.html

Before the new season started a few weeks ago, I came across these pieces and videos on Mad Men's young star Kiernan Shipka and saved them for a rainy day:

Kiernan Shipka as the savvy go-to Child Star psychologist 
http://youtu.be/AjprZrWBh9w


New York Magazine

The Fug Girls Track the Fashion Evolution of Mad Men Daughter Kiernan Shipka 

By The Fug Girls

3/29/12 at 11:45 AM 

http://www.vulture.com/2012/03/fug-girls-track-the-fashion-evolution-of-mad-men-daughter-kiernan-shipka.html

Those of you who are new to this blog should know that I have always been intensely interested in advertising and marketing and read everything about them, hence, the previously-referenced David Ogilvy book.

In the pre-Internet years of the early and mid-1980's, when I was home for the summer from IU, and living with my mother near The Falls, i,e. S. Dixie Highway & S.W. 136th Street, in what is now the Village of Pinecrest, I used to weekly drive about a half-hour away to get to the only new stand south of downtown or Brickell that sold Advertising Age, so I could read what was in the real world of marketing and persuasion.

With the newest issue in my hands, whether I read it poolside at the upscale apt. complex pool I lived at or over at the Godfather's Pizza in the retail complex next to the Pearl's crafts shop on S. Dixie Hwy. & 136th Street, taking full advantage of their delicious salad and individual pan pizza, when I read those articles and analysis about campaigns that soared or fizzled or about who was moving where to be the new Creative Director at some hotshot boutique ad shop, I was mentally far from the mortal coil of South Florida.

Here, unfortunately, the local advertising industry was very, very insular and almost seemed to be more in the client hand-holding business than anything else.
To an extent that would be hard for many of you readers to believe now, given how far it has fallen, the advertising world of that time was also very Miami Herald-dependent.

Up until I want to say the mid-to-late 1980's, everything else being equal, working in the Herald's Advertising Dept. was perceived as a pretty cool job where you could make good money and meet a lot of the genuinely clever 'creative' people throughout the region, given that there were no meaningful alternative serious news newspapers, or, alas, a real regional interest magazine that went hard after upscale readers, like The Washingtonian or Chicago Magazine did,once "MIAMI" magazine bit the dust more than a decade before.

Oh yes, I remember "MIAMI" magazine of the late '60's and early '70's!
My mom's office downtown had a subscription to it and New York magazine and always brought home the old copies after everyone had already read them because she knew that I would devour them.
And I did.

The latter was where I first read Nik Cohn's 1976 cover story, "The New Rites of Saturday Night," the story that was later was adapted by Lesley Stahl's screenwriter husband, Aaraon Latham -and James Bridges- into the blockbuster film, "Saturday Night Fever." 
-----
http://www.amctv.com/

Going Old School & New School: 'See the USA in Your Chevrolet' TV ad - Dinah Shore in 1952, 'Glee' cast in 2011

The Cast of Glee "See the USA in Your Chevrolet"
2011 TV ad in show following Super Bowl 45 http://youtu.be/JD7EsyYlqlU


In a word: Brilliant!


See the USA in Your Chevrolet - Dinah Shore, 1952 http://youtu.be/iK43-ERSwwM

For those of you who had never heard of or seen the original iconic Dinah Shore Madison Avenue classic, you're welcome.

Since I'm a big believer in source material to give you the appropriate context, if you watch this, you will learn more than you could want about the new 1953 Chevrolets -and see where the songs appears in the scheme of things.
The entire song was from A Great New Star (1952), with Dinah starting to sing it just after the 10:19 mark.







Chevrolet TV commercial of 1965, featuring the cast of NBC-TV's Bonanza, The Man From UNCLE, and ABC-TV's Bewitched, the latter of which was sponsored by Chevrolet its first season.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TRHinTPu5I


Below, you can hear the 'See the USA' jingle segue into the opening credits of the 1964 season of Bewitched



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnDF3-Forms