So it takes something really special for an advertising campaign to start to piss me off consistently. Congratulations channel 10… You’ve done it.

I’ve not read anything about The Good Wife, I’ve not paid particular attention to the teasers given in the ads, I’ve not looked for the small print on the billboards around town. I know that Julianna Margulies – the nurse from ER that was going out with George Clooney – has straightened her hair and is playing the titular character and Chris Noth – Big from Sex and the City - plays some sort of political public figure character who has been shamed by some sort of shenanigans. Not once have I bothered sitting through the entire “Sneak Peek” without turning the channel off or hitting the 30 second skip button twice. And yet I’m confident enough to call this one of the major flops of 2010. A bigger disappointment than FlashForward or even Commander in Chief.

There are sure to be parallels with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojovic, caught out trying to sell a Democrat held seat last year, and Hilary Clinton standing by Bill through the Lewinsky saga, probably peppered with inappropriate campaign-trail type press conferences on the front lawn of the family house or on the steps of a courthouse, proving the passionate attention given our hero by the entire nation. The magnitude of girl-power is likely to be off the scale as Margulies triumphs almost impossibly in the career that had only been simmering while she kept the home fires burning in support of her previously legitimate, successful husband. I don’t, however, see the skeptical audience turning off their sense of disbelief for more than a couple of weeks.

This show seems likely to be a fusion of a couple of recent genres we’ve seen: the latest hopeful to try to capture the loyal Sex and the City bloc, who like their women sassy and crave someone they can really relate to in a weekly drama; and the genius working in a professional capacity story – think House, Shark, Leverage, The Mentalist, Eleventh Hour - undertaking and conquering tasks that nobody else anywhere could possibly accomplish. I’m not sure it’s a fusion that can work. US TV has been desperate to get another SatC up for 3 or 4 years now – Women’s Murder Club, Cashmere Mafia, The Starter Wife - but they just don’t take and there seems to be a lack of ensemble in The Good Wife. The genius professional always tends to be a little odd, which is lateral, spontaneous and occasionally fun from a guy working with a team of minions or a federal handler but very quickly shouts ‘Bunny Boiler’ in a woman.

I could be completely wrong on all of this but the saturation promotion that 10 has been giving this show over an extended period has my Boxie senses tingling. We’ll have to wait and see.

It took me a while to hunt through my notes and find what I was talking about but here is a tutorial about using proxy system Hotspot Shield to view Hulu and it may also work for other sites.

Let us know in the comments if this works for you or if you have other ways around this problem.

via Tinkernut

Showtime, the cable network in the US that produces Californication has been using viral marketing on the web quite well for some of their programmes. Most notable is the video/SMS campaign for the second season of Dexter.

The thing is, Mia Cross is totally the kind of character who would start on Twitter because their agent thought it was a good and quick way to get a profile without them even understanding the concept of the community or how it works.

Meanwhile, Lost‘s ?ber-invasive conspiracy body, The Dharma Initiative, has been seeking and testing new recruits. Fans of Lost, me included, are excited to get an insight into the organisation that harnessed the magical island’s magnetic energy and ran tests on humans and animals alike. Actually, some of us, me included, are excited just to get a Dharma Initiative ID card.

The question that comes to mind, though, is what are the marketing people thinking this does for a show? Will it build audience directly? Will it strengthen the brand in a viewer’s mind so that he or she becomes an evangalist for the programme? Or is it just throwing crap at a wall and hoping it sticks?