Imagine my delight when a friend & colleague posted a note to my Facebook wall alerting me to the fact that Katy Perry had appeared under what looked to be a replica of the classic “The More You Know” star, made famous in the NBC PSAs of our youth.

Below is an example, a 1990 Will Smith PSA on the benefits of staying in school.

And here is Katy Perry performing “Firework” during Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show:

And, because the internet is awesome, here’s a side-by-side comparison…

…and a mash-up:

As a scholar of media conglomerates and the logics that govern their operations, I have found the entire event immensely fun.  The question I got peppered with (well, if you count three friends’ comments as “peppering”) had to do with whether or not I thought Perry’s production was an example of planned cross-promotion, as the Super Bowl aired on NBC this year.

The short answer is that I don’t know.  I do know NBC was very quick to take advantage of the situation, tweeting out the “More You Know” logo at 7:23pm Eastern–a tweet that has been retweeted over 4000 times, typically with comments like “Nicely played, NBC!”  That tweet alone helped people make the connection between Perry’s performance, the PSA series, and NBC. Although many people of a certain age are likely to remember the PSAs, it’s quite likely that they would not remember them to be an NBC product.  NBC’s quick thinking (or advance knowledge and planning, perhaps) aided in closing the loop to take full advantage of the cross-promotional opportunity.

The long answer is that I don’t care, and you shouldn’t either—because NBC definitely doesn’t.  I’ve been grinning about this all week, because it beautifully illustrates something crucial to understanding the nature of cross-promotion: it doesn’t matter if it’s pre-planned or not, and it works better when it doesn’t appear to be arranged.

Like all forms of product integration, where advertisements are embedded within content, cross-promotion works by appearing “natural” and “organic” to that content.  When Jimmy Fallon has stars of NBC TV series on The Tonight Show, it’s an instance of cross-promotion, but it wouldn’t necessarily strike anyone as odd because Jimmy Fallon has lots of stars on The Tonight Show.  The star’s appearance on Fallon offers a potential double win for NBC; the star may draw fans to The Tonight Show, and the appearance might draw Fallon fans to the star’s series.  And that, of course, is the logic behind cross-promotion.  The risk NBC takes in engineering these opportunities is that if the audience feels duped, or like the network is trying to trick them, they might be turned off—but that sort of reaction is highly unlikely if the cross-promotion is thoughtfully conducted and unobtrusive.

And therein lies the beauty of Katy Perry’s ride on the “The More You Know” star at Super Bowl XLIX: it appeared to just happen with no forethought.  That sense of happenstance was a huge win for NBC, as audiences got to feel smart by noticing it, tweeting about it, commenting on Facebook, or saying something to their friends at the Super Bowl party.  That reward coupled with an accompanying nostalgia for an era when NBC was enjoying the height of their must-see-TV glory days imbues the entire incident with a rosy glow for audiences and, in turn, for the network.  Just as the appearance of an NBC star on Fallon offers a potential double win for NBC, so does a situation like this.

If it was pre-planned, it was an absolutely genius move made even better by no one from Perry’s camp or NBC stepping forward to claim credit for thinking of it.  If it wasn’t pre-planned, NBC got really lucky with Perry generating nostalgia for a PSA campaign that they could link to their network.  And whoever was manning the Twitter account on Sunday deserves a bonus.

I can hear the higher-ups at NBC now, gleefully counting up the many folks who ventured to YouTube to look up videos of 1990s PSAs, only to be flooded with warmth and affection for the bygone days of the network.  “Oh man…remember when NBC had Friends?  And ER?  And Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?”  NBC remembers, and they’re glad that now you do too.  And it’s all because Katy Perry rode a star around a football stadium on national TV.

Photo courtesy of Lindsay Hogan

In Part One of this series, Erin Copple Smith offered perspectives on conferencing from graduate students. In Part Two, she continues with advice from faculty at various stages of their careers. 

Each respondent was asked: What did you do during SCMS? What were your strategies, if you had them? And how do you think your decisions reflect where you are in your career? Please note that the contributors here are not meant to represent a full spectrum of SCMS participants–many perspectives are missing. I encourage you to contribute your own strategies in the comments.

Early Career Assistant Professor

This year, I spent SCMS connecting and reconnecting with my academic network. My goal was to spend time with my grad school cohort, other conference and social media friends, current colleagues, and new connections. Since so many of us are flung all over the U.S. and beyond, this conference is an intense few days of bonding, bitching, and general shenanigans. Therefore, organization was vital. The best strategy I had prior to SCMS was setting up meetings, coffees, and lunch dates weeks in advance. One of my favorite dates was a happy hour with other new junior faculty. It was an opportunity to check in on the first year and share everything from how we are adjusting to our new campus cultures to decorating our offices. No matter where you are in your academic trajectory, from graduate student to full professor, spending time with others who are experiencing similar career points or transitions is incredibly cathartic. Maybe next year I will spend more time in panels or the book room, but this year was about reinforcing this support system. I truly believe that investing time in relationships and growing my community will help me shape the experience I want from this crazy academic game over the next 20+ years.

Advanced Assistant Professor

Because I am deeply involved with one of the Special Interest Groups, there was more tension for me than usual at this conference: do I attend all the SIG-sponsored and -related panels (which could have consumed most of my week), or do I skip some of those panels and thereby risk undermining the efforts of the SIG (not to mention running the risk that some of my friends and colleagues might feel snubbed).  Ultimately I decided that, if the SIG thrives, it will be because many people work to support it; letting go of that sense of responsibility freed me up to attend more panels that would help my teaching:  topics that students are perpetually interested in but that don’t directly relate to my research.  I also skipped more of the workshops that I would have attended in the past; I’m at the point where I kind of know what most of the participants are likely to say, and social media will cue me to anything really novel. Finally, my social time was spent almost entirely catching up rather than networking, but in actual fact I’ve found that there’s usually at least one person at the table who is new to me, so “catching up with old friends” and “making new connections” seems more and more like a false dichotomy.

Advanced Assistant Professor

This has been a trying year on the personal and emotional fronts. In addition, confronted with the prospect of explaining myself via the tenure dossier and exhausted from life on the grinding treadmill that is the tenure track, I needed to use SCMS to recharge my batteries and to renew my excitement (and perhaps even faith and confidence) in my work. This year at SCMS I spent most of my time outside of panels catching up with the friends from grad school who helped me finish the dissertation and have provided the online and offline network that has provided me with both encouragement and sober reason. At this point in my career, I’m realizing that the most interesting projects I have worked on and have been working on have been hatched over dinners, glasses of wine, drinks, or espressos grabbed quickly between panels. This year, though, I wasn’t thinking about networking; I was thinking about renewal. To twist the prompt of this post from what we should be doing at major conferences, I think we need to think about what we need to be doing, not necessarily for professional advancement, for  securing book contracts, or for enlarging our personal network of acquaintances and collaborators, but for ourselves, especially during the stressful moments in our lives and our professional journeys.

Advanced Associate Professor

This is an interesting assignment. I decided before the conference this would be my last SCMS for a while and almost didn’t attend this year. I find myself at a career point where I’m not getting a lot out of the conference, and rising service demands at my home institution have me needing to shift my service load. I’ve attended SCMS every year since 2001 and have held some position in the organization since 2005. So for the span of the last five years I’d say a lot of the purpose of the conference was the opportunity to network with collaborators and perform whatever duties my various roles have required. Until this year, I usually presented personal scholarship at some point and maybe attended a handful of panels, but the most meaningful experiences have been the coffees and lunches where I caught up with colleagues elsewhere and often brainstormed projects.

I’m not sure how much of my questioning the utility of the big conference is a function of career space versus how technology has changed the world of academia. In recent years I’ve tended to Skype with collaborators and maintained projects by email, decreasing the necessity of the annual meet up. I can’t say I’ve ever seen or gotten substantive feedback at a conference like SCMS—the panel format rarely leaves much time for questions, though now and again a workshop will come together nicely, and I’m now at a career point where I have relationships with those whose opinions I most respect, and am more likely to approach a colleague directly for feedback (though I must acknowledge that attending all these years is largely what has helped me cultivate many of these relationships). I’m also not a particularly auditory learner and have always preferred to read work. I review about 10-12 article submissions a year and usually 2-3 book manuscripts, and find this a better way to stay abreast of the work in my field. I still find smaller, interest-focused conferences to be worth the effort and enjoy the extended conversations and engagement those venues allow, and faced with competing demands on time and tightening university support, will likely focus my conference travel to those venues in coming years.

Now it’s your turn!  What are some of your conference strategies, and how do you think they reflect where you are in your career? Chime in with comments!

Photo courtesy of Lindsay Hogan

While at the Society for Cinema & Media Studies conference in Chicago this year, I found myself suddenly very aware of my recent career shift from dissertator and visiting assistant professor to tenure-track faculty. I kept thinking, “Wait. What am I supposed to be doing here? Should I be meeting up with far-flung friends and colleagues? Should I be networking? Should I be attending panels intended to enrich my research, or attending panels intended to enrich my teaching? Should I be expanding my horizons, or renewing my ties?” In talking with some of my fellow conference-goers over the weekend, I realized that many of us were dealing with similar tensions, and we all had different strategies. (Indeed, I’m apparently not the only one thinking about this, as Tim Havens so nicely articulates in this SCMS blog post!) It occurred to me that a roundtable presentation of perspectives from scholars at different stages of their careers would be really interesting and potentially very useful–much more so than my rambling thoughts! Talking this over with so many colleagues had me thinking differently about conferencing, and I hope the insights from the contributors below will have the same impact for everyone reading.

I’ve kept the contributors anonymous, so they could speak candidly and freely, but I’ve explained where each person is in their career, because I think that makes a difference. Each respondent was asked: What did you do during SCMS? What were your strategies, if you had them? And how do you think your decisions reflect where you are in your career? Today’s post offers the perspective of graduate students, tomorrow’s post addresses faculty perspectives. Please note that the contributors here are not meant to represent a full spectrum of SCMS participants–many perspectives are missing. I encourage you to contribute your own strategies in the comments. My takeaway from these conversations? There is no “right way” to conference; it’s all about being thoughtful about who and where you are, and what you want to get out of the experience.

Graduate Student at Dissertation Proposal Stage

Graduate Student, ABD

I’ll be honest: I watched the Oscars live on Sunday, and though I found MacFarlane spectacularly unfunny, didn’t find a whole lot to be offended over.  So imagine my surprise upon waking up to a Facebook news feed full of proclamations that the host was not only unfunny, but misogynist and racist, to boot (In my defense, I appear to have missed several of the most egregious displays of sexism and racism while chatting with fellow partygoers and/or noshing).  There’s a lot of excellent reporting and analysis out there, so I won’t spend my space here recapping it (Two of my favorite pieces include this one from The New Yorker, and this from The Atlantic).  Throughout the day, I not only learned about the moments I’d missed, but entered into online discussions with folks far and wide about the controversy, and by mid-afternoon, came across several instances of backlash in which people defended MacFarlane’s right to make the jokes he wants to make, and accusations that those upset by the ordeal were overreacting.

For my money, Margaret Lyons’ Vulture piece offers the best response to this particular counter-critique:

Jeez, the song was a joke! Can’t you take a joke? Yes, I can take a joke. I can take a bunch! A thousand, 10,000, maybe even more! But after 30 or so years, this stuff doesn’t feel like joking. It’s dehumanizing and humiliating, and as if every single one of those jokes is an ostensibly gentler way of saying, “I don’t think you belong here.” All those little instances add up, grain of sand by grain of sand until I’m stranded in a desert of every “tits or GTFO” joke I’ve ever tried to ignore.

Lyons’ argument offers the jumping-off point for this post.  I’m not here to make any grand claims about whether MacFarlane was funny or within his rights as a comedian.  I’m not even here to argue that his jokes were sexist or racist, appropriate or inappropriate (Though I welcome thoughtful arguments on all sides in the comments, or as another Antenna post entirely!).  I’m here to make a plea that before we each go to our separate corners, carefully guarding and maintaining our own position on the controversy, we open ourselves up to the opportunity to interrogate what happened and consider what it reveals about comedy, about Hollywood, about society.  I would argue that MacFarlane is not so much the problem as a symptom. There’s a lot that’s problematic about Hollywood’s treatment of women, and it neither begins nor ends with MacFarlane OR the Oscars.  But if we stop identifying the symptoms, we stop thinking about the problem.  So let’s seize the moment and have conversations about these issues.  They’re incredibly complex, but absolutely worth taking seriously and unpacking.

Hegemony is pernicious because it relies on invisibility.  The system can only be maintained by convincing everyone that the way things are is the way they should be–that our beliefs, our existing social structures structures, our interactions are normal, and thus not worth interrogating.  Even for those of us personally and professionally committed to challenging ideological structures, normalization proves a difficult force to escape.  I confess that at the party I attended, a colleague said, “Man!  Does he think that by telling all the women how nice they look, he can get away with murder?” and I failed to see the brilliant critique that comment articulated.  Most of the time, most of us walk around without seeing the ideologies which guide our lives as constructed.

And that’s why moments when the machinations of hegemony are laid bare are so powerful.  For a few days after MacFarlane’s hosting gig, discourse has opened up around questions of patriarchy and the media’s role in perpetuating misogyny.  These moments when some of us are thinking, “Wait a minute…there’s something wrong here” and some are saying, “Oh come on.  It’s fine.  It’s normal” provide us with an opportunity to have conversations about the things we take for granted.  Take to Facebook, to Twitter, to the classroom, to coffee klatsches and have the conversation.

I admit that I didn’t necessarily expect this semester’s opportunity to unpack the relationship between media and ideology to come in the form of an awards show.  But I am spectacularly grateful that it did, and for the chance to open essential dialogue about these issues with my students, colleagues, friends, and family.  (And you!  Feel free to continue the conversation in the comments!)

One example of this “ad-as-content” strategy is Ford’s “Escape My Life” web series.  Debuting in September 2012, “Escape My Life” is an 8-episode series (available on YouTube, Hulu, and other online venues) featuring comedians Natasha Leggero and Jo Lo Truglio.  In the series, Leggero plays Skylar, a Hollywood costume designer who desperately needs a new car.  On the advice of a friend, she decides to take part in a marketing program (ostensibly sanctioned by Ford) in which Hollywood types can get a new Ford Escape for free.  (The friend calls it “Product placement in real life.”)  In the suspicious-looking office of the program head, she signs a sheaf of papers without reading them, and happily drives her new Escape home – only to be confronted with socially maladjusted Barry (Truglio) upon arrival.  You see, it appears that by signing that stack of papers she didn’t read, she agreed to let Barry go with her everywhere to show her how to use the Escape’s features, and to (eventually) document and blog about his experiences with Skylar and the SUV.  Hijinks ensue as the two try to live with one another throughout the series.

What’s interesting about “Escape My Life” is that the series ultimately spends only a small portion of its time on the Escape itself.  Each episode features one or two brief mentions of the SUV’s features – from the Sync system to the roomy interior to the hands-free foot-activated gate lift – and each concludes with a 15-second ad highlighting those features.  Aside from that, however, the SUV operates as a backdrop for the action more than the star of the series.  According to Ford, this was, in fact, the primary motivation behind the series.  In a press release, Ford’s Digital Marketing manager Brock Winger claims, “We are not talking at them, we are showing them the Escape and how it is used in daily life.”

But I argue that it’s more complicated than that.  There is absolutely no denying that the series functions as an advertisement for the Escape, and I certainly don’t think that any audience member would be fooled into thinking otherwise.  But perhaps that’s simply part of its charm.  As Fast Company’s Joe Berkowitz notes, the series is particularly notable for the fact that it functions as a meta-commentary on marketing itself, as the drama centers around Ford’s deployment of a new “real-life product placement” marketing campaign.  In his analysis, Berkowitz contends, “In acknowledging how annoying it is when you’re forced to watch an ad that’s trying not to be an ad, the ad-based show becomes instantly more accessible.”

Compared to a traditional ad campaign, the series might not seem a major success – the first episode has been viewed around 240,000 times on YouTube, with the rest averaging 30,000-40,000 views.  Even a weak cable channel has far more viewers.  But the difference, of course, is that those who came to watch “Escape My Life” online sought it out, were thus more likely to watch it closely, and probably left with a higher degree of brand message recall than the average viewer of a 30-second spot.  (Certainly I now know much more about the features of the Ford Escape than I did before watching the series, and I rather enjoyed myself while consuming the ads, too!)  As Ford’s Winger notes, “The series reaches out to consumers where they are at in their media consumption behaviors – we are not interrupting them and forcing them to go somewhere else or stop what they are doing in order to watch and enjoy the content.”  And this, I contend, is key to the “ad-as-content” strategy: as audiences migrate away from live TV viewing and advertisers become increasingly concerned about how to get their messages out, series like “Escape My Life,” which invite viewers to engage more directly and deeply with a brand (while being entertained!), might just be the wave of the future.

The backstory: Nickelodeon subsidiary Nick Jr. has historically aired preschooler-friendly programming 24 hours a day.  In October of this year, the folks at Nickelodeon decided to branch out a bit by turning over their overnight (10pm-2am Eastern) programming to a new block, called NickMom (tagline: “motherfunny.”)  The new block features four series: What Was Carol Brady Thinking? (in which episodes of The Brady Bunch are overlaid with pop-ups indicating what Carol was really thinking–see image at right for an example), reality series Mom Friends Forever, comedy talk show Parental Discretion with Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, and stand-up comedy showcase NickMom Night Out.  (Blogger Joyce Slaton offers a useful overview of the series here.)

Though the series are technically different, they all share a trademark sense of humor about 21st Century motherhood: kids are great, but they’re also a pain in the butt, so when they go to bed, have a glass of wine and laugh over the ridiculousness of raising kids in our modern times.  This bump, aired as the channel switches from its preschooler content to NickMom demonstrates the way Nick Jr. conceives of the connection between these two program types, and the approach to motherhood NickMom has adopted.

Nickelodeon’s strategy here is clear: turn a slow daypart into a moneymaker by appealing to the folks who are already likely to be tuning into the channel.  Once the kids go to bed, demand for preschooler programming goes down, but parents may already have the TV tuned to Nick Jr.–why not give them some “adult” programming to enjoy?

But NickMom  has been met with quite a bit of resistance from audiences whose complaints illustrate the perhaps unanticipated flaws in such an institutional strategy, along with the current national sentiment on representing motherhood.  The lineup has led to the creation of the Cancel NickMom movement, a group of parents committed to achieving one of two goals: getting Viacom to cancel the offending programming or move it to another channel.  Their primary complaint is the unsuitability of NickMom series on a channel otherwise aimed at a preschool audience,  highlighting audiences’ expectations for niche cable channels.

Parents have come to rely on Nick Jr.’s 24-hour cycle of kid programming for a variety of reasons: sick kids awake in the middle of the night, 2nd and 3rd shift parents whose families are on a late-night schedule, families in the Pacific time zone for whom this content is on not at 10pm but 7pm, and so on.  Because NickMom shows are targeted to adults, their more grown-up themes (including sex, alcohol, and adult language) frustrate parents who previously viewed Nick Jr. as an ever-ready tool in their parenting arsenal.  One parent, quoted on the CancelNickMom.com homepage, notes, “Why have you put garbage such as NickMom on a PRESCHOOL channel??? Sometimes, I do allow my child to stay up past 10 pm, and sometimes, she does wake up in the middle of the night. Used to, I was able to let her watch nickjr [sic] until she went back to sleep. Nick jr [sic] is the biggest reason I have kept the satellite plan I have. But if I have to tolerate this nonsense, she won’t be watching the channel at all.”

It would be easy to dismiss CancelNickMom as a small but vocal minority–indeed, many of the comments on their Facebook feed indicate that parents who dislike NickMom should simply switch the channel–but ultimately the programming block has not performed well for Nick Jr.  The Wall Street Journal reports that ratings for the time period have decreased 74% from the same timeslot in 2011.  Moreover, the movement has inspired several advertisers, including kid-friendly companies who should be Nick Jr.’s bread and butter (Green Giant, Cheerios, and Fisher-Price), to withdraw from the channel.  Perhaps the increasingly dramatic narrowcasting strategies that are the hallmark of the post-network era have reached a point of no return when those extreme niche channels can no longer diversify.

Of course, this particular drama centers around two hot-button topics: kid-appropriate content and representations of motherhood.  Though most of the complaints from parents center around the unsuitability of NickMom programming for the preschoolers who may be watching, media critiques of the NickMom block suggest that the real problem is the way the series portray modern motherhood.  The New York Times‘ Neil Genzlinger calls the block, “a collection of shows both aggressively lowbrow and narrowly focused on a few areas of interest to the female audience, namely sex and children.”  Indeed, as the promo below indicates, these topics do seem to form the bulk of the lineup.

Though the New York Times critique offers a perspective on audiences which is a bit too “passive sponge-like” for me, suggesting, “repeated exposure to NickMom’s two-note material will quickly turn otherwise smart women into zombies who can talk of nothing but sex and the mundanities of child-rearing,” the argument that the NickMom representation of motherhood focuses too narrowly on jokes about potty training, sex, and chardonnay is one expressed elsewhere, also.  Slate‘s Jessica Grose had a similar reaction to Genzlinger’s piece, and so completed her own review.  In her more nuanced critique, Grose indicates that her favorite series, Parental Discretion, stood out because, “That one half-hour of goodness nestled in hours of mediocrity made me realize what’s the matter with NickMom’s other shows. What worked about the nanny hidden camera was that, while of course embracing mommy culture simply by being a part of the NickMom block, it was also pointed criticism of the absurdity of it all, rather than bland, soppy reassurance that whatever you’re doing is just great because you’re part of that exalted category of human known as MOM. It’s the hardest job on earth, didn’t you know?”

Ultimately, the drama surrounding NickMom provides a wonderful case study of both institutional strategies in the post-network era and the ambivalence surrounding contemporary representations of motherhood.  I, for one, will continue to watch the news surrounding the lineup, even if I rarely watch the lineup itself.

A Visual.ly infographic highlights that 83% of American Pinterest users are women, and that the most common areas of interest for those users are crafts, special events planning, hobbies & leisure, interior design, fashion, and blogging resources. This certainly holds up in my experience, where the pins I see most often fall into those categories, along with others including exercise tips, babies/children, humor, and food/drink.

There’s a lot to say about Pinterest, but what has struck me most about the site (which I’ve used heavily for over a year) is the way that pinners perform postfeminism. As the statistics provided indicate, the vast majority of American pinners are women, and many of the most popular categories of use are ones that are coded as “feminine” in our culture. But what does femininity, as displayed on Pinterest, actually look like? Below is a screenshot of the Pinterest homepage I captured at random on a Saturday afternoon. Images of fashion appear alongside exercise and cleaning tips, DIY decorating suggestions, ideas for back-to-school, and recipes. To the casual observer, such a selection would appear to heavily reinforce dominant codes of femininity–the female pinners (note the users’ names underneath each image) are collecting ideas for keeping their homes clean and their bodies fit and well-attired. They’re focused on the parties they’ll throw, the children they’re sending back to school, and the meals they’ll prepare. But these pins only tell part of the story.

On display across Pinterest is the juxtaposition of feminist and anti-feminist ideas that comprises the heart of postfeminism. Alongside such content as exemplifies dominant notions of the feminine (crafting, cooking, cleaning, mothering, decorating) are pins that fly in the face of such ideas. Images such as those shown below (all found on Pinterest) subvert the dominant paradigm in ways that would be recognized as feminist: quotations from Madeleine Albright about the need for women to help women, images poking fun at the idea that women should obey men, or asserting that little girls have as much interest in stereotypically “boy” play as “girl” play.

Due to juxtapositions such as these, postfeminism has caused a great deal of consternation and confusion–women understand that they’re allowed to “have it all,” but are unsure what that means or how to achieve it. The experience of using Pinterest has been described as similarly confusing. As the image at right shows, the pins displayed side-by-side on the site, and the messages embedded within them, are not only disparate but oftentimes completely contradictory.

Blogger Jane Roper notes that Pinterest can easily make users feel inadequate. Roper writes, “Every time I go there…Pinterest inevitably reminds me of the various ways in which I am not good enough.” She includes a litany of “feminine” qualities presented on Pinterest which she lacks, suggesting that in contrast to most pinners, she is “slovenly…a boring cook/baker…a bad mother.” Tellingly, however, Roper concludes her post: “But the upside of Pinterest–or perhaps the huge, ridiculous irony–is that people also love to post gorgeous graphics … of inspirational sayings: ‘Everybody dances to their own rhythm!’ or ‘I won’t worry my life away!’ or ‘I will love myself more each day’!”

Not only is the content on display on Pinterest exemplary of the postfeminist moment–the experience of pinners exemplifies the daily lived experience of women who encounter these mixed messages and are supposed to make meaning out of them, making the site a fascinating (if ever-changing) snapshot of contemporary ideology.

Before the Super Bowl aired this past Sunday, host network NBC aired this gem of a promotional video.  (Go ahead and watch it if you haven’t already, or again.  I’ll wait.)

As Josef Adalian notes, this type of rousing “all hands on deck” campaign used to be de rigeur for networks from the 1970s to the 1990s, but its use here highlights what I see as one of NBC’s greatest strengths, and also its potential weakness.

To my mind, this number beautifully sums up what sets NBC apart from its broadcast competitors: the sense that all the folks at NBC are really just one big, happy family.  Even in the face of lagging ratings (they’re in a tie for fourth with Univision, at last count), an inability to find a hit, and faint praise for their entertainment chairman (“when you’re heading up the last-place network, the only direction to go is up”) who concedes that the network “had a really bad fall,” audiences, advertisers, and investors alike are still intrigued by the peacock network.  But why?

In part, I would argue, it’s due to NBC’s lasting image–and one they continue to bank on–evidenced in the “Brotherhood of Man” spot.  NBC still seems like the broadcast network of yore, one more closely resembling the Hollywood studio system than contemporary niche-marketed television.  The sort of place where everyone looks sort of familiar, because you’ve seen them (likely on another NBC series) before.  The sort of environment in which you can imagine the network’s stars getting together for lunch, or cracking jokes together in the hallways. This is not a new strategy, of course–one can recall with relative ease the “Must-See TV” crossover nights of the 1990s, and the fact that NBC stars of the era tended to move on to…other NBC series.  Seeing Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Will Arnett move across the weekly schedule feels like part of the NBC legacy, ultimately, and knowing that so many current NBC stars are actually friends behind the scenes works to cement this notion in audiences.

Or maybe it’s because NBC is so firmly associated with New York’s 30 Rock (the place, not the series).  From The Today Show to Brian Williams’ Rock Center to the eponymous series, Rockefeller Plaza has become the physical and emotional home of the network, with the result that it’s not difficult to imagine Kristen Wiig, Jimmy Fallon, Ann Curry, and Bob Harper dancing around outside the building.  All of this combines to delight audiences, prompting tweets like, “NBC shows singing Brotherhood of Man gave me chills! I love this so much!” and “This is what my dreams look like.”  And, perhaps my personal favorite, “Guys remember that time all the best NBC shows got together and sang Brotherhood of Man and I basically died? Me too.”

But NBC’s reliance on this image might be its albatross rather than its saving grace.  As Myles McNutt has argued here on Antenna, the network’s reluctance to move beyond its own legacy is actually holding it back.  As Jason Mittell pointed out to me when I posted the video to Facebook, the fact that “Brotherhood of Man” is centered so firmly around 30 Rock (the series, not the place) overestimates the series’ popularity.  Indeed, the poorly rated series proves the point, exemplifying NBC’s “we’re all friends here” sensibility in the form of longtime NBC-friendly personalities (Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan) while overlooking the fact that the show (and the network) are in some fairly serious trouble according to traditional metrics.

Nonetheless, the video reveals what I see as the fundamental strength of the network–the fact that, as the song goes, these stars truly are “proud to be…right here on NBC.”  The song’s actual lyrics in that moment are “proud to be…in that fraternity,” which I would contend is also an apt metaphor for the insidery network.  And as thrilled as the stars are, many audience members are equally happy to see them hanging out together enjoying one another’s company.  As one Tweeter commented, “Now this is a frat I’d pledge.”  Indeed.  And the network is banking on the fact that our desire to join the party will keep us coming back as they struggle to regain a spot at the top.

First came the awkward placement of the HP TouchPad into the season premiere of The CW’s Gossip Girl.  Leaving aside the oddity of these characters using the TouchPad rather than the iPad, the promotion garnered attention because HP decided to get out of the PC business (including killing the very technology used by Serena) several weeks before the GG premiere.

As Advertising Age reports, this is the problem of the production schedule–placement deals are worked out months in advance, and sometimes by the time they air they’re already out of date.  The Ad Age piece cites Modern Family‘s spring 2010 integration of Toyota, a promotional effort that came to fruition at precisely the same time as Toyota’s massive recall PR nightmare.  In the case of both HP and Toyota, these promotions were developed into the storyline and filmed up to nine months in advance of their airing, making any changes in the final months an impossibility.

On the heels of the Gossip Girl awkwardness came the two most recent episodes of NBC’s The Sing-Off.  For the past two weeks, contestants competed with their interpretations of a current chart-topper and a 1960s hit.  The latter was being used as a cross-promotional opportunity for the network’s The Playboy Club, which aired in the 10 p.m. Eastern slot directly following the a cappella competition.  The end of the first episode featured host Nick Lachey exhorting, “If you enjoyed our ’60s songs, be sure to stick around for more of the decade and watch The Playboy Club, coming up next!”

When news of The Playboy Club’s demise came the following day, the promotion seemed like an awkward but charming moment, but this week’s episode of The Sing-Off–filmed over a week prior, mind you–was almost uncomfortable.  As the ’60s performances commenced, Lachey addressed his costume change by noting that the slick suit he was wearing had come from The Playboy Club‘s costume department.  As I fought the giggles (thinking that the costume department was probably happy to get rid of it as they cleaned house), it got even more awkward–at the moment Lachey finished this comment, a graphic appeared on the bottom of the screen, informing viewers that up next was Prime Suspect.

These two virtually concurrent instances of awkwardly out-of-date product integrations reveal two key truths about the nature of television advertising.  First, that the television production schedule requires a great deal of pre-planning on the part of advertisers, studio executives, and writers.  Second, that as product placement and cross-promotion become the norm due to ad-skipping with DVRs, DVDs, and online streaming, we’re not only going to see more integrations, but more moments when those placements just don’t work by the time they hit the air.

In the meantime, let’s get Serena and Blair some iPads, and hope next week’s episode of The Sing-Off doesn’t feature a cappella versions of songs about workplace romance.

“I believe in criticism and I believe in humbly analyzing one’s faults,” she writes.  This rings true for me, as I wholeheartedly—truly!—welcome students’ critiques and suggestions for improvements of both my own teaching and my syllabi.  Teaching, after all, requires constant evolution.  I’m confident in my own teaching style, but I’m new enough that there’s certainly room for improvement.  When a student urged me to play devil’s advocate more often by challenging students in class discussion, I saw it as constructive criticism.  And one student this semester gave me several excellent ideas for in-class activities I’m considering using in the fall.  I encourage students to give me useful feedback on their evaluations, and tell them that their input is important to me.  The result has been generally supportive and constructive criticism.

And yet, as Jenkins explains, “…as I read these negative reviews I sometimes don’t understand what restaurants these people are eating at.”  Haven’t we all had this experience with evaluations?  Sometimes I’m left wondering what class a student was attending, or what they were expecting to get from my class.  Of course, there are always the “No exams!” and “Less reading!” comments that are not really useful (or feasible).  But there are also bewildering comments that reveal confusion about the nature and content of the course, including one suggestion that I use less media in my teaching of a media studies course.

In separating the wheat from the chaff, Jenkins encapsulates what I view as the best advice regarding evaluations: “I want to read my criticism and take it on the chin, use it to better see what we are doing wrong and improve… but have to put more faith in what I see in front of me.”  Anyone who’s been teaching for any length of time will say this is the key to reading student evaluations: approach with an open mind, and a willingness to embrace practical suggestions, but compare the feedback to your own experience in the class, and if it just doesn’t fit (with your experience, or indeed, with evals from other students!), let it go.  This is the only route to turning evaluations into a productive exercise while maintaining your sanity.

I’d love you to chime in below with your own experiences with evaluations.  What’s the best advice you have for administering evaluations and/or dealing with the resulting feedback?  What’s the best (funniest, most rewarding, etc.) feedback you’ve gotten from a student?  The worst?