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Steve Bornfeld | MEDIAOLOGY
I-Team promos trigger the giggles
SPARKS ... WILL ... FLY.
“Sparks”? Must mean the I-Team is rushing headlong into journalistic battle! Or there’s a faulty electrical outlet somewhere. Or a firefly convention is in town.
Ultimately, the motto means that some serious Vegas reporters are stranded in some hilarious TV ads that turn journalists into unintentional jesters. Only Charlie Sheen mugging up “Two and a Half Men” and Neil Patrick Harris clowning through “How I Met Your Mother” promise more giggles per promo.
Boasting slick production values that ape the ads for CBS’ fall lineup, Channel 8’s investigative go-getters — George Knapp, Colleen McCarty, Jonathan Humbert and Steve Sebelius — pose and posture like some mutant strain of supermodels in these over-the-top spots without an ounce of irony or humor to ease the stifling self-importance, making it all the more comical:
Penetrating stares of intensity from Crusading Reporters. Arms crossed for ain’t-we-cool emphasis. Special effects floating, flying and cascading all around them. Voice-overs loaded with movie-trailer melodrama.
Thunder crackles. Drums beat. Noises whoosh. Sparks take off like fireworks and skyrockets. (Announcer): “When someone wants to hide the truth ...” (Humbert): “They run ...” (Sebelius): “They threaten ...” (McCarty): “They work awfully hard to cover their tracks ...” (Knapp): “We just work harder.”
Images of Strip resorts and city sites flash behind, storm clouds gather above, cameras circle around in a dizzy tizzy. “You have to be fearless. It takes passion. Dedication. And an insatiable need to get the truth. And most of all, it takes instinct. It’s the kind of intuition that can’t be learned. Ya gotta be born with it. It’s in our DNA and ... Sparks ... Will ... Fly.”
Cue the ... EXPL-OOOOOO-SION! Duck, viewer, duck!
C’mon — truth, you guys: Do you really shoot these kooky come-ons with a straight puss?
What’s wrong with aggressive, watch-us-instead-of-those-other-guys marketing? Nothing, if it avoids tipping over into the kind of caricature that, for leery, media-hip young viewers, is validation that we in the news biz are arrogant blowhards. (That includes critics, though oddly, I can’t think of one.)
Twitter/Facebook-reared viewers control their own media experiences, no longer passively absorbing media messages as did previous generations, snickering instead at ad blitzkriegs that sell reporters as superheroes out to thwart Nevada’s army of Lex Luthors.
They smell the bull.
Distrusted as mainstream media is by Generation-Tech, journalism is still central to their discourse. Without legit stories to bloviate over, much of the yammering blogosphere would fall into awkward silence. Those dogged I-Teamers produce some of the strongest journalism in the state. (Congrats, George K., on your induction into The Associated Press Hall of Fame and also earning your very own day, as proclaimed by Mayor G.)
Preening promotions, however — oozing a Wrongdoers-Answer-To-Us bravado — will be, in the long term, a ticket to ridicule and rejection from viewers. Too many other options are knock-knock-knockin’ on their iPads, iPhones — iEverything — in this madly spinning mediaverse.
We strut at our own risk.
Given that fact, humility is wiser than hubris.
Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.
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