by I saw this story today on the Huffington Post and couldn’t believe it was possible (headline: NBC President Mocks Writers, Strike In Upcoming ‘My Name is Earl’ Commercial), but then I saw the attached video. Yikes. What is Jeff Zucker thinking exactly? Especially since they uploaded the video early on NBC.com. Oh. Wait a second. I know exactly what he’s thinking? Clicks, clicks, clicks, equals $ in the bank, courtesy of ad-within-the-ad from eSurance. Oh no. I just helped Zucker out a bit. I met Jeff Zucker last November at Carolines during the New York Comedy Festival — he acted very wary around me because I’m a journalist, but his wife Caryn Zucker couldn’t have been nicer. So I suppose I’ll post the video, too, and let you be the judge.
UPDATED! Nikki Finke got the show’s creator, Greg Garcia, to acknowledge it was his idea.
The key quotes are, as indicated already elsewhere, these two zingers…
1) "It’s right here on NBC.com, where you can watch all of your favorite shows, preferably within the first 17 days." If you watch within 17 days, no extra cost. After 17 days, the writers get online residuals.
2) "Earl gets hit by a car, just like he did in the pilot episode. Writers
refer to that as a ‘callback.’ I call it getting paid twice for writing
the same thing." Zucker’s going for a joke. Yes. But it’s at the expense, again, of the writers. Hmmm.
If you dug further, you would find out that the writers of Earl wrote this piece for Zucker and asked him to do it. This wasn’t his idea or NBC marketing.
That’s why I questioned it to begin with in the headline. I certainly didn’t think it was Zucker’s idea, and the way the spot is written sounds as if the writers had a hand in it. And if creates some buzz, all the better for the show, right?