Commercial blitzkrieg

OUT, DAMNED SPOTS! Between 1/12 and 3/2, advertisers will spend an estimated $1.5 billion for airtime on the seven big TV shows of the winter season, The New York Times reports. Those programs are the Golden Globes (1/12), the AFC and NFC Championship games last Sunday, the Grammys this Sunday; Super Bowl XLVIII (2/ 2), the Winter Olympics (2/7-23) and the Oscars (3/2). This explosion of event television tends to be watched live by a higher percentage of people than series TV, which a large percentage of viewers pre-record, fast-forwarding through the commercials. By contrast, on these shows the commercials themselves are a draw, with people conditioned by Super Bowl viewing conditioned to be on the lookout for inventive spots like the football-themed Beats Studio headphones campaign that was broken out during the NFL postseason. The challenge for advertisers is how to stand out amid the ocean of high-end competition; the Winter Olympics telecasts alone will contain as much as 5,500 minutes of advertising. So, do you plan to watch the Grammys in real time in hopes of seeing what the marketers have cooked up to debut during the show, or will you prerecord it and skip the commercials? (1/24a)