One of the cardinal sins commercial TV often commits is using news and current affairs coverage to promote other shows on the same channel.
This is getting more and more shameless every year. It’ll sometimes earn a smackdown from Media Watch if MW’s having a slow week. (What’s even more galling is when other media outlets report this as if it’s news - Big Brother is world champ in this regard.)
The SMH, lately, has been doing a fair bit of the same. For instance, the website on Saturday usually includes a “news” story that is a preview of the stories in Good Weekend that you’ll only get if you buy the dead-tree paper. And then there’s today’s story about how the Herald is running a new ad campaign. Wow, now that’s newsworthy. I’m sure all the other papers will be covering it too.
The campaign uses cartoon characters very nicely designed by Jon Burgerman to “change perceptions about the masthead’s readers”. You can find out more about these super-quirky characters and read their Myspace-ripoff profiles at www.interestingcreatures.com.au.
It doesn’t take you very long, though, to work out who are the new generation of readers the Herald is targeting: hip twenty- and thirtysomethings who view themselves as quirky and alternative by dint of having seen a Michael Moore movie once and having said something snooty about reality TV.
In other words, not all Herald readers drive Volvos - some of them are fucking wankers.
