Sunday, January 11, 2009

Football Reloads

The experience of watching a football broadcast is not the same now that the two big product categories that for years paid for football on television, beer and pickup trucks, have fallen on hard times. There is still the occasional commercial for beer or a car, but not all game long the way it was three years ago.

Commercials for insurance, business software, weight loss programs, and mattresses helped fill the gaps, but these don’t necessarily have the same good-time, hard-hitting, rev-it-up feeling. The commercials can clash with the style of the game broadcast. If these are the new sponsors of football on television, the networks may have to come up with new music and graphics to better connect to the style of the commercials. Meanwhile, commercial directors will look for more energetic ways to tout the products they are now trying to sell during football games.

This may not be the most serious example, but it shows how one adjustment in the economy leads to other adjustments. It can take some time to get the new order to go together smoothly.