Grammy Awards on CBS

Watch another 30-minutes of television. Blog – Note the time, program and audience of whatever you watched. What did you notice about the ads? How were they catering to a given audience?

It is 8:00 P.M. Sunday night, but I'm starting whenever Lady Gaga quits singing. Putting the TV on mute enables me to notice the audience. There are two different audiences, anyone in the American public (ages 10-50) who listens to music and the live audience (ditto). It looks as if there may be over 10,000 people there. Lady Gaga quit singing, thank goodness, so I can turn the mute off. The host is making very simple jokes - clearly targeted to people who are really into seeing Lady Gaga perform in her 13450981034 costumes, because they would be the only ones deep enough into it already to laugh. Now the host is making some joke to his daughter about guitar hero and some old rocker dude having the high score in it even though he's never played it, and his daughter is playing along. More simple humor but they are effectively bringing together different generations. Useful for keeping the attention of families watching the Grammy Awards together. The host announced that Beyonce won the best song of the year award. This isn't just an observation of THIS award show, but the short speeches remind you who the audience is. Nobody wants to hear Beyonce's posse thank 5 million people. They keep the acceptance speeches short because people would rather see the presentations, performances, various celebrities, and more awards. It's all about keeping the audience focused, and that is why they move along at such a fast pace. The longest segments are the performances, and besides the fact that they are the most popular singers, they also use tons of different camera angles and lighting effects and dancers to create a mass chaos of movement. The noise of the live audience adds a subtle yet effective effect. The thousands of cheering people sends a message to the viewer that they should be watching it because all those people are so excited and enjoying it so much. The first ad is for some Lincoln car. Sure enough, they use a song, Major Tom, as the key part of their advertisement. Shots alter between the singers singing the song and video of the car driving in infinity. The next ad is a contacts ad, a very normal ad there. McDonald's showed an ad next for some burrito looking thing. There were three girls in the ad and a guy eating the food. As the guy walked by all the girls eyed him and they were all smiley and so was he. The message was clearly that McDonald's gets you the girls. Beyonce is now about to perform "If I were a Boy" and it's 8:30. Perfect timing.