“Slow but steady wins the race”*…
Slow TV comes to the U.S…
TV viewers in Duluth, Minnesota had the opportunity to witness a record-setting premiere last Staurday: the world’s first thirteen-hour-long commercial– an ad for the the chain that Jon Stewart loves to hate, Arby’s.
The door of a smoker will open, the brisket will be placed inside, smoke will flow in, and for just short of 13 hours, the viewer will watch it smoke through a window. A small logo in the corner of the screen identifies Arby’s…
At 13 hours, the commercial will be longer than pre-game coverage of the Super Bowl (6½ hours), and not much shorter than Richard Wagner’s operatic “Ring” cycle (14½ hours)… Indeed, when the commercial passes the one-hour mark, it will have exceeded the Guinness World Record for longest TV commercial, currently held by Nivea…
The manager of My9, the Duluth station that aired the spot, reported that he got “a ‘ton’ of media calls about the stunt—that is, six or seven.”
Read more here.
* Aesop
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As we proclaim “Out damned spot! Out, I say!“, we might recall that it was on this date in 1957 that Chuck Berry opened “Berry Land” (AKA “Berry Park”), an amusement park and resort built on his estate outside of St. Louis. The 30-acre complex had hotel rooms, a miniature golf course, a Ferris wheel, a nightclub, children’s barbecue pits, and a guitar-shaped swimming pool. The attraction closed in 1961, when Berry was convicted of a Mann Act violation.
