Do Adults Want Little Cartoons?

That seems to be the thinking behind a couple of TV promos right now.  First, I noticed that the USA show “Psych” offers viewers the animated adventures of the two protagonists from the show as kids.  It’s kind of like the Muppet Babies.  These cartoons are chopped up and played in pieces during the actual commercial breaks of the show.   You can also watch them on the site but, as is sadly often the case, they are not embeddable or directly linkable.

Now, AdRants has news that the Courtney Cox/FX series “Dirt” is doing its own animated promos:

“To help kick of Courtney’s Cox’ second season of Dirt on FX, recently launched design and production company Arsenal created six animated “vignettes of Hollywood stars and celebutaunts caught in the act of wild, unbecoming behavior.” Each vignette is finished off with witty commentary from Courtney Cox.”

These are more standalone promos, and use what looks like a cheap knockoff rotoscoping technique (ala “Waking Life”).

The question is whether or not shows that are pretty much geared to the “grown-up” set really get a lot from promoting their shows with animation.

MTV needs a reality check

A post over at NewTeeVee discusses MTV likely embracing of the NBC-sponsored (I believe) web-video portal Hulu and their dislike of YouTube.  Not much to the whole piece, except for this total gem:

““YouTube without us — what is there?” added Courtney Holt, executive vice president of digital music and media for MTV Networks’ Music & Logo Group. “Even without Viacom it’s still driven by professional content, it’s not cats chasing string.” That comment might not be popular with the YouTube crowd, who’d have things like Smosh’s 100-million-plus total views to prove their point. ”

Honestly, Viacom could remove every single video that even had a whiff of copyright violation and it wouldn’t even make dent in YouTube’s viewership.  It is a classic example of a large media executive complete misunderstanding this brave new world.

If I were in charge at MTV I’d serious consider finding a replacement for Ms. Holt. Pronto.