TV Sponsorship

The same could be said with Gilette Soccer Saturday. Wilkinson Sword Soccer Saturday doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

3 had a terrible roster of stings that featured a comedian (Spencer something IIRC) delivering a little bit of observation on a makeshift stage to lukewarm canned laughter. They got very tiresome very quickly and were eventually replaced with a very simple white screen that said "3 - Sponsors Original Comedy".

The Fosters ones aren't the worst but they are tiring. Sometimes they don't consider just how often they're played out, considering Channel 4 is probably the biggest comedy channel on terrestrial television.

The Fosters ones are terrible. (And bloody Fosters! )

Which? on Dave at weekends is just baffling. I wonder how much brands really get out of this kind of "weekends on XXXXX" sponsorship, or do they just pick it up dirt cheap and decide any tiny piece of extra awareness is better than nothing?

In Australia it will be sponsor billboards where a voiceover would say "this programme is brought to you by..."
The closest thing to this in Australia would have been these movie tie-in idents:






Also similar to the "Channel sponsored by" idents would be sponsor tie-in idents.

In my country (back in late 2000s), NTV7 and TV3 Kids (the children's programming strand on one of my country's TV stations) would air their edit of one upcoming movie trailer to include their station logos in form of "Hidden Mickey" (the logo would appear at a random place every few seconds).

Or..

Having to put the "proud sponsor" is a recent trend in Australian TV.

I wonder why Australian sponsorship stings never name the programme being sponsored. As we see, it's always "This programme is (proudly) sponsored by.." not "Home and Away is sponsored by...".

The amount of sponsorship captions in the end credits of Aussie shows could be as many as six to eight (airlines, hotels, removals, etc). Originally ITV left these in until in the mid 80s it became apparent they were too strong an advertisement - it's rumoured that people even set up businesses with the same names as the familiar Aussie chains seen advertised at the end of Sons and Daughters etc. Noticeable jumps and fades to and from black started appearing in the end credits of Prisoner, Young Doctors etc on UK television prompting some viewers - yes, people I know - to ask "why do you never play the full closing theme?"

I'm grateful we in the UK have never had the hosts of quiz shows and light entertainment programmes actually doing commercials mid-show. In some countries they would step to one side after a game show round or after chatting to a guest, look the viewer in the eye and tell him or her that Alka Sektzer really was the best thing for a hangover.

Australia's In Melbourne Tonight with the late Graham Kennedy often made the ad into a feature of the show - someone would bring on a dog and see which bowl of food he would choose - "Prince prefers Pedigree Chum, so will your dog!" Nauseating!!

Mind you, I do find an abundance of sponsorship stings within a show, before the weather, travel, pollen count etc to be just as annoying. It noticeably interrupts the flow of the programme at times.

On a US radio station i listen to in Houston they do this a lot. The hosts stop being themselves and begin to read an entire promotion out before getting back to the programme or crossing over to travel news etc.

This happens in Talksport football commentaries over here - there'll be a 20-second long promo read out for a sponsor. There's an occasional variant on LBC where there'll be a promo for a sponsored show which is read from a script (the only time I've heard it is when James O'Brien does it and it's obvious he's reading it from a script and not putting effort in.)

The Fosters "money never sleeps" bumper must have been used for at least nine months, I am absolutely sick of the sight of it. The best thing about Catastrophe is that C4 consider it a drama and they don't sponsor it.

As you say, the 3 ones were fantastically bad, the comedian was Spencer Jones who is a regular on the circuit and was in Upstart Crow last year (as the character who was a parody of Ricky Gervais). It was terrible observational comedy that was always going to look ridiculous next to proper comedy, and as you say they seemed to abandon it quite quickly without any proper bumpers to replace them, just the logo on a blank screen. Grolsch used to sponsor C4 comedy as well for a while.

Twenty years ago Cockburns Port used to sponsor all ITV's comedy, including the Comedy Awards and the Audiences Withs and anything else that came up. That also included the first series of Cold Feet but it was an appalling match, it was some Marquess of Bath-style comedy posh bloke causing chaos in a stateley home, which looked ridiculous alongside the modern and subtle comedy of Cold Feet. Around the same time of course Becks sponsored all of C4's drama but after a few weeks of Queer as Folk they decided it was getting too explicit and withdrew it, to general derision.



Yes, Absolute used to do that when they had Premier League coverage until last season, and when Barry Davies did a couple of matches for them last season, it sounded very odd him reading out the Sky Sports promos.

And, of course, "Welcome to Bologna with Capital Gold for San Marino vs England, brought to you in association with Tennants Pilsner, brewed with Czechsolvakian yeast for that extra Pilsner taste, and England are one down!"

I can remember being younger and Channel 5 having similar movie tie in idents during their 'five' era. I'll try and see if I can find some because there's one in my mind where the characters were playing with the logo or something.