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Last Minute Bailout (1/18/99)
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Uh-oh, what's this? Just when we thought we'd actually have a reason to watch the Super Bowl this year (we lean more towards the basketball end of the sports spectrum), suddenly it all comes tumbling down around our ears. Faithful viewers will recall that Super Bowl XXIII, scheduled for a week from Sunday, was to include Apple's first commercial during that event since its "Lemmings" spot aired way back in 1985. (In 1984, of course, Apple aired its teaser for the Macintosh, directed by Ridley Scott and held by some to be one of the greatest commercials ever made.) But according to Advertising Age, Apple is pulling out at the last minute.
There isn't much information available on why Apple's decided to bail, but Fox is definitely looking for another advertiser to purchase Apple's slot. (AtAT would buy it up, but we're just a little short on cash these days.) So why the sudden change of heart? Is a particular product not yet ready? If that's the case, then might the planned commercial have featured QuickTime 4.0, which was expected at the recent Expo but now might not surface until next month? That seems like a pretty narrow focus for Apple's first Super Bowl commercial in fourteen years, so we doubt it. But something big was planned, and something happened-- or didn't happen-- to sour the deal.
Poor, poor us; Apple watchers who felt ripped off when Apple didn't advertise on last year's event thought we were finally going to see a firm declaration that the Mac is back. Sure, profits, sales, and market share are on the rise, and great new products like the iMac and the new G3's tell the story-- but a Super Bowl ad would have crystallized those points and made it known all across the world. Guess it's time to start waiting for next year. Perhaps a Mac OS X unveiling?
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SceneLink (1274)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 1/18/99 episode: January 18, 1999: If anyone knows why Apple suddenly decided to pull its commercial from the Super Bowl, no one's talking. Meanwhile, that may have been a MacMate sneaking in a cameo appearance on The X-Files, and Microsoft's next Windows release slips ever further into the future...
Other scenes from that episode: 1275: The Truth Is Out There (1/18/99) Fans who have been tuning in to AtAT for any length of time know that the AtAT staff are big fans of The X-Files, and, like most longtime fans of the show, we were blown away by last Sunday's episode, which finally marked a return to the dark conspiracy theories of previous seasons instead of the "X-Files Lite" flavor that has characterized most of the season so far... 1276: Tick, Tick, Tick... (1/18/99) So far, it hasn't been a very good year for Microsoft. The beleaguered software giant continues to fight legal battles on all sides, and public opinion (at least the media's public opinion) seems to be waning fast...
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