Hey, TLC! "Jon & Kate" Promotional Video Should Be Viral
No, I will not be watching tonight’s very special edition of “Jon and Kate Plus 8,” but as it has been so far in this season of this increasingly exploitative series, it’s a little hard to avoid its publicity, and the fact, that tonight, the once-happy-couple-with-the-eight-kids is going to make “an announcement.” The show’s teaser clip makes it clear that whatever the announcement is, Jon and Kate Gosselin sure aren’t going to be announcing they are expecting quadruplets.
But here’s the thing. This video is clearly promotional — i.e. intended to increase viewership of the show. Yet, YouTube has pulled down illicitly-uploaded copies, including one that The New York Post put on its heavily-trafficked gossip blog. Since YouTube tends to pull down videos only after copyright holders have complained, one can only assume that this is the work of TLC, the network on which the show airs. You can understand the network wanting to keep the wraps on the specifics of the big announcement, but this clip, purposely, reveals nothing. Therefore, the pulling of this clip looks like one great example of a company letting its lawyers do the decision-making, instead of first looking at what the objective of this piece of video is. When it comes to pushing this show — the highest-rated in TLC history — it’s obvious that TLC should just let this promo go viral.
Previous coverage of “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ on BNET Media:
(UPDATE: To no one’s surprise, the episode drew as many as 11 million viewers, handily beating its last record, of 9.8 million, for the season premiere. The bad news for TLC is that due to the couple’s “shocking” separation, it has to shelve the series for most of the summer.)
Catharine P. Taylor has been covering digital media and advertising for almost 15 years and is a frequent speaker at conferences about media and advertising. She posts daily to BNET Media, writes the weekly Social Media Insider column for Mediapost and also has her own advertising blog, Adverganza.com. Follow her on Twitter or subscribe to the BNET Media Twitter feed.
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