Random As Rhyme

A week or so ago my dad gave me two tickets he had mailed to him for “Tv-Preview”. He’s not really the type that goes to things so he figured at least 2 of them should go to use rather than  wasting the whole four. TV preview was the oppurtunity to watch two pilots of a tv show before they hit they air. They toted it as me being able to help choose the next shows that end up on the air. Sounded pretty sweet.

The event was held in the bottom floor of a local hotel and upon arriving you had to give your tickets and state whether or not you were from a media agency. If you said no you got in and received a sealed package with paper.

If you said yes you got tarred and feathered… actually I don’t know what happened no one said yes but lets assume you would have been tarred and feathered.

One part of the package  was market research, you had to circle your  favorite shampoo out of a bunch of images of shampoos for example, and the other we were not allowed to open until the show started because it contained questions that the MC had to ask you about the show and without the questions the answers just didn’t make any sense.

I was expecting the tv’s  to be pretty high quality and the atmosphere to be movie like but it wasn’t at all. The tvs were just ok  and the  chairs kind of sucked, this was  explained by the fact  that when they used to do these previews in movie theaters the results were all skewed since most people like that is played in a movie theater just because of the size of the  screen comfort of the chairs and the sound.

We got to watch two shows, one drama and one comedy, before we watched the shows we had pilots explained to us. A pilot is a test episode of a particular show shot in the way they wanted it to look at that time. The idea is to show this to a network and audience to positive reviews and get it picked up for national broadcast. However not all shows are picked up right away, for example 90210 was shelved for 10 years before being taken  down re shoot and re worked into the hit it became.

So these shows were dated as hell reminiscent of watching the christian channel or retro tv, the first show was called “Soulmates” it was about two people connecting in present life who both thought they had been lovers in their previous life. Honestly it was pretty stupid, really stupid actually, its a show I would have never watched it. It was on the lovey dovey side except the chemistry was really bad, it had two interesting points though the first was that the lead actor was young Robert Kneeper (aka T Bag from Prison Break) and the lead actress never wore a bra. Other than that it was pretty snooze worthy.

After this first show we had to answer some questions about whether or not we liked it, if we thought the tittle worked, how was the on stage chemistry etc etc.  Then some prizes were drawn and we had to cirlce more products we would use over others.

The second show, the  comedy, was called Dads and while it was not terrible I think for it to really be funny you had to be a parent. It had one of the lesbians from Friends in it and some guy who was a less talented Tony Danza, oh and one of the Golden Girls as a German day car camp teacher. All in all I enjoyed it more than the first but it was fairly old as well.

After this there was more of the same answering of questions and what not. The whole expireance wasn’t terrible but was not near what I expected either. I thought I would be watching something new and cool that would give me bragging rights when it got on tv but really I just did a bunch of market research for shampoo companies and watched so so television. That being said I would probably do it again because it was free and I am a sucker!

Tags: Dads, Soulmates, TV preview, Tv screening expireance