Syracuse is mecca of car dealer ads

[AMonFM]

The past few years, I've been 'fortunate' enough to spend the holidays in beautiful Oswego County. As those of you who know already, there's not a whole lot to do there except drink, fish and watch TV (for the adept, all at the same time).

The one thing that drives me bonkers is the amount of ad time sold to car dealers. Without exaggeration, 80% of local spots I saw on all local channels were from three area dealers (Fuccillo, Caprerra and some other goober selling used cars). Cripes, even Watertown had a wider variety of accounts airing.

Is there anybody still working TV sales in CNY? Or is there nothing else for sale in that town? .... even Los Angeles doesn't have that kind of saturation for car ads.

I feel sorry for the locals who have to sit thru the same 3 spots, multiple times an hour every hour. That only makes the TV stations out there look really pedestrian.

 

[anoldguy]

Guess you haven't seen Rochester TV lately. Three car spots in a row is the norm. Used to be they were at least seperatred by one spot.

 

[BobRoss]

I think in Syracuse, the main factor is Billy Fucillo. From what I hear, he negotiates a ridiculous cost-per-spot rate, but the total price he's willing to pay is just too lucrative for most stations to turn down. As a result, it's nearly impossible to turn on the TV or radio without coming across a Billy ad ---- and thus, every other game in town has to put on their own massive ad campaigns just to keep up. With all the car dealers demanding so much air time, there's barely any room left for others to get in on the action.

From a sales standpoint, it's great for the sales reps who have to do very little work. From a programming standpoint, it's terrible. Audiences get sick of hearing and seeing the same shtick over and over. Billy's obnoxious, and the wannabees trying to compete aren't much better.

Unfortunately, at most stations, sales overrules programming... very few stations have a sales manager or a GM who will see beyond the dollar signs and put their foot down to avoid alienating the audience. Even those that do say no to Billy often make an exception when he does his annual Hyundai sales drive in July.

But even on a Billy-less station, you've still got several other car dealers who still want to get on the air, and many of them have co-op money coming from the manufacturers, so it's nearly impossible to turn away that kind of business. There aren't many other clients who can bring the kind of bucks to the table that a car dealer has.

 

[jfc40ts]

Here in Buffalo we get "Billy'd to death" as well. There was something that 2 of the other dealers in the area did at one of the stations to counter it. They agreed to pay more than the usual rate if the station would agree to refuse Billy's commercials for one month. I believe it was a ratings month but don't know if any other stations were involved...

 

[The Voice of Reason]

Car Dealer Ads Are All Over The Place

Personally when these obnoxious car dealer ads appear on my TV screen I immediately hit the "mute" button on my remote; or I just change the channel.
What is kind of amusing is one Sunday morning, when "Vinnie" and his mini-skirt sales assistant came on to hawk their cars; I turn the channel and guess what? The same damn commercial was running on another station.
In my humble opinion the only decent car ad running on TV today is Auto Solutions.
No hype, no bimbos or ex-TV news anchors, just the owner.

 

[WaldoVista]

It was bad enough when the car commercials took up an entire local break, but now it seems like every dealership is going the half-hour infomercial route, often buying the same timeslot on multiple channels. So, if you don't have cable, your choices for TV viewing on any given saturday night are: Vinny, Vinny and Vinny.

Maybe it'd be better to go back to the days of sponorsed programming(Texaco Theatre anyone?), where at least we can get some entertainment or information in between car ads

 

[BobRoss]

Unfortunately, the fact that desktop video editing is now cheap and simple enough for almost anyone to get it and use it... combined with digital video cameras getting cheaper... means these ads will be more frequent (and probably worse) as dealers and other advertisers try to save a few bucks by skipping the big-money ad agencies.

Think of it... a dealer who once spent $10,000 on a series of really slick 30-second spots can now hire some less-experienced firm that can do some 30-second spots, one or two 30-minute infomercials, and come in a couple grand below the original $10,000. You don't need $25,000 switchers, $40,000 cameras, $60,000 CG's and $8,000 Betacam decks to make commercials anymore. A $1000 computer, $1000 camera and $600 (or even less) in software will do it all. Spit it out to a Mini DV tape or a DVD and your product is ready to go on TV.

With the savings on production, these clients can afford to buy a lot more airtime ... including those dreaded infomercial slots. Productions like Texaco Theatre worked back when the FCC limited how many minutes per hour could be spent on commercials. Back then, that was the only way to "own" an entire half-hour or hour of television. Now, clients can buy the entire 30 or 60 minutes for themselves... so they do.

If there's anyone to blame... it's the morons who sit there and watch this drivel, and then go buy the products. If people didn't call to buy the Ron Popeil knives and ham roasters or the "breakthrough" medicine/car wax/get-rich-quick book of the week, these companies wouldn't keep spending money on infomercials!