Hasta La Creative!

The NBC morning show will promote a book every four or five weeks, starting on Tuesday with “The Bone Season,” by Samantha Shannon.

The end of August means football season, and football season means ads for football audiences, which eventually leads to Super Bowl commercials. But before we go down the rabbit hole of beer spots, Subway ads, and…twins, we have an ESPN commercial promoting the actual games.

W+K New York handled the creative legwork for “It All Comes Down to Monday Night,” which shows Houston Texans defensive end/athletic monster picking up a fumble and thinking about how everyone is watching him on television. For comic relief, he starts to run down a checklist of some people named Kenny who could be watching: Ken Norton Jr., Ken Griffey Jr., Kenny Loggins (who makes a quality cameo). According to ESPN, there will be two more similar spots on the way as the regular season draws closer, so start thinking of celebrities with the same first name who might like to watch football.

Unfortunately, as much as ESPN would like you to believe that it all comes down to Monday night, the truth is that MNF has taken some hits in the ratings over the past few years. These goofy thirty-second spots always play with the same stringy background music, and even if a few of the quips make you smile, they always feel a little dated. Maybe the program could use a tune-up before “It All Comes Down to Monday Night” turns into “Ratings Come Down on Monday Night.”

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Fox Sports 1 appears to be the stiffest competition for ESPN because of the resources of its parent and ambitions of its chairman, but it has a long way to go to match the ESPN empire.

The future of TV is evidently here, and a new series of spots from 72andSunny for Samsung portray the typical American family coming to terms with the fact that they will forever be enslaved to the glowing rectangle in their living room, especially considering that it now hooks up to the Internet.

Yes, Samsung’s smart TV comes with a remote that turns the set on when you hold it up to your mouth like a microphone and say “Hi, TV.” Useless? Maybe, until you consider that crippling loneliness that most of us endure. It’s nice to be able to talk to someone sometimes, you know? Even if it is just a TV. A nice, friendly TV who you can tell your problems to and routinely greet.

Samsung is also offering an “Evolution Kit,” which you can stick on the back of your grandfather’s TV. Of course, being a total grandpa, gramps will inevitably turn the conversation into one about his hip. Silly grandpa! Always talking about his fake hip. What a total grandpa move. One more spot, which features the grandpa and the dad watching Star Trek, and credits follow after the jump.

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Men with comb overs look hapless. Little boys with comb overs look creepy. To see the difference, please watch the latest Jell-O television spot, appropriately titled “Comb Over.”

In the forty-five-second ad built by CP+B, a balding father whose depressing life resembles a deflated balloon schools his son on the importance of the little things, like a cup of Jell-O pudding. In turn, we see some surreal daydream where the son, still about six years old, goes through a day in the father’s life, only now he has a giant cone head and a comb over. If you ever wanted to know what the male offspring of Lord Voldemort and Francis Dolarhyde (Manhunter version, not Red Dragon) would look like, here you go. Is that not the definition of creepy, a little boy who somehow resembles two fictional psychopaths all because of a comb over? Still, the commercial’s surrealist twist manages to make it stand out in an otherwise standard concept. It’s almost sweet, if not for the whole hapless/depressing/pitying reaction that comes along with comb overs.

Credits after the jump.

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The men and women who steer six of the best TV dramas talk about the challenges of making a show in the Twitter age.

Nuance doesn’t do well on cable, so a topic as fraught as race often ends up being covered in cartoonish ways during signal events like the death of Trayvon Martin.

Investments in mythical kingdoms and alien invasions are paying off for Time Warner, which posted an 87 percent jump in income after it increased spending on original programming.

On the football field, Peyton Manning runs the Denver Broncos with a robotic efficiency fitting of a man with a giant, shiny forehead. His younger brother Eli roams the sidelines for the New York Giants with the mopey glare of a six-year-old who wants to pick his nose but can’t because cameras are watching. Usually, the funniest thing about the Manning brothers is that they’re so unfunny. They’re stiff and white. But every once in a while – don’t forget the acclaimed “Football Cops” – they unleash some comedy genius for a football-related commercial.

The newest addition to the Manning oeuvre is a fake R&B music video created by Grey for DirecTV and NFL Sunday Ticket. #footballonyourphone. Remember that hashtag. It’s going viral, because a company that deals with an incredibly popular sport got two huge stars to subvert their normal personalities and completely buy-in to a goofy campaign that could’ve been an abandoned Lonely Island digital short. In the first 12 hours or so after it hit Youtube, the clip reared in 100k views.

Everything about the spot is smart, right down to the tiny Archie Manning cameo and the best/worst hair design you’ll see this year until American Hustle, starring Bradley Cooper’s curled terribleness, hits theaters. Peyton may be known as the more gregarious of the two brothers, but Eli is a vastly underrated comedian in his commercials. He ends up stealing this show with some odd riffs on milk, blouses, and Alexander Graham Bell. Pay attention, brands: This is how you go viral.

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The five broadcast networks sold an estimated $9 billion worth of commercial time before the season starts, about the same or a little less than last year’s sales.