More Commercial Alternatives

During Vh1's Fabulous Life of the Mega Rich, they had little pop-up comments. Mostly it was kinda dumb stuff like "get this look and save money by putting fake gold on your floor instead of real gold!" There was also a pop-up for Wendy's Threeconomics (their 99 cent menu) that related to the show just like the other pop-ups. Like I said, all the pop-ups were pretty cheesy and dull, but it was a new way to get their message noticed!
I've noticed that when E!'s The Soup goes to commercial, they put a twist on the usual "we're sponsored by McDonald's" thing. They somehow relate the company/product to a funny clip, so it's like it's part of the show, but it's promoting the sponsor.
During The Hills commercial breaks, the Sonic commercials feature the usual Sonic characters talking about The Hills and Sonic products. I love those Sonic characters, all their spots are funny. And I really love the way these ones tie-in to the show!
On The View they incorporated a commercial into the program in a really neat way. The ladies were talking, as usual, and somehow the conversation led Joy to begin telling a story. The story wound up to be about Hamburger Helper and at the end they showed the audience, and they all had Hamburger Helper hands!

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FX shows movies like this: movie for 10 minutes, commercials, movie for 10 minutes, commercials.... A 2 hour movie becomes 3 hours! (One example: Mr & Mrs Smith is 120 minutes but takes 3 hours on FX. I couldn't sit through it!) I avoid watching movies on FX, especially recent movies shown near primetime, I think it's worse then.

I love the way Fox does the commercial breaks for Fringe. They come fairly frequently, but are usually under 2 minutes and start with "Fringe will return in x [60, 90, etc.] seconds." It's just enough time to run to the bathroom or grab a drink from the kitchen or compare notes with whoever you're watching with. Not enough time to get bored and start flipping channels or doing something else. You may even just sit and watch the two commercials (and that's a good thing for the sponsors).

About a year ago, I watched a movie on one of the cable stations (like AMC or something), and they had a different way of presenting commercials. The commercial breaks were pretty normal, except for one thing: there was scrolling text along the bottom of the screen that related to the movie. Stuff like trivia about the movie's production, facts about things related to the movie, multiple choice questions about the plot, quotes from the director.... So you could be entertained throughout the break and never even think of changing the channel. While you would be distracted from the ads by the text, the fact is you would be staring at the screen, hearing only the commercial's audio. So it's good for the viewer, good for the sponsor.

I liked this way better than some of the other attempts at adding extras to movies on TV... Regular trivia and quizzes surrounding the commercials are rarely anything worth resisting the urge to "flip" for. There's the whole Dinner & a Movie and Movie & a Makeover thing on TBS. But come on, who really wants intermittent recipes with hosts no one really cares about? I do like when they play the special features from a DVD before/after the commercial breaks.