After Milwaukee TV viewers had to endure amateurishly produced commercials for a local lawyer featuring the Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers over the past couple months, there's finally something showing his more entertaining side.
Associated Bank has two TV commercials having some fun with Rodgers, offering him as a premium to an elderly character named "Edith."
The spots are entertaining and well-produced. And they show that Rodgers can have a laugh at his own status as one of the state's biggest celebs.
Here's the first commercial:
Here's the second spot with Rodgers:
The two 30-second spots are slick, quick and funny – and still sell the product, with the assistance of Rodgers. What else do you want?
Milwaukee's shrinking – and growing: The Arbitron Co., which provides radio ratings, has released its annual list of radio markets and what it terms the Milwaukee-Racine market is now the 38th largest market in the country, with an estimated population of 1,472,600.
In the 2010 list, we were 37th, with 1,453,300 people.
On the TV side, Nielsen Media Research's new list of markets shows Milwaukee has actually moved up one spot, to number 34, with 907,660 TV households in southeast Wisconsin.
On TV: The pre-roast hype tour by Charlie Sheen starts Thursday when he visits Jay Leno on NBC's "Tonight Show" at 10:35 p.m. Thursday on Channel 4.
- It's now unclear whether ABC News' Diane Sawyer will get an on-camera interview with Gabrielle Giffords. Adweek.com reports the wounded congresswoman is still undecided about whether to do it.
- Recently departed "Today" co-host Meredith Vieira will be a "special correspondent" for Brian Williams' (likely to be renamed before it premieres) "Rock Center" news magazine, debuting later this season.
- Sunday's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" season finale had its biggest audience in seven years (2.4 million viewers), while the "Entourage" series finale had the season's biggest audience (2.6 million), according to Nielsen.
Showtime jumpstarts Danes' new show: Showtime has posted the premiere episode of Claire Danes' new series "Homeland" on YouTube, to get people talking about the show, which doesn't join the regular schedule until Oct. 2.
Here's the full episode:
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
