DISNEY CONCEDES TO DEMOGRAPHICS

The Hack in the Hat

Orlando (WPI) - After thirty years of broadcasting Monday Night Football, ABC Television finally conceded that it had badly misread the demographic profile of football fans.

In an astonishing concession to the ABC Marketing Department the network last night presented a new opening to Superbowl XL abandoning its traditional “Are You Ready fo Some Football” musical extravaganza, featuring the inimitable Hank Williams Jr, in favor of an animated “Cat in the Hat” intro starring the scruffy but lovable Harrison Ford.

Many media observers were shocked.

“Regardless of their IQ’s, there has been a standard used for years to describe the average football fan. Why Disney decided to change it now is a mystery,” said Len Mesummoni, publisher of Advertising Age magazine.

“Beer guzzling, truck driving, vomit spewing, costume-wearing, crazy men who throw twelve dollar cups of beer on each other and scream like lunatics whenever a camera comes near- why would Disney want to mess with that?” wondered Les Guile, CEO of ad agency, The Great Northern Rip-Off Company.

Other experts see the change as long overdue.

“The NFL is desperate,” said advertising guru, Telly Anilye of the Sheersheep Group, “You saw that pathetic ad they ran with all the children, little girls for God’s sake, sitting around watching professional football! These people are terrified that their normal demographic of middle-aged male alcoholics is aging out. They believe that the drunken party scene epitomized by Hank Williams is not doing anything to develop the next generation of viewers. That’s why they went with the Cat-In-The-Hat approach.”

““Look it can’t hurt them, “ said Ima Overuall, Distinguished Professor of Communications at Emerson College, “Disney owns every animated character created since 1930 so whatever they do is some form of crass cross-marketing. This is no exception. Most of their older male drunk viewers know the Cat-in-the-Hat from childhood so it strikes a familiar, sentimental cord with them. Younger audiences know the name from the Mike Meyers’s abomination. These diverse audiences both feel aligned with the piece, though exactly how ABC thinks it can translate or trick the younger Cat-In-The-Hat fans into the “NFL experience” fans escapes me. The only commonality is that both groups have the same IQ.”

The Hollywood Insider magazine reports today that Harrison Ford has been forced to delay production of his new film, “Pathetic,” until cast and crew learn to control themselves better. Denying reports that he was drunk when the intro was filmed Ford released a statement today through his publicist.

“I thought the piece was cute. It was cool. The reports of my professional suicide are greatly exaggerated! Ha, ha!?”

In a related Superbowl story, post game analysis showed that of the female sideline announcers Suzy Colbert scored almost twice as high in fan recognition as Latoya...whatever.