How’s this for odd media placement?

Guy who has his own cable-TV show comes onto your cable-TV show and calls you a slang term for a piece of male anatomy. A clip of that moment—also including his assertions that you, and others like you, are “hurting America”—gets widely circulated thanks to the Internet. In large part because of the clip, you are fired from your aforementioned cable show. But being a resourceful person, you find a new job at a competing network. And when it comes time to promote your new home, where do you decide to advertise? On the show of the guy who insulted you in the first place! It sounds unreal, but for the past two weeks, the bow-tied Tucker Carlson has been hyping his new MSNBC show, The Situation with Tucker Carlson, with ads running during The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. (What’s with all the withs, anyway?) Considering that most people who watch The Daily Show are probably aware of Stewart’s infamous appearance on Carlson’s Crossfire last year (and likely partisan to Stewart), I’m unclear on what Carlson’s producers are trying to accomplish with these ads. Unless, of course, the ads’ cheesy 1970s cop-show satire theme is meant to make Carlson look more like a doofus than Stewart did. If that’s the case, mission accomplished.

—Posted by Aaron Baar

July 19, 2005 | Permalink