CanWest News Service and Ottawa Citizen

TV messages captivate viewers with pop-culture treasure hunts

March 1, 2006
Byline: Misty Harris

With secret codes in commercials and hidden messages and imagery on
prime-time TV shows, the boob tube has become the new frontier for
pop-culture treasure hunters.

Like the video game and DVD industries before it, TV is leveraging the
power of ``Easter eggs'' embedded content not readily visible to casual
viewers to attract and sustain today's fickle audience.

``Part of what we're seeing here is the industry playing on the public
fascination with subliminal messages,'' says Glenn Sparks, professor of
communication at Purdue University.

``Hollywood knows the more deeply involved people become in these
programs, the more likely they are to come back and the more likely they
are to talk about it, which is going to translate to increased ad
revenues.''

ABC's Lost is setting the bar for concealed content. Every episode
features blink-and-you-miss-them visual treats recent examples include a
cloud of smoke that, when frozen and enlarged, revealed images of
deceased characters, and a plane crash perceptible exclusively to
viewers watching in high-definition.

The NBC sitcom My Name is Earl also plays to those with HD, though its
Easter eggs are largely innocuous. An episode featuring a mayoral
campaign, for instance, depicted a placard in the corner of the screen
reading, ``Carl Hickey Loves High Def'' which couldn't be viewed on
analog screens.

``What we're seeing is primarily a function of increased competition in
the marketplace,'' says Sparks. ``Television is, in a sense, fighting
back (against the Internet and gaming) by transforming into a more
interactive medium.''

Toby Miller, editor of the journal Television & New Media, says the
trend can also be interpreted as part of an industry effort to achieve a
return on investment for expensive HD broadcasts.

``There's a desperate attempt to push consumers to make a decision to
buy into this new technology,'' says Miller.

``The hook is to get cult viewers turned on by having a competition
amongst themselves: `Wow, did you see that special encrypted message that
explains what's going on but you have to be in-the-know to find it?'''

Small-screen Easter eggs have proven successful enough that TV
advertisers are now trying their hand at them.

In what's being touted as the ``first-ever documented case of a hidden
message in a national advertisement,'' Kentucky Fried Chicken's latest
commercial conceals a secret code that can be exchanged online for a
discount coupon. To see it, the ad which runs through March 3 must be
replayed frame-by-frame with a digital video recorder or VCR.

``It's not about the discount; it's about being a player,'' explains Tim
Blackmore, professor of media studies at the University of Western
Ontario.

``Never, ever underestimate the amount to which people want to
participate in their daily edutainment.''

Blackmore compares KFC's Easter egg to Tim Hortons' Roll Up the Rim to
Win promotion as a means of encouraging people to spend a few extra
seconds looking at something they would otherwise ignore. For Tim
Hortons, it's a cup; for TV advertisers, it's a commercial.

``Companies are the real prize-winners because they make sure you learn
what their messages are,'' says Blackmore.

According to pop-culture expert Charles Keil, the key is to create the
illusion of insider knowledge while simultaneously ensuring that
knowledge is accessible to outsiders.

``(Eggs) satisfy the coterie of cult viewers who pride themselves on
being more media savvy or culturally learned than the average person,''
says Keil, director of cinema studies at the University of Toronto.

``But you can't risk alienating the bulk of your audience ... No one
wants to feel like they have to be `in the loop' in order to follow
something.''