Television Ads

Television ads for Hiram Walker's ready-to-drink Kahlua cocktails will air on selected cable and broadcast stations this week, a trade publication reported. Brandweek said the spots will air nationally on USA Network and Comedy Central and on unspecified broadcast stations. Kahlua becomes the latest brand to test reaction to hard liquor ads, which have been denounced as potentially harmful to children by some government leaders, including President Clinton.

The alliance between Los Angeles mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel and the Department of Water and Power workforce strengthened Wednesday as a committee run by leaders of the utility's main union launched TV advertising to buttress her candidacy just as she reduces her own spending on television ads. Working Californians to Elect Wendy Greuel, a committee controlled by the union's leadership, bought about $500,000 worth of TV airtime over the next...

Merck & Co. and Schering-Plough Corp. suspended television ads Tuesday for the cholesterol pills Vytorin and Zetia after a study questioned the benefit of the medicines. The Vytorin commercials were among the most widely aired drug ads, featuring people dressed as food items to show the pill lowers cholesterol from food as well as from genetics. The ads were voluntarily and temporarily halted, Schering-Plough spokesman Lee Davies said.

Eric Garcetti's first television ad of the runoff campaign for mayor of Los Angeles touts his record on revitalizing neighborhoods and promises more job training and basic services if he is elected. The 30-second ad by the city councilman comes less than four weeks before his May 21 election showdown with City Controller Wendy Greuel. The ad shows scenes of a rehabilitated Hollywood, farmers markets and Garcetti speaking to constituents. A narrator says the councilman has led improvements in Hollywood, Echo Park, Atwater Village and Silver Lake and made his district "No. 1 in job growth in L.A. while lowering violent crime.

The Democratic National Committee will open a new front today in the air war over President Clinton's economic plan, targeting television ads at states where Democratic senators are wavering in their support of the package. Committee officials said the 30-second television ads will start running in Arizona, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Nevada--states where Democrats hold seven of the eight Senate seats. The ad is also running in Washington, D.C.

Upping the ante in an already costly race, the California Republican Party has purchased broadcast television advertising time to help the struggling reelection campaign of Rep. James Rogan (R-Glendale) against state Sen. Adam Schiff, the Democratic challenger from Burbank. The state party has purchased about $1.3 million in ad time on four L.A.-area broadcast stations for issue-oriented messages designed to boost GOP contenders including Rogan and Rep. Steven T.

Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Bradley on Friday purchased nearly $1 million worth of television ads for January in Iowa, when caucuses there will kick off the nominating process. Experienced political strategists said that it is unusual to buy such a large block of advertising so many weeks in advance, especially because air time is readily available in January after the holidays. Moreover, campaigns usually don't like to tip their hands and reveal strategy so soon.

After becoming an issue in the presidential race, the American Civil Liberties Union has begun airing television commercials to try to correct what it believes is a misunderstanding of its work, some of which involves getting new trials for criminals. It is an issue of particular importance to the presidential campaigns in California, which are fighting over a group of conservative Democrats for whom the crime issue has been a high priority in recent state elections.

The most archetypal American small town in Los Angeles County may be El Segundo, with its neighborly mid-century vibe. Visitors arriving on Main Street pass stately brick-and-stone El Segundo High School, a popular filming location, before encountering a large wooden directory erected by the Kiwanis Club that lists the city's 11 churches. Around the corner at Wendy's Place Cafe, there are framed jigsaw puzzles of Saturday Evening Post covers drawn by Norman Rockwell hanging on the paneled wall above the milkshake machine.

Volkswagen of America Inc. will unveil new print and television ads for the second-generation New Beetle during a news conference today in New York City. The advertising industry has been waiting to see how the campaign, designed by Boston-based Arnold Advertising, stacks up against now-legendary ads that New York agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (now DDB Needham Worldwide) created for the original Bug during the 1960s.

When I heard that a national law to ban loud TV commercials had taken force in December, I was skeptical. Why did we need a Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM), I wondered, when more urgent issues demanded action? There were nations to invade, marriages to prohibit, guns to enshrine. Loud commercials were just an itch - to scratch it would be like trying to pay the mortgage and replace a burned-out light bulb. If we can ignore global warming, we can ignore loud commercials.

Wendy Greuel launched the first TV ad of the mayoral runoff election on Monday, a 30-second cable spot about her support for new gun control measures. The ad nods at Greuel's personal experience with gun violence, including a 1992 murder-suicide involving two employees at a San Fernando Valley building supply store owned by her family. Greuel's rival, Eric Garcetti, faced fresh questions about how much his mayoral bid has intruded on his duties as a city councilman. Garcetti has missed 10 of the 12 Los Angeles City Council meetings since he came in first in the March 5 primary.

In her first television ad in the runoff for mayor or Los Angeles, Wendy Greuel describes how gun violence has affected her and other Americans and promises Angelenos, “I'll work so this never touches your life.” Greuel uses the 30-second spot, due to begin running Monday on cable television, to pledge more mental health services and “a partnership with parents and police to keep guns and gangs out of schools.” By raising the issue in...

Mayoral candidate Kevin James clawed his way into the thick of the race for mayor of Los Angeles, but a harsh TV ad last month turned off twice as many voters as it won over, according to a USC Price/Los Angeles Times online survey. That reaction contrasts strongly with viewers' feelings about more upbeat ads for front-runners Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel, the survey found. The James ad, financed by the independent group Better Way L.A., blames the three sitting politicians running for mayor - City Controller Greuel, Councilman Garcetti and Councilwoman Jan Perry - for the city's "loss of services, crumbling streets" and "bankruptcy.

Emanuel Pleitez is running for mayor. But at this moment, he is jogging for mayor - in sneakers and baby-blue athletic shorts down a sidewalk in Reseda. By all accounts, the lanky former tech company executive is a long-shot candidate. He is fifth in the polls and has raised only nickels compared with the top contenders in the Los Angeles race. Many voters don't even know his name. But Pleitez, 30, is an optimist, and his thinking goes like this: If people just get the chance to meet him, they might vote for him. So in the days leading up to Tuesday's primary election, he is running 100 miles across the city in a grueling effort to introduce himself to as many of them as possible.

With the Los Angeles mayoral primary a week away, an aggressive mail campaign by Jan Perry has helped push her into a three-way fight with Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti for two spots in a May runoff. From the start, Garcetti and Greuel have seen each other as the chief competition. But Perry's steady attacks via mailers - she lacked the money to advertise heavily on TV - have made her, at the very least, a credible threat to Greuel, the city controller. The race remains highly fluid, with many voters still largely unfamiliar with the candidates days before the election.

The governor's race hit the airwaves in earnest this week, with three new television ads from Democrat Kathleen Brown and two from Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. The recent crop of commercials shifts the debate from the summer's hot issue--crime--to the economy and education, and both campaigns are trying something unusual: spots targeted at a particular region.

Less than a month before the election, the cash-poor campaign to defeat California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two other Supreme Court justices unveiled Tuesday its long-awaited media strategy--a $900,000 statewide blitz that campaign officials insist is affordable even though they have less than $500,000 on hand. The television and radio campaign, starting more than a month after Bird launched her own series of television ads, focuses on the court's record in death penalty cases.

Outside campaign committees affiliated with two powerful city employee unions have spent more than $2.2 million on their bid to make Los Angeles City Controller Wendy Greuel the city's next mayor, according to Ethics Commission records posted Saturday. Working Californians, which is heavily backed by the Department of Water and Power union, reported spending an additional $770,000 on Greuel, much of it for campaign commercials. That brings the group's total to $1.65 million - money that has also gone toward billboards, pollsters and campaign consultants working on Greuel's behalf.

Republican Kevin James received two significant boosts Friday to his long-shot bid for Los Angeles mayor: the endorsement of former Mayor Richard Riordan and the first of nearly $400,000 in television ads purchased by a committee backing his campaign. Political observers say the developments could improve James' standing in the March 5 primary, but some questioned whether they would be enough to counter the city's heavy Democratic tilt. "It increases his prospects and puts him credibly in the ballgame to make the runoff … and it makes the race more interesting," said Allan Hoffenblum, a former GOP strategist and publisher of the nonpartisan California Target Book, which handicaps legislative races.