AMC Continues to Ruin a Good Thing

So I hate to say this because I know everyone is annoyed by the whole "I-only-liked-it-before-it-was-popular" thing, but I'm really disappointed with AMC's "support" of Mad Men this season. It was one of my favorite shows last year and at first, I was excited it was getting so much buzz. Until AMC's PR machine went into overdrive and I suddenly saw Don Draper in EVERY SINGLE MAGAZINE-- from Spin to W to the most obscure daily. It was just too much saturation. To make matters way worse, the show has been pretty boring so far this season. They over promised and under delivered.

Still, a lot of people (me included) feel that a meh episode of Mad Men is better than a lot of other TV so we watch. And some of us, take the obsession into Twitter. And then AMC having annoyed people like me by PAYING millions of dollars for forced word of mouth, stupidly threatens legal action to squash actual word of mouth, ordering Twitter to kill these unauthorized profiles. This will likely become a go-to example of a big company that does not get how to leverage the social Web in any post, column and talk I give on the subject, so thanks for the material AMC. (Nice write up on it here too.)

It reminds me of the FX show "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"-- loved it the first season, then the network felt they had to add Danny DeVito to generate more viewers and respectability. It's not that he was bad, I just didn't care much about his character as it was written. (Although I loved his performance on the View...see tribute below) As Geoff said, it was wasted time that he'd rather spend watching the other characters. But at least FX leveraged MySpace to promote the show. Shame on you AMC!