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With the Fall television season kicking off, networks are trying new and exciting ways to distinguish their shows from the others in a crowded marketplace. Blogging.la's Will Campbell came across an ad in Entertainment Weekly (fun fact: if you ignore those renewal notices, they eventually stop sending you new issues, thus freeing up your bathroom time for the consumption of actual literature!) for NBC's My Name is Earl that was so effective in its attention-grabbing mission that it demanded immediate destruction:

Personally, I'm a fan of Jason Lee and perhaps his new show will rock enough to get me to tune in and/or Tivo it. But I seriously doubt it. Especially after having my page-flipping Sunday evening solitude so entirely disrupted when I came to this ad and turned past it only to jump at the loud sound of Jason's voice coming from straight outta nowhere and telling me "My name is Earl! Do good things and good things will happen to you! It's called Karma!" I quickly ascertained that the voice was not from inside my head but rather inside the page via a small speaker wired to a small pressure sensitive circuit board embedded in it. My first thought was "cute" followed by "man that's a lotta dough and a hard sell," and one that I wasn't buying.

Trouble was when I turned the next page Jason piped up again. "My name is Earl! Do good things and good things will happen to you. It's called Karma!" And again with the next page. And again. After the fourth "My name is Earl" I backtracked to the offending page ripped it out of the mag and then tore the guts out of it (pictured after the jump) to shut good ol' Jason the fuck up and that's where my true flabbergast set in.

They're doing such amazing things with technology these days! We never thought we'd live long enough to see a microchip advanced enough to properly capture NBC's desperation in digital form. After the third or fourth hammer blow, the ad bleats, "Come oooon! Friends is never coming back, asshole, so you might as well check out our new show."