Before NBC’s The Office hit the airwaves nine seasons ago, the folks of Scranton, Penn., were a little weary about a sitcom calling the coal-mining town home. After all, as the Scranton Times Tribune points out, the city had been the butt of jokes on All in the Family, Friends, and The Sopranos. The Championship Season, the 1973 Pulitzer winner for Drama about a high school championship team in Scranton that gets together 20 years later, doesn’t exactly leave theatergoers feeling like they want to rush off to visit the place.

Now, the series that focuses on the employees of the Dunder Mifflin paper company is coming to a close and Scrantonites seem to be pleased with how the series gave “a steady supply of residual pop culture cachet.” That cachet won’t come to an end when the series airs its final episode on May 16. It’ll fade with time, but Office love is probably at its peak in Scranton right about now, especially after the show’s cast members, writers and creative team paid a visit this past weekend as part of a big “Wrap Party,” Entertainment Weekly reports.

Along with them came about 10,000 fans who wanted to celebrate the legacy of the sitcom. The stars of the show were paraded through town, signed autographs with fans, sang old tunes to the adoring masses and sat through an extended Q&A.Continue reading...

Some 30-second blocks of Super Bowl airtime are being sold for as high as $4 million — a $500,000 increase from the top seller in last year's telecast, according to USA Today.

The research firm Kantar Media notes that the increase means that the price “is growing at three to five times the rate it did just a decade ago.” 

"No one is holding a gun to the heads of these advertisers," Jon Swallen, chief research officer at Kantar, told USA Today. "Clearly, these are price increases the market is willing to bear." Swallen said he thinks the first 30-seconds-for-$5 million Super Bowl deal could air in 2016.

Those tuning in for the cola giants and other brand marketers suiting up for Game Day are in luck: The number of in-game ads has been going up, Swallen said.

One of the brands shelling out that kind of dough is M&M's, which had a much-heralded spot in the last year’s Super Bowl. M&M's won’t release its commercial or details of the ad in advance, according to a press release. However, the ad is tied to a new "Better With M" spot and social campaign that launched this week.Continue reading...

Our most-read blog posts of the week includes Coca-Cola Pulling their White Can to Victoria's Sectret Fashion Show and more:

#1 Bad News, Bears: Coke Pulls Back on White Cans in Holiday Campaign to Save Polar Bear [Updated]

#2 Victoria's Secret: Getting CBS to Pay for Its Commercial, er, Fashion Show

#3 Sons of Anarchy Gangs Up With Brands For Online Store, App

#4 As NBA Lockout Ends, What's the Damage to Michael Jordan's Brand?

#5 Staples Takes Dunder Mifflin Brand Out of The Office

#6 Silence is Golden, But Not When It Comes to Silencers

#7 Viral Video Watch: Nokia and deadmau5 Create 3D Spectacle in London

#8 Will Occupy Black Friday Build on Buy Nothing Day?

#9 Have You (RED) The Latest About World AIDS Day?

#10 Lynx Apologizes with Video after "Degrading" Ad Gets the Axe

Fans of the American version of The Office can now host their own Office Olympics with official Dunder Mifflin boxes of paper.

While the fictional paper company Dunder Mifflin on the NBC TV series is struggling to compete with real-life office-supply chains like Staples, an online outlet owned by Staples (Quill.com) has licensed the Dunder Mifflin name from NBC's Universal Television in a bid to — wait for it — sell more copy paper. It's a deal that David Brent and Michael Scott would be proud to take credit for.Continue reading...