Tv Preview Scam
Soulmates and Dads T.V. Pilots
I was scammed this weekend. A relative offered me some tickets for a chance to attend a focus group by Tv preview to review upcoming tv pilots at the Radisson hotel here in Austin. When i got the tickets i was pumped ready to see the next "Seinfeld", "Friends", or at least something on par with "2 And A 1/2 Men". I wanted to be able to say i had a hand in the fate of an upcoming tv show whether it ended up successful or not. Boy was i wrong.
I knew something was fishy as soon as i walked in and heard their explanation. The first question i was asked was "Are you part of an ad agency"? I should have known right there something was up. The gentleman then preceded to tell me that we were gonna watch two pilots. He said one was with Kim Raver from 24 and it was a romance, mystery drama that was an hour show and then he said the second show was an half hour sitcom that was filmed about 10 yrs ago but the producer still owned the rights and he wanted to see our reaction to it so he can decide on what he should do with the material.
The second flag something was wrong was when he stated that we were going to watch the shows with commercials in it just like we do at home. First off I along with millions of others watch their shows with Tivo or Dvr and end up fast forwarding all the commercials. And the final flag was when we were told to open our folder and fill out a questionnaire circling our product choices that we truly want. There were things like favorite tuna, favorite oatmeal, shampoo, movies, jeans, toilet paper, etc..etc... Then they took up our choices booklet and pulled 3 winners from those. Each winner was going to get a sample pack of each one of their choices mailed to their house. After we watched the two pilots which ill get back to in a minute we filled out another choices booklet and they drew 3 more winners. So six people won out of an estimated 150+ that was there. They said it was 250 dollars worth of prizes so that would make the prizes value at about 42 bucks per person.
First off we watched the horrible, terrible, mystery drama "Soulmates" starring Kim Raver. It has this ridiculous plot about her character finding her soulmate which was some guy she was in love with back in the 40's and somehow they were reincarnated and met again. The show was a mess. It was confusing, cheap looking, and just plain boring. There was unintentional laughs throughout the show. I knew there was no way this show was going to make it as a primetime show. The second show we watched was that 10 yr old sitcom called "Dads". Believe it or not it was somewhat enjoyable. I could easily see this being a hit 10 yrs back when it was filmed. It kinda reminded me of a better version of "Full House". It starred Rue McClanahan as a teacher and Steven Eckholdt as the main single dad. It wasn't great by any stretch of the imagination but I could see how it could have made it at least a few seasons with its demographic back in 97. I was still wondering why this was being showed to us? Was the producer going to recast the show and try it again with enough positive reviews?
It finally clicked with me while we were filling out the questionnaire after the shows were watched. It was asking all about products and which ones we prefer and it lasted forever. I swear it was probably only 30 minutes long but it seemed to drag on for an hour. I had a feeling this whole evening was about the commercials and other products and nothing to do with the shows that we watched. After I got home I did research about Tv Preview and sure enough I found other people had the same suspicions. Apparently they have been showing Soulmates for years now knowing full well it wasn't going to ever air and they were just using it gauge our reactions to the commercials. We filled out the first prize packet before we watched anything and then the second packet after we watched the shows and commercials and they were probably checking to see if we were influenced by any of the commercials and changed our choices on the second packet. If I would have won a prize then maybe just maybe it was worth it but for the 144 plus people who didn't win we were just flat out scammed!