Super Bowl Ads Get 'Mental Engineering' on PBS
February 1, 2002

Super Bowl postgame analysis this year won't be confined to passing and tackling but will cover promoting and selling as well.

"Super Commercials, a Mental Engineering Special" will be broadcast after the game on most PBS stations, including KCET-TV in Los Angeles. The half-hour program, derived from "Mental Engineering," a round-table panel show hosted and produced by John Forde, seeks to deconstruct commercials, how they are supposed to work psychologically and their cultural influence.

Forde, based in St. Paul, Minn., originated the show on cable access; he will be joined by a communications professor, a computer scientist, "Talk Soup" host Aisha Tyler and comedian Lizz Winstead, co-creator of "The Daily Show." Evaluating Super Bowl commercials has become an annual event, but not quite in the way "Mental Engineering" approaches it. Beyond the somewhat lofty goal of helping people decipher the messages that bombard them and not "live through some contrived sense of corporate identity," Forde sees the show as a means to bring viewers in their 20s and 30s to PBS and "create a new audience for public television."

"Kids watch PBS until they're 6," he said, "and then they go away until they're 50."

Brian Lowry

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Last modified: February 01, 2002