Usually contestants on reality competition shows perform tasks like seeking spouses, racing around the world, eating bugs, losing weight, living in houses rigged with cameras and working for Donald J. Trump. A new series aired this week with a contest all its own: wooing advertisers to say yes to campaigns.

The series is “The Pitch,” after the pitch process by which agencies compete for assignments from marketers.

It's not as sexy aa Mad Men but as an ad man myself this reality show hit very close to home...in fact the show was so real it made me nervous.

“The Pitch” appears on the AMC cable channel, which is seeking to increase its offerings in the unscripted genre that include “Comic Book Men” and “Talking Dead,” a live talk show about its hit scripted series “The Walking Dead.”

“What we were looking to do” in the reality realm “was to tell stories, heavily character-focused,” to echo the channel’s scripted series, said Charlie Collier, AMC president and general manager.

“It wasn’t born out of ‘Mad Men’ at all,” he said. “It was born out of a moment that’s universal, when you have to come up with a great idea under pressure and sell it in, lay it all on the line for what you believe.”

In each of the eight initial episodes of “The Pitch,” two agencies face off to win a stand-alone contest to create a campaign, in 7 to 10 days, for a major marketer. The marketer, if it likes, can then transform the campaign into actual ads.

The eight marketers taking part include “Whozzat?” names like Clockwork Home Services, parent of companies like Benjamin Franklin Plumbing, along with familiar brands like Waste Management, Frangelico, Popchips and Subway (the subject of the sneak peek).

“We’ve done branded message integrations for a long time, with a fair amount of success,” said Tony Pace, global chief marketing officer at Subway, including “The Biggest Loser” and “Chuck.”

There are plans to run ads “later this summer,” he added, based on the winning presentation by — no, no spoilers here.

Another reason Subway agreed to participate, Mr. Pace said, was “a very good experience” appearing in an episode of the CBS reality series “Undercover Boss.”

Waste Management was also featured in an episode of “Undercover Boss,” which is produced by the same company as “The Pitch,” Studio Lambert.

“The Pitch” was “a very, very long journey,” said the United States president of Studio Lambert, Eli Holzman, who also worked on “Project Runway” for Miramax Television, because agencies were reluctant to be involved if “we showed confidential client process, real business up for grabs.”

“One day it dawned on me: What if we first lined up an enormous brand to look for an advertising agency?” he said, adding: “If we had the brand already, it would be a big incentive for the agencies to invite us into their world, and there would be no danger of offending current clients. That made the difference.”

Fifteen agencies agreed to appear, all of them small or midsize independent shops. (One, the Ad Store, competes in two episodes, so the total is 15 rather than 16.) Many larger, better-known agencies declined, worried about revealing the ingredients in their secret sauces; among them were BBDO, Leo Burnett, DDB, DraftFCB, JWT, McCann Erickson, Ogilvy & Mather and TBWA/Chiat/Day.

The Grey Group, a unit of WPP, said no because; the story is not about us,” said James R. Heekin, chairman and chief executive, but rather “it’s about building our clients’ brands first.”

“We don’t have anything against anyone doing a reality show,” he added, “but it’s not our style.”

Another well-known giant courted by “The Pitch” was Deutsch. Although “we love the premise,” said Val DiFebo, chief executive of the New York office of Deutsch, owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies, “our ‘reality’ precluded us from participating.”

“We’re eager to see the goods and explore if there is a competitive advantage for us to participate,” she added.

The agencies in “The Pitch” are: the Ad Store, Bandujo Advertising and Design, BooneOakley, Bozell, Conversation, DiMassimo Goldstein (a k a DiGo), FKM, the Hive, Jones Advertising, Kovel/Fuller, McKinney, Muse Communications, SK&G, WDCW LA (the Culver City, Calif., office of Wong, Doody, Crandall, Wiener) and Womenkind.

"We went through several weeks of back-and-forth with Studio Lambert and AMC,” said Jeff Jones, president at McKinney, who appears in the episode in which his agency and WDCW LA compete for the Subway assignment, “but we were willing to take the risk because we ask our clients every day to take risks.”

The winning concept from McKinney for Subway.


Scott Brown, president and chief creative officer at FKM, who appears in the Clockwork episode, competing against the Hive, echoed Mr. Jones. “It was a calculated risk,” he said, adding: “The pitch process is an agency putting a big ‘What if?’ in front of a brand and hoping the brand will fall in love. We’re not doing this to become reality TV stars; it gets our brand in front of our consumers, marketers.”

Dick Clark, the youthful-looking television personality who literally introduced rock n’ roll to the nation on “American Bandstand” and for four decades was the first and last voice many Americans heard each year with his New Year’s Eve countdowns, died Wednesday.

With the exception of Elvis, Clark was considered by many to be the person most responsible for the bonfire spread of rock 'n' roll across the country in the late 1950s. "Bandstand" gave fans a way to hear and see rock's emerging idols in a way that radio and magazines could not. It made Clark a household name and gave him the foundation for a shrewdly pursued broadcasting career that made him wealthy, powerful and present in American television for half a century.

Nicknamed "America's oldest teenager" for his fresh-scrubbed look, Clark and "American Bandstand" not only gave young fans what they wanted, it gave their parents a measure of assurance that this new music craze was not as scruffy or as scary as they feared. Buttoned-down and always upbeat, polite and polished, Clark came across more like an articulate graduate student than a carnival barker.

He helped transform rock 'n' roll into a cultural force, and in the beginning he did it by introducing artists such as Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and the Comets, James Brown, Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers for the first time. All made their national television debuts on "Bandstand."

As the music matured through the years, Clark played a potent role in star-shaping, and the Mamas and the Papas and Madonna would join the long and eclectic list of performers who got that first big boost on "Bandstand." Clark himself joined many of his show's guests in 1993 when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

On Aug. 5, 1957, from the no-frills Studio B of WFIL-TV on Market Street in Philadelphia, Clark greeted a national television audience for the first time with the backdrop of a faux record store, a concrete floor and crowd of giddy teens in clean-cut mode: Ties for boys, no slacks for girls and no gum chewing were the rules from the first day. By the end of 1958, it was a full-fledged sensation with 40 million viewers tuning in to ABC to learn about the newest dance step, rock star or fashion style.

The first record on the premiere show was the then-shocking single "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" by the ribald Jerry Lee Lewis. The juxtaposition of bracing music such as that with the show's tame trappings — party games, a roll call of giggling kids, viewer voting on the best couple — would do more to put the emerging music into the mainstream than any other forum of the day.

While Clark embodied a "safe" aura on camera, off camera he was the prototype for the fledgling music scene's new-model impresario. There would be close to three dozen songs played on the show on any given day and Clark huddled constantly with record executives and his own staff to decide which tunes got the highly coveted airtime. For the fans watching at home, Clark was simply the chaperon on their first date with rock 'n' roll.

"It's got a great beat and you can dance to it," or some permutation of that phrase, became the mantra of fan life during the "Bandstand" tradition of rating records. Three records would be played and members of the show's dancing brigade would give them a numeric grade anywhere between the odd parameters of 35 and 98. Clark would announce the average, and fame and fortunes could be decided with that calculation.

That staple feature, along with the lip-syncing appearances by new stars and the countdown of the day's hits made the show the template for the entire new television sector of music shows. "Soul Train," "Solid Gold," "America's Top 10" and MTV's "Total Request Live" were among the shows that would borrow from the formula. To artists, especially in the show's first decade, a booking on "Bandstand" was a stamp of career arrival.

After eating my Good Friday dinner at the local Red Lobster I once again spoke with friends and family about the origin of Catholics eating fish on Friday. I immediately went to the web of course to look for the origin of our custom but found this story about Fish on Fridays, McDonald's and Catholics instead.

In 1962, Lou Groen was desperate to save his floundering hamburger restaurant, the first McDonald's in the Cincinnati area.

His problem: His clientele was heavily Roman Catholic. In those days, most Catholics abstained from meat every Friday, as well as during Lent, the 40-day period of repentance that begins this week with Ash Wednesday.

His solution: He created the Filet-O-Fish — a sandwich that saved his restaurant and eventually would be consumed at a rate of 300 million a year.

"Frisch's (the local Big Boy chain) dominated the market, and they had a very good fish sandwich," recalled Groen, now 89.

"I was struggling. The crew was my wife, myself and a man named George. I did repairs, swept floors, you name it. "But that area (where his restaurant was located) was 87% Catholic. On Fridays we only took in about $75 a day," said Groen, a Catholic himself. "All our customers were going to Frisch's.

"So I invented my fish sandwich, developed a special batter, made the tartar sauce and took it to headquarters." That led to a wager between Groen and McDonald's chief Ray Kroc, who had his own meatless idea.

"He called his sandwich the Hula Burger," Groen said. "It was a cold bun and a slice of pineapple and that was it. "Ray said to me, 'Well, Lou, I'm going to put your fish sandwich on (a menu) for a Friday. But I'm going to put my special sandwich on, too. Whichever sells the most, that's the one we'll go with.'

"Friday came and the word came out. I won hands down. I sold 350 fish sandwiches that day. Ray never did tell me how his sandwich did." But the chain made Groen modify the fish recipe.

"I wanted halibut originally," Groen said. "I was paying $2 a pound for halibut. That sandwich cost me 30 cents apiece to make. They told me it had to sell for 25 cents. I had to fall back on Atlantic cod, a whitefish, and I added a slice of cheese. But my halibut sandwich far outshines that one."

Groen wasn't complaining. "My fish sandwich was the first addition ever to McDonald's original menu," he said. "It saved my franchise."

And fed it. By the time he sold his franchise in 1986, Groen owned 43 McDonald's restaurants in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, about half the number in the region today.

It's been a long time since September 13, 2009. Barack Obama hadn't even been in office a whole year. The Arizona Cardinals were almost Super Bowl champions. And nobody knew of Escalades or trees or golf clubs or Perkins. It was back when Tiger Woods was simply “Tiger Woods, greatest golfer alive.”

That date marked the last time Tiger stood over a putt on the 72nd hole knowing he was going to be champion of a PGA Tour event.

And while it seems like it has been a lifetime since all that happened, the strangest thing about this whole week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational is just how comfortable the whole process turned out to be.

Tiger Woods won a PGA Tour event on Sunday. He did it by five shots over a group of solid competitors that while in the mix, never seemed to give up much of a fight. If nothing else, that outline has basically been the story of Tiger's career when he got himself in the lead.

It was great to see him back on top of the leaderboard again. It is certainly good for the PGA.

Pope Benedict has something of a reputation for style. He's been seen wearing Gucci sunglasses and his red Prada loafers earned him the title of “Accessorizer” of the Year by Esquire.

Now the Pope has his own scent. An Italian perfume maker was commissioned by the Vatican to create the custom cologne. The exact formula is top secret but it's rumored to have hints of lime, verbena and grass — reflecting the pontiffs love of nature.

Serving mass as an altar boy when I was young the only scent I remember in church was the smell of the incense that I carried at major religious ceremonies. As a Catholic I still expected my Pope to smell like a delicate combination of frankincense and myrrh.

Here he is with his Prada loafers!