Television commercial donut

A television commercial donut is a template for a television commercial. It contains all the specialized elements necessary to create a finished commercial, but does not contain any specific product, pricing, or logos. It is named, somewhat humorously, after the donut, a pastry with a hole in the middle.

Traditionally, high-quality commercial television advertising has been very expensive and time consuming to produce. As a result many smaller advertisers have chosen to take advantage of the "free" or low-cost production services offered by many cable television affiliates and local broadcast stations in exchange for purchasing airtime. Because most of these stations do not intend to make a profit from the actual production, it is not in their interests to go to the extra expense of custom 3D artwork, extensive camera work, or animations for these commercials. As a result many local commercials do not look very appealing compared to ads made for nationwide companies and chain retailers. Television commercial donuts allow for inexpensive customization by local television stations and cable TV affiliates by providing the pre-made artwork in an editable form.

This prepackaged method has become less of a necessity as advances in video editing software have made it possible to incorporate special effects and motion graphics to create high quality, custom TV commercials. The major roadblock for TV stations in creating interesting local commercials remains the education and backgrounds of local TV commercial producers, who generally are promoted from the ranks of blue collar TV production positions rather than being hired from advertising agencies.

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