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‘Tonight Show’ to Air Live Commercial

NBC has teamed up with Garmin International to air a live commercial during Tuesday’s broadcast of The Tonight Show.

The ad - in the form of a skit put on by Jay Leno’s announcer, John Melendez - will air just before the show’s second commercial break, writes the Wall Street Journal. Leno will toss to the break, at which point Melendez will come out in a lab coat to discuss the perils of “direction disorder,” or men’s seeming inability to ask for directions. The cure for the disorder: a Garmin device.

After the skit, the commercial break will air, with a Garmin ad running in the first slot in the break.

Live ads were standard in the 1950s, and continued to be popular for some time, but they eventually fell out of favor. The Tonight Show last ran a live spot in 1995.

The live ad for Garmin is another in a series of attempts by television networks to TiVo-proof ads for their advertisers. During television development meetings in Los Angeles in March, the networks announced new initiatives that they hoped to launch with advertisers. ABC, for example, introduced 10 examples of how ads might be incorporated into the content of shows, while VH1 has introduced what it is calling a “pod-buster” format.

NBC says it will look to expand the use of live commercials during late-night, but that it won’t happen a lot.