Priceline sends Shatner s Negotiator over a cliff

LOS ANGELES (AP)

William Shatner

's brave Capt.

James T. Kirk

died in a line of duty. Now a actor's bargain-touting

Priceline Negotiator

is headed heroically to his final frontier.

In a new 30-second TV mark set to start airing Monday, a Negotiator rescues panicked vacationers from a train teetering on a bridge's railing.

"Save yourselves some money," he says, handing his cellphone to a newcomer as he and a train decrease into a dry rivulet bed. A aroused explosion, genuine and computer-generated, follows.

"I'm in grief mode," a farcical Shatner pronounced by phone Wednesday. "It's not a initial time I've had an iconic impression die off."

He's been a pitchman for

Priceline

for 14 years, 5 of those as a relentless Negotiator priesthood a gospel of transport bargains. But an promotion change was indispensable to simulate a company's broader strategy, pronounced

Christopher Soder

, CEO of Priceline.com North America.

"The plea is harder to get people's courtesy than it used to be. ... So we motionless to do something unequivocally over a tip to get a summary across," Soder said. The new mark will be on his company's website and, he hinted, competence be partial of subsequent month's Super Bowl blurb extravaganza.

Shatner promoted Priceline as a site where transport prices are theme to bidding. But Priceline is also a set discount-price engagement site for some-more than 200,000 hotels in 140 countries, an expanding use that is not widely famous by consumers, Soder said.

The new instruction creates sense, according to a selling strategist.

"It's a tough decision, though a bottom line is Price line had to do it," pronounced Peter Sealey, accessory highbrow during a Claremont Graduate University's propagandize of management. "They're changing their business indication from a name-your-price indication to a fixed-price approach."

Shatner's Negotiator was only too good during representing a aged approach, Sealey said.

"Had he been reduction effective, he could have been authorised to blur away," he said. "I don't know if we would have left as distant as a train exploding."

Shatner, whose Kirk arguably had a reduction noted genocide in 1994's "Star Trek: Generations," is philosophical about a spin of events. He's looking forward to a entrance subsequent month on Broadway of "Shatner's World: We Just Live in It," his one-man show.

"It was a good run," a Emmy-winning actor ("Boston Legal" and "The Practice") pronounced of a Priceline gig. But "if a government says this is a end, this is a end."

Is it? Could a Negotiator be resurrected? Or c ompetence Shatner, who formerly seemed as a troubadour in spots for a website, play another purpose for Priceline?

"I'm not going to assume on destiny campaigns," pronounced a company's Soder.

Great pitchmen have been innate from a remains before. Fast-food sequence Jack in a Box's commercials customarily underline "Jack," a male wearing a chronicle of a clown-faced pitch that a organisation dramatically blew adult in 1980 to vigilance a menu change ("Waste him," an aged womanlike patron pronounced in a spot). Some Americans were dissapoint by Jack's demise.

Does Soder fear recoil from those lustful of Shatner and a Negotiator?

"We positively wish not. We had a great, prolonged organisation with Mr. Shatner," Soder said, adding hastily, "I didn't meant to use a past tense. He's still underneath agreement with us."

True, pronounced Shatner, an healthy 80 years old. So either they use him again or not, he pronounced merrily, "I'm going to make the m compensate by a nose."

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EDITOR'S NOTE Lynn Elber is a inhabitant radio columnist for The Associated Press. She can be reached during lelber(at)ap.org.

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Online:

http://www.priceline.com

(news.yahoo.com)