This blog is about the power of advertising, but not in the way you have traditionally understood those three words. It is about what advertising has done to almost everything it touches – that is, emasculation. To be transparent in this analysis I should say that I always mute ads when they appear on the TV programs I am watching and those, mostly imbecilic/inane wastes of my time, push products and services that, on principle, I would never consider buying or subscribing to simply because they are on a TV ad.
It really came home to me the other night when I switched to the CBS Network to watch “60 Minutes” – I tend to normally watch PBS (Public Television), or one of the cable channels. The ads on PBS are annoying enough but, when I inadvertently left the TV on CBS for a while, I was horrified at the time spent on ads versus the time spent on the actual program. I haven’t timed it but I would expect, if I did engage in such a useless activity, it would almost certainly be over 50%. That results in over 50% of my TV-watching time being devoted to mostly juvenile material (and that’s an insult to most juveniles), which is delivered in soundbite/machine gun fashion and which, quite often, leaves me stupefied, and totally unable to decipher what product they are pushing. And, worse, by the time the channel returns to the actual programming, I have lost the train of the story that program is covering. I have to ask “where is this process going” – five minutes of programming and 55 minutes of ads?
I am reminded of a very old joke from British BBC radio many years ago when Kenneth Horn, in his program “Round the Horn”, said that “the quality of the entertainment is often compromised by those annoying little interruptions called programs”. He was joking – it was a comedy show – but he, unknowingly, was predicting current day reality.
It’s not only TV. I was amazed to learn, also many years ago, that an American football game, which lasts for an hour on the clock, takes roughly three and a half hours to play, actually has only about thirteen minutes of actual game movement. I learned this from an American, with whom I shared a house in Sierra Leone before I came to the U.S., who was a radio announcer for the University of Illinois football team – he had to time the game to make sure all the ads were accommodated – yes, that what timeouts are really for, to allow time for the ads.
I have to wonder what percentage of the population deliberately won’t buy anything that is advertised on TV. I also have to ask, “what person in their right mind would buy a drug that is advertised on TV and do it without consulting with their doctor”. Obviously, many do, or the companies wouldn’t spend a fortune on those ads. I am tempted to add that the real worry is that such people can vote and breed!
I remember seeing somewhere, I think it was in a bar in Manhattan, a TV that was set up with a split screen; one side ran continual ads and the other, the programs. In these days of screens that are several feet wide, that might actually be the solution. We could learn to tune out, visually and auditory, the ad side, if we really tried. However, I’m sure some politician, bought by the ad companies, would pass a law banning such a sensible approach.
Unfortunately, I have to admit that the ads do “get to me”; I wouldn’t be writing this blog if they didn’t. However, even though mine may be a lone voice crying in the advertising wilderness, I feel it needs to be said as part of my continuing rant about our soundbite culture. Last week I talked about the numbing effect of “machine gun style” soundbites and the dangers inherent in that approach. This week I would add that not only does it allow the volume of noise to cover up what may be the real strategy, of Donald Trump for example, but it also allows the proponent of such a strategy to change course every few minutes, and lie in the process, because the next onslaught of soundbites is only a few seconds away and people will forget what just happened. It sounds ridiculous that we can be so gullible, but it is happening every day, right now.
I wish I knew how to combat this phenomenon, but I seem to be as vulnerable to it as everyone else. I give up watching the news and react with indifference to Trump’s next inane and dangerous step towards dictatorship. The volume just overwhelms my senses, and that is inherently dangerous for the future both of myself and the United States. Help!!
