Gilda

I had severe PMS today and took the day off. Once the industrial strength painkiller Dr. Cohen prescribed took effect and the migrane and cramps wore off a bit, I watched some daytime game shows, and noticed something I've seen before.

I call it Media Creep in my Humanities course.

Example One:

In the 60's and 70's, at the end of a game show or daytime talk show, during the credits, the announcer would read a list of sponsors, as in This show brought to you by Prell, Doritos, etc. Just a list of names.

This eventually became a list, with a slogan, as Proctor and Gamble: Making the products you use at home!"

Now, each sponser has it's own, fully produced 10 second commercial. Except it isn't counted as a commercial, because it's a sponsor identification; it occurs during, and gets counted as, program time.

So each program is getting away with selling an extra minute or so of commercial time that gets packaged and sold as part of the program itself.

1A: During closing credits, the credits will be shrunk down, and a promo run in 2/3 of the screen. This again, gets counted as program time.

Example Two:

Next.

When we here the word next in a promo, we don't expect the program being promoted to come next. We expect commercials, possibly a promo, and then the program. The programmers are pretending that commercials don't exist, that they'll be going straight from one program into the following one without interruption. They're lying to us, and we accept the lie, we allow them to redifine the word for thier purpose, which is to deny that they're showing us commercials.

But then, in the 90's some people in programming hit on the idea of doing away with the commercials between programs; run one program immediately after the other to prevent viewers from switching channels. They would also be shrinking the credits to run a promo for the following program. You know, the one that actually comes next. But they can't say that "Houston Blues" is next, because they've perverted that word to mean "after these commercials". They can't be honest because the viewer has come to accept the lie, and to say that a program comes next would be to defeat the purpose of not having commercials. The answer is "now". Of course, they'll say, "Houston Blues, NOW", but since they say this during "The Dodo Show" what is meant is "Houston Blues is next". And we, as the audience, understand that "now" means next, but without commercials.

Example three:

Fill in the blank:

Don't settle for anything ____________ .

In the 70's and 80's the proper word would be "else". The problem with "don't settle for anything else" is that it's making a claim of quality, namely that other products aren't as good, therefore to buy them is "settling." Someone saying this is actually claiming that their product is the best.

Now you'll hear "don't settle for anything less", a very clever little bit of deception. First, it seems to imply that other products aren't as good, but does it really? No. It says "don't settle" in other words, accept lesser quality, "for anything less" in other words, of things that aren't as good. It makes no claim whatsoever regarding whality, it just says if you get "something less" it won't be as good--you'll be settling. It implies quality, while all it really does is define the word "settling". "Don't settle for anything less" is true of every product, regarless of quality, even the worst product on the market.

Comments?

Anyone else have examples?

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cinnles

Insightful, thanks for the rant.

The blatant product placement in movies these days is enough to make me stop watching sometimes.

Seeker

I think it's mainly through television that I learnt cynicism.
I personally hate the way they ram thoughts, ideas, opinion, attitudes, and products down your throat.

We have many adds now that are introduced as having the 'serious' interview approach or news broadcast/documentary qualities, like it's an official broadcast of something that is of great importance. Honestly...

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Janey

I am with you 110% on these observations. I want to give you my own feelings, next, however, mmmmm i just took a sip of some very fine dark roast coffee from President's Choice! But really I hold onto the remote, and at the slightest provocation - ANY kind of cmmercial, I am off to the next channel searching for "programming".

I find the semi transparent network/channel logos in the bottom of the screen to be the most annoying trend so far. My eye always gets dragged to the symbol, and many times they cover up things like news programme footnotes, names or even subtitles.

Charlatan

In the television industry trade magazines and the conferences I have been attending lately the big topic of discussion is the revolution that is about to occur in the world of Television... PVRs like TiVO and Video on Demand are poised to rid the realm of television of commercials...

While this may read like a good thing for many of you you also have to realize that it is ad dollars that finance much of the Television you are watching...

The new models that are a arising are increasingly subscription driven. For example, HBO has no ads and has produceds some exceptional drama.

What this means is that either there will be a great diminishment in what we now call Free TV (i.e. sponsorship funded television) or Free TV will have to develop ways to integrate commercials into the programs they show (in other words doing an end run on the commercial skipping PVR).

You could see a return to things like Proctor and Gamble presents The Drew Carey Show or see Drew Carey using Proctor and Gamble products in the normal course of his show. You could see popup ads like we now see station ids or "coming up next"... channels like Spike do this a lot.

Get ready for more control over what you want to watch but also get ready for a more agressive and perhaps subtle form of advertising that this will spawn.

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flamingdog

I don't believe that TV exists for any purpose other than to deliver a fresh piping hot stream of advertising content to your eyes for the 24 hours a day, 7 days a week you sit there watching it.

I had an interesting discussion with my mother one day. She watches a PHENOMENAL amount of TV, most of which is complete garbage in my view. Shows about buying houses and redecorating them, shows that tell you what 'good taste' is, that kind of thing. I went in there one day during an ad break and asked her: 'If TV has a general, overarching purpose, a reason for existing, then what is it?'

She thought for a while, staring kind of blankly at the screen, these pretty images of brand new products twisting and undulating before her eyes, then she turned back to me and answered: 'Education. News. Entertainment.'

She never even thought to mention advertising. Such a significant part of any given hour of TV viewing is advertising, and yet, she never thought to include it as part of TV's prescribed function. And this was even with the ads playing in front of her!

So I suppose the question from this is, is advertising a by-product of financing the 'quality' shows that 'educate and entertain' us, or is TV simply there to provide an endless stream of commercial images to keep us buying?

Discuss.

Charlatan

Flaming Dog... it is clearly there as a pipeline to provide advertising... That said, you cannot completely dismiss the "Education. News. Entertainment." part of the mix.

Television, historically, has been responsible for bringing nations closer together. As trivial as it may seem, things like the Superbowl, the Paul Henderson goal (ask a Canadian), the shooting of JFK, etc... were/are largely television phenomanons.

As we move forward to the splintering of the TV universe I don't think this is largely the case anymore... When there are only three channels to watch, you can expect to get an audience share of 80million... today in the US this would be a HUGE number.

The advertisers are not going to go away entirely but with new forms of delivery, it does look like subscriber based programming could diminish the power of advertising on our content.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

Cynthetiq

1 Million viewers is all it takes to make enough money to collect advertisers.

that's the reason we put on TV. That's the reason that MTV moved from music videos to Road Rules et. al, because it can be tracked by neilsen and sell ad space.

Our Ad Sales takes up 5-6 floors, our production offices? 3 floors.

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flamingdog

I can concede that certain incidents in our collective history have gained a certain amount of resonance because their images have been made timeless as a result of their repeated broadcast on TV. For instace, I'm not even American, and I can call to mind the famous picture of JFK's cavalcade. I suppose September 11th is another example of where the whole world watched an event unfold with baited breath, thanks to TV.

But even events like that, I have very clear and serious reservations about the way coverage of events like that were portrayed. That's another discussion though.

To my mind, increasingly, any worthy content on TV is being squeezed out by reality TV, lowest common denominator, 'escapist' rubbish, soap operas, TV movies and propaganda news. People will say that advertising just pays for the programming in between - a necessary evil... but it's my view that the programming increasingly hammers home the message of the advertising, simply because the vast bulk of the programming is absolutely worthless.

Television has also, in my opinion, been among the most significant factors in increasing fear, paranoia and isolation among the populace while at the same time actually working to decrease our ability to engage with each other. This was demonstrated to me as recently as yesterday. I tried to start a conversation, only to be asked to 'sh' because the person I was talking to was trying to watch 'Driving Miss Daisy'.

Nowadays, in my view, it communicates hegemony in the name of information, consumerism in the name of education, and gutter-level voyeurism in the name of entertainment.

Unless they start taxing TV, or extorting a licence fee from you, like they do in the UK, the advertisers will never even approach going away.

That's a perfect demonstration. It was the same on the paper I worked for, and that was a piddling little local title. The advertising staff earned 50 per cent more than the editorial staff, got company cars, company phones, worked strict, set hours, and were basically treated like gold. Editorial staff, such as myself, were paid peanuts, had to use their own cars, mobile phones, worked unpaid overtime without time back in lieu and were basically treated like dogshit.

Seems to me you can see right there a very clear picture of where the company's loyalties lay. I always had the distinct feeling that as long as readership didn't dip and revenue didn't drop, I could wipe my ass on a piece of plain paper and submit it as a story.