About 15 years ago, my wife and I started watching a good portion of our television programming time-shifted. In the beginning, this was off VHS tape, because we were doing parental things when the shows were on, or just because we wanted to watch TV on our schedule, not the networks'. And it's the sort of thing that, once you start doing it, you find it hard to ever go back. Now that we have a PVR box attached to each TV, we're still time-shifting, just without the necessity of a system for keeping track of tapes (nothing quite so annoying as discovering you just taped over the shows you hadn't watched yet, know what I mean?)
Something else has persisted over that period besides time-shifted viewing, though. And that's the fact that I delight in fast-forwarding through commercials. I know this is a common thing, because I keep reading about advertisers trying to find ways to counter this (like embedding the commercials in the shows themselves, maybe like a news ticker at the bottom.. ugh!). But I don't know if everyone else is doing it because they hate commercials, or because they just can't wait to get back to their drama, reality show, sitcom or sporting event. Me, I hate commercials.
When people say TV is responsible for the dumbing down of our culture, I think commercials have been leading the charge in that regard forever. I don't know what universe exists out there in which Life is like what the typical commercial depicts, but I know I don't live in it. Some commercials intentionally go for hyper-reality (our brand of car is so superior you'll actually float up above the streets and fly to your next stop) but almost all of them seem to lack any actual connection to reality. Your average vendor doesn't go out of his way to help his customers; big chains don't treat their employees like family; and most products don't work half as well as they're advertised. Does anyone believe that airline employees are the smiling, helpful folks that current ads show them to be? (And if so, has that person not travelled in the last 5 years?) Does John Q. Public simply consider such commercials to be legalized con games, tolerated in the same way that we don't run clearly dishonest politicians out of town? I know that when I'm in a situation where I have to watch one, and can't Mute the audio like I normally do, I get mildly angry. It bothers me that stupid commercials are the norm, and that the occasional intelligent, or at least creative, offering catches everyone's attention because it's so exceptional.
I actually interviewed for a job, about 6 years ago, that would've seen me working for a company that provided video advertising to people waiting in line at fast food joints... or standing at a urinal! I'd pretty much decided, 15 minutes into the interview, that I'd never work for that company. How could I look myself in the mirror every day if I knew I was responsible for, at best, intruding where I wasn't wanted, and at worst, contributing to the numbing of brains everywhere?
And I haven't even mentioned the time-management advantage of being able to watch a so-called one hour show in 43 minutes, without missing a single thing you cared to see.
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2 comments:
Agreed. Now having known the joys of a PVR I don't think I could ever live without one (maybe that comment should be saved for a separate post where you rag on me and my standard of living). Anyways, I still watch a lot of stuff when it airs because I can't wait but I often find myself pressing the fast forward button when the commercials start and being utterly depressed when it doesn't work. I also mute all the commercials which my friends find completely batty.
Even if I was a marketer, which many of friends are primed to be, I would never ever advocate something that intruded even further on public life. Ads are far too pervasive as it is; showing up in the actual TV shows (as you mentioned), and popping up in the middle of our internet sites with audio and everything. I don't see how annoying people provides a good image of your product or company, let alone actually encouraging them to buy!! Ugh. The world is one big golden arch, huh?
Me, rag on your standard of living? Perish the thought! ;-)
When we watch live TV, we'll often pause it for 5 or 10 minutes at the start (gives us time to finish up whatever we were in the middle of) and then use that short buffer we've built up to zip through the commercials, catching up to LIVE around the 3/4 mark or so. We find it's easier to get something done in those first several minutes, all compressed together, than to try to hit the bathroom, make a sandwich (or whatever) during the 2 to 3 minute commercial breaks.
Of course, sometimes we don't do this, at which point Picture-in-Picture comes in handy for checking out sporting events or other stuff during those nasty, nasty interruptions.
I forgot to put this in the original entry, but the one form of advertising that might ultimately work for me, is the intelligently-targetted variety. If every ad that ever came before my eyes was for comics, or books I might actually want to read, or movies I hadn't heard of but would probably enjoy, or seminars on topics I'm interested in, etc... then I'm sure I'd be a lot more tolerant of them than I am now. The current reality is that at least 90%, and probably more like 95%, of all ads I see, hear or read are for products or services I'd never use.
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