Tag Archives: advertising
Television
Horrible. Getting worse. Predictable. Who are these actors? When is it on? So many commercials? Why so loud? Was that the news? Another repeat? This is television . Like Twitter and other social media it has been commercialized and bastardized way past the point of everyone’s comfort zone. It is downright annoying. It has seriously jumped the shark.
There are few alternatives. It’s not as though you can sit down with a “good” magazine – they are equally as annoying. Less intelligent content and pages filled with anorexic men and girls in ridiculous fashions designed for the wealthy to wear on other planets. Most content is pointless and tweet-like. The “articles” amateurishly written about fluff mostly by journalist wanna-bees. The art of editing seems to have died. Just like television.
I couldn’t care less what the large audience for prime time talent shows featuring celebrity judges in spinning chairs is. I ignore the ridiculous claims of the networks that EVERY one of their shows is hit, obviously far from it. The pronouncement that Joe Schmo from some blockbuster movie is executive producing a new television series is meaningless to me. And, despite the supposed law just passed that commercials must be the same volume as the programs they’re advertising on, they’re definitely not. One of the worst commercials of the season was by Target. A strange nerd-like “man” – a “weirdo” – was screaming into a red telephone announcing a sale. Creativity has been replaced by college fraternity antics and shouting. Pathetic.
Whether it’s produced by the broadcast networks or cable – reality, drama, comedy or something else – what is being fed to us is garbage. This trash comes and goes split up unevenly and unexpectedly though the year in fake “seasons” with ridiculous mindless cliff hangers in the form of airplane and car crashes, terminal illnesses or gun or bomb violence. How many times did a show end and you asked yourself if one or more of the characters managed to negotiate a new contract for another season on the program? Will he recover from the heart attack on the beach? Give us a break. Don’t forget many of these actors are pulling down $125K+ per episode. I watched a movie made last year for Hallmark or Lifetime and had no idea who the actors were.
Have you tried to watch a movie on AMC or Oprah’s Oxygen not-for-prime-time network? Did you think you would ever see fifteen or more commercials in a row? The originally movie was a hour and forty-five minutes long but due to the insertion of incessant commercials it has been stretched out to three hours. I tried watching a movie onBravo and saw the same Stouffer’s meatloaf commercial over and over and over. You wonder if these people have lost their minds. By the way, is there anyone who can figure out when The Actor’s Studio is on?
I’m not going to dwell on reality programming. None of it is worth our time or attention. There is absolutely no value in it. The news is just about in the same ballpark. Without a doubt, the best thing to happen to television is the DVR. When my ability to fast forward through commercials is thwarted in any way, I avoid that program. In the case of The Good Wifeon CBS, during the football season, nobody has a clue as to when the show begins. It could be 9, fifteen minutes past the hour or later or not on at all. Screw that. The next morning, you can watch the latest episode online with limited or no commercial interruptions.
That is how television should be, no, let me correct myself, it’s how it must be. Same with movies. Forget new releases, pseudo seasons, cliffhangers, premiers. There is no way I’m going to drive to a movie theatre to purchase a Tom Cruisemovie or worse – garbage like Django Unchainedor The Guilt Trip. We all agree those are guaranteed a quick trip to DVD city. But, I just might watch such “products” on demand for 1/2 the price vs. going out to the movies. With a late night show likeCraig Ferguson’s, I go to YouTube, select the segment I prefer and watch that – never the entire program. It’s all about what “I” want to see, how “I” want to see it and when.
Television is dying. The craft of good advertising had faded away. “TV” is a mature industry nearly in dinosaur land. It is slow to adapt. Lack of innovation and acceptance of their fate has lead to loss of audience and disinterest. It’s the same ‘ole – same ‘ole rehashed. It’s as if Congress is managing the television AND movie business. There is a next great revolution waiting in the wings and what are now multi-platforms of how television and movies are viewed will be different AND better. That change sadly should have occurred 5-10 years ago. We wait with open arms.
Photo credits - econsultancy.com and mattsko
Things Are Never As They Seem…
I was standing at the dessert table at the buffet dinner I attended at Disney World in Orlando. Lots of social media “gurus” posturing themselves around the room. Making appearances at this restaurant in the Contemporary Hotel were Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Goofy – that is, as Disney puts it, cast members dressed as those iconic characters.
There was a woman standing in front of me with a little girl in her arms. The child was facing me – her mother looking in the opposite direction into the dining room. Mom said, “Oh look dear, there’s Mickey Mouse!” The little girl looked at me, actually it was an intense little kid stare and you just tell from her expression what she was thinking as her mother proclaimed that this is what Mickey Mouse really looks like.
There was combination of disappointment and disbelieve as the little girl’s eyes burned right into me. I imagine her discovery that this is what the real Mickey Mouse looked like wasn’t that bad, because she didn’t burst out screaming or crying and did not throw the Oreo cookie she had in her hand at me. Or maybe she had to think about the “situation” a while longer. I did not wait. Yes, I did make “nice” with the child and smiled and pointed her toward the real Mickey. She was thrilled.
But, for both children and adults, things are never as they seem.
Social Media…
I dabble in social media for my business, which obviously is blogging, writing and editing. A current list of the top 15 networking sites can be found here, exbizmba websites, just in case you worry that you’re not on all of them. Perhaps, if I were a forest ranger, I probably would not need any of them, but being stuck out in the wilderness with no one but Smokey to talk to, I might want to engage with all of them. There was a point in time that I stayed clear of Facebook, Twitter and all the others, and I didn’t realize until recently that MySpace was still around.
Since it was the “in” and fashionable thing to do, I signed up for everything, complying with their annoying requirements to fill out profiles, make up NSA-type secret passwords and go back and forth with texts and emails confirming my status as a human being. I gained friends, followers and others seemingly interested in my career path, all with the end result of having more spam, junk and utterly useless BS in my already cluttered life. The more I attempted to avoid it all, the more people expressed a desire to interface with me, “me” having no desire whatsoever to have any contact with them.
Recognizing that it was all just a childish game, I went on the various sites and did this and that, then stopped. Then started. Then stopped. For no logical reason I accelerated my participation on Twitter and just the other morning, woke up with 1124 “tweets” waiting for me. Holy “@” and #’s (hashtags). I’m an angry person and after less than a week, I started to respond to the 140 or less character messages, with, well, a bit of sarcasm. I found the people that call themselves “successful” writers, freelancers, SEO “experts” the most annoying with their useless amateurish “advice” on how I should run my business. If you put a keyboard in from of me I write, it’s that simple. More advise, I don’t need.
