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Tuesday, March 24, 2015

TELEVISION DESERVES ITS DEMISE



JUST HOW OFTEN DO WE HAVE TO WATCH THE SAME DAMN COMMERCIAL

I love all media.  Newspapers, of course. Radio. Television is a great eye on the world, even if it needs drops.
I still get two newspapers a day, slimmer now unfortunately, and read others on the computer. Love long car trips listening to the radio and only put in a CD in desperation. Watch TV every night but find the banquets of childproof movies and good sit-coms have turned into wilted salads with yesterday's meats. I still buy books.
The biggest decline in the media, despite the obituaries about newspapers, has come with television. I liked it better before this 24-7 schedule means there's something for insomniacs to watch at 4.30 a.m., the hour of death for both humans and TV. Why don't they husband their apparently limited resources and go dark for four or five hours every night instead of running archival crap?
What bugs me most is the proliferation of the same ad running 20 or 30 times a day for weeks if not months on some stations. It gets so bad that each day I spend a few minutes preparing to tape various programs so I can fast-forward through the ads. It saves some time and a lot of irritation.
One of the worst offenders in running the same ad over and over and over is BNN. The business channel should have lots of resources because as we are told regularly it is owned by the rich fat giant of BCE.
Yet during the two one-hour Market Call shows at 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. where weekday viewers email or phone with their questions  (commentaries are squashed by the host) we are bombarded with a phoney Shakespearean actor emoting about damage in an insurance commercial and a bossy brat demanding construction paper for a school project in a credit card commercial.
I understand the ads pay for the telecasts. And I can switch to another channel which is probably running another clutch of ads over and over and over.  I'm not a fan of the CRTC, an inept manager of the public air waves which too often doesn't really protect the public. But surely even the CRTC has rules about one station running the same ads ad nauseam.
You would think that advertising and television companies would realize that the endless repetitions of the same commercials are starving the geese that lay the golden eggs. Perhaps, with the new CRTC rules about subscribers not having to take border-line cable stations, a few geese will be killed here and there.
As it is, I tape more and more and watch fewer and few commercials. As far as I'm concerned, I don't really care if that Shakespearean actor buys construction paper for the brat, or whateverinhell the commercials are promoting.





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