The Crawl . . . It's A Disease . . . It's Spreading . . . We're Doomed!
Are On My TV Screen & In My Way |
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It's all about advertising . . .
As an aficionado of entertainment media, I no longer tolerate Internet pop-up banners.
Junk e-mail? No way, Jose! I have Google banner blockers and Norton e-mail spam filters to keep the annoying stuff off my computer screens.
Many agree with me. "We don't need no stinkin' ads on the big screens in the movie theatres, either" says the Man-on-the-Street. Recently, I actually heard movie-goers "Booooooo" a well-known, local advertiser when that business tried to get a marketing advantage by hawking their company's stuff in a mall-based movie theatre.
"We came to see a movie," one patron said angrily and unashamedly, aloud. "If we wanted to see advertising, we'd have stayed home and watched TV."
That moviegoer's point is well taken. Each day, television advertising, and advertising in general, is getting increasingly more intrusive and "in your face".
I know many humanoid types that have become (shudder) ad-compliant. These lower life forms no longer question the in-your-face posture of advertisers. They tolerate, grovel and bow to the gods of marketing because they are overwhelmed by the advertising onslaught and feel they have little choice.
It's apparent, if people want to read something badly enough or need to watch something on television badly enough . . . heck, they'll tolerate just about anything.
And . . . If you're still reading, I get the feeling that we're beginning to bond and that you just might agree with me on this issue.
One person (wife) in my family, (it's Donna,) but don't tell her I mentioned her (Donna) in this column . . . she (Donna) gets real mad when I do) actually has evolved to a much higher intellectual level where she (Donna) has the ability to completely block out ads of any kind.
Whether it's advertising that appears on the home television screen or ad spots on a car radio station in between familiar songs, she (Donna) blocks them out like a Stanley Cup goalie. It's true! Trust me! I have no reason to lie about this.
"Wasn't that ad clever," I asked her the other night during USA's Monk - after watching a 6 Flags commercial? "Did you see it," I asked?
"See what?"
How could you not notice the Six Flags dancing geek??
Nevertheless, the logic here is simplistic. Somebody must be watching the ads. If nobody watched, ads wouldn't work. Who would sell something that didn't work? Moreover, why would anyone pay for something that didn't work?Case Closed - Your Witness . . . Next!
The extreme, most well known example of advertising mania is certainly the annual TV Super Bowl price tag binge for 30-second ad spots that sell for nearly a million dollars each.
If they cost a million bucks, they must work . . . right?
Back in the 1970s, a business-savvy, very successful, local beer distributor told me that he was sure that at least half of his advertising didn't work. However, he continued, he couldn't figure out what half didn't work. So, he kept spending and making profit.
In 1954, the argument used to be, (when there were only three TV stations and no cable or satellite), that television programming was free and stations needed advertising to pay for the transmission towers, the administration buildings and the necessary workers to get the signal from the station's tower to the viewer's roof-top antenna. That seemed reasonable at the time.
Fifty years later, things have changed very little. The argument is still pretty much the same. But the "price of poker" keeps going up. Now we pay $50 per month to Charter Cable for what used to be free and yet there seems to more and more and more crap on my TV screen then ever before.
Is it my imagination or does every channel have an informational crawl or an action logo or a hype for what's going to be on next, or next week, or even next month. Good God!
Get the annoying hype off my screen and out of my face.
Every weeknight, it seems, while I'm trying to read the darn Jeopardy clues as fast as humanly possible (in an attempt to vicariously defeat the evil Ken), the local network affiliate (TV5) has its silly corporate logo plopped right over the last word of the Jeopardy clue. And if there's a weather alert, the map of doom is in the othercorner. (That's the only reason Ken gets them right when I don't.) Who's in charge here? Is anyone looking at the product? After all, it's the Ken Jennings show. Almost 30 straight wins. He's just gone over a million bucks. Or haven't you heard?
Let's get our priorities straight!
NOTE: I was really pulling for Darci the other night to unseat Ken Jennings on Jeopardy. She got within one question of making Final Jeopardy meaningful. I was chanting at the end of Double Jeopardy. "Darci! Darci! Darci!
Take a moment to check out ABC, NBC, TBS, CBS, SPIKE (to name a few), ESPN's Ticker Tape, the Weather Channel's up-to-the-minute doom and gloom forecast . . . Good Golly Miss Molly . . . they all have a logo ora crawl or a ticker!
Below: Have you ever seen Bloomberg Television in the morning? It's the epitome of screen clutter. There's hardly enough room in the upper left corner of the screen for the news commentator's face. In fact, on the Bloomberg web site, they actually have a "how to" section that explains their TV screen layout. My feeling is this: If there's a need to explain the layout of your TV screen . . . perhaps you might want to re-think the concept.
And, for what it's worth, Spike TV (Charter Cable, Channel 39) can take it's cutesy, little, corporate paint spray can and spray it where their corporate sun don't shine.
I could hear the girls hitting the ball. I could even hear Serena Williams "grunting." But I'd be hard-pressed to say that I could actually see any tennis. The game score was covered. The sets were covered. And . . . I couldn't see the speed in mph of Serena's serve. I thought I was going to hemorrhage.
So here's my point: If network cable (Channel 5 (Cable 7), 25 (Cable 4) and 12 (Cable 11) is still supposed to be free because we have to look at the advertising. And we pay straight up monthly for the cable feed. Then how come every channel is allowed to bombard us with more and more and more unwanted and annoying logos, crawls and paint cans?
The Survey Says: How about a little unofficial, unscientific online survey?
If you agree with me that there's too much crud on our TV screens, ---> at exactly 10:00 am on Monday July 19th, hold up two (2) fingers in front of your computer monitor
I'll publish results of this survey next week.
Final Note: I e-mailed a copy of this column to my wife (Donna) so she (Donna) wouldn't be mad when she (Donna) saw that I used her name. At the same time, I asked her (Donna) what she thought of me using all the scrolling banners and ads throughout the column to make the point that there are too many ads and scrolling banners on TV.
She (Donna) mailed me right back and said she (Donna) really liked the column and thought it was cute how I used her (Donna) name. "But what scrolling banners and ads are you talking about," she (Donna) asked??
Definitely a more intelligent, highly evolved species. Definitely!
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O. J. Cunningham |
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