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Crisis and TV Advertising
The freedom of speech is a right guaranteed to us in the United Sates
by the Constitution. But the question is being debated if that freedom
extends to television advertising. Can we equate advertising with the
press. Is objective journalism on an equal footing with journalistic
marketing. Has television advertising been deliberately misconstrued by
television promoters as being on an equal footing with objective
journalism.
Television advertising playing on a gullible public that has stopped to
think in favor of being told what to think, has made huge profits for
companies whose commercials are political masterpieces of propaganda
and hype. It is more than obvious that television stations in an effort
to keep monies from commercials have begun to slant their news slots to
fit with airing of commercials that are supposed to be of equal
objective matter. The entire television advertising has become an
exercise in credulity.
The situation has begun to backfire on these pseudo social engineers
called advertising executives. Many of the sponsors of commercials that
have been played by television stations as parodies of the news or as
being government sponsored, have dropped their commercials and are
looking elsewhere to advertise. Television advertising is paying the
price for its bizarre manipulation of commercials with real news with
talk show monsters attacking even the weakest mind of all of us to
withdraw to the printed word.
Perhaps, one of the good things to come out of the crisis in television
advertising is a return to hard reporting of the news which only a
newspaper can provide. How many of us have become as sickened of a Lady
Godiva reporting the six o'clock news only to be followed by a
commercial on Viagra or worse? There are few of us who can garner the
news without having to go through the person that the newscaster is
promoting. It is beyond belief how television censors who would can a
news reporter for slanting the news is now allowing a newscaster to be
a symbol of some product or political group. Television stations are
closing down and some stations are cutting the salaries of these
advertising gurus who pose as objective journalists. No reputable
company will put up with its reputation being deliberately put through
the meat grinder by television advertising executives who seem to be
getting scripts from political groups on when to air commercials, what
commercials to air, and what should follow these commercials.
We have all lost patience with what seems to be a conspiracy between
script writers of popular shows having their exits into commercials
coincide with some deliberately contrived line as if to blend
television advertising with fiction or pulp talk shows. Television
advertising might not be journalism per se, but they are governed by
laws that require them to be truthful in what they are telling the
public they can do. Television advertising is on its last gasp with
most of the air time taken up by eharmony, sleep comfort and cars that
talk to you. One wonders if they have anything to do with the
credibility of Katie Couric or the meltdown in the economy known as the
recession?
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