Democracy beware! TV titans and the marketing industry are gearing up to sap our will and make Americans more passive than ever. Their ultimate goal: the breakup of American character followed by the commercialization of the American soul. This is TV’s negotiating time with advertisers. Networks and advertisers are meeting this month to plot the reinforcement and intensification of our mindless absorption of TV commercials. It seems that not enough of us are sitting comatose for hours of non-stop consumerist reverie. Too many of us, apparently, are getting up from TV sets to stretch our legs and use the bathroom. The industry is also upset at us for muting the commercials and wandering off to have a beer or acknowledge a family member.
According to a report this week in The New York Times, TV titans are planning changes to please advertisers that include integrating the actors and actresses from the programming into the ads, as well as simultaneously showing more ads with the programming. The goal, one marketing executive said proudly, “is to blur the line between content and advertising message.”
Thank you, TV land, for blurring that line and making the impaired vision of more Americans your policy contribution to national health. That vision thing that democrats talk about is overrated anyway. What’s so bad, other than enriching Wal-Mart, about being compulsively acquisitive and addicted to a stream of erotic impulses to buy more plastic storage bins to keep our junk in?
