I don’t know about you, but I’m old enough to remember the “Advertising FREE” promotions for cable television when it was introduced.
That was how cable television was sold to us unsuspecting consumers. We had FREE television that paid for itself through the providers selling commercials.
Commercials back then were limited in number and networks like CBC in Canada were commercial FREE, but as time passed, broadcasters realized that consumers would tolerate more and more commercials until we ended up with the mess that we have today where networks like CNN (which I call Commercials Not News) simply overwhelm!
Then, along came cable television promising an “advertising FREE” medium, obviously responding to consumer resistance to commercials.
On the FREE television services, they got caught elevating audio levels during commercials trying to chase their viewers out into the kitchen.
Then, when everyone was so sick of commercials interrupting their television viewing that they turned to cable television the “Bait and Switch” was executed and voila . . . . viewers could get sick all over again over being interrupted during their television viewing with endless streams of commercials.
I personally find commercials offensive.
They don’t lead me to buy things and I don’t ever recall dropping what I was doing to take advantage of such unbelievable offer being extended for a limited time only, but I have to accept that networks like the Shopping Network, QVC and a host of others suggest that there are many people to do not see things my way.
Unfortunately, what has resulted is a society that has had its taste, sensitivity, culture “shaped by advertisers“.
Television has become the centre of the universe to the decided majority of us.
24 hour news, and an endless array of networks pumping out senseless programming and all driven by advertising.
They’ve done such a great job of stealing our intellect, that consumers have literally become broadcasters’ “product”, a commodity that they sell.
Advertising on television is priced based on audience numbers, so consumer literally are the product.
And consumers are so brainwashed that they actually pay to be the product (you sign up and pay an outrageous amount of money (over a thousand dollars a year on basic services these days) for cable television “service” with XYZ and they make millions on selling advertisements to you) and you sit through commercial after commercial after commercial.
And you can already forget about cable cutting as the Internet has become much worse that television!
Now, they’ve just introduced advertising to FREE WIFI, and it’s not about pushing ads in your face when you use their “FREE” WIFI, once you sign in to use their “FREE” WIFI service, they now track you and send you unsolicited advertising going forward.
One stop at that coffee shop where you need Internet so you accept their gracious offer and you become the product!
On the Internet, you either pay for the product or you ARE the product.
In condos I always said: “Believe nothing that you hear and half of what you see“, on the Internet I can just say “Believe nothing“!
I’m Charles
