Went home to visit my boomer parents for Thanksgiving and they watch a lot of TV. I should say they watch a lot of commercials.
I don't have CATV/SATV or whatever the GenXers and Boomers are consuming these days. I stream everything through a browser with adblock so I never see a commerical.
My god! It's commercial after commercial after commericial for seemingly the majority of the program. Even football games are all commercials now. Do they pause the game for 5 minute commercial breaks? I used to play college football. I don't remember putting the game on hold for 5-10 minute commercial breaks.
Modern television in unwatchable. It's like 1 minutes of show and then 3-5 minutes of commericals. It didn't used to be like this. In a 30 minute block, there was 22-24 minutes of show, now it's like 10-15 minutes of show and the rest is commercials. Modern TV is unwatchable! I burst a blood vessle in my eyeball in anger.
The next day we all sat down for breakfast with the TV on, of course, and we all finished our meals before the commercial break ended. WTF, DUDE!!?
Anyways, I'm trying to get them to cut the cable.
And every commercial is bizarro world woke fest nonsense too. I also experience this at my parents’ house.
And it's all pharma ads. Like 50-75% of every ad break is goddamn pharma ads for ailments that you never even knew existed, yet are somehow prevalent enough to warrant an ad spend during prime viewing hours.
I once saw an ad that listed, I shit you not, "heart attack, stroke, sudden death, and thoughts of suicide" as side effects. Like goddamn, four different ways it can kill you?
And it was for something that was only a mild inconvenience, like acne or hair loss, I'll bet.
take this heart medicine. side effects include heart attack.
They know their audience. No one under the age of 50 uses that terrible medium on a regular basis. I watched the History Channel as a teen (back it was good and not reality TV slop) and the 3 most common ad categories were hair transplants, home improvement, and boner pills. They obviously knew that their main audience was men aged 50+. These days I imagine it's the same with the addition of pharma crap.
It's not prevalence. No one alive has ever seen market forces in action. Those ads are token transactions to legitimize pharma companies buying television stations.
Big Pharma is buying influence more than selling drugs.
That or drugs.
And my parents just sit there and absorb them like nothing is wrong. I think they derive comfort from the commercials.