As of yet, I have no sponsor for this column. This column is going to once again veer off into some unchartered territory. Just to mix things up.
With the Super Bowl a little over two weeks away I decided to discuss something that has been gnawing at me for years.
Bad Bad commercials.
I know. To get free television you have to make a deal with the devil. Just like doing web searches, you give up a little to get a lot. I am ok with it, I really am. What I am not okay with is stupidity and the beating down of men everywhere.
One point before I start. I no longer am a slave to cable TV. I cut the cord over a year ago and my life has not changed one bit. I still enjoy whatever I enjoy on my television and don’t have to pay for 374 channels I will never ever watch. I get internet service through Verizon at a very discounted rate and I am very happy as far as my options for viewing are concerned. All that with the added knowledge that I never have to deal with an industry that can only be described as abysmal.
I do periodically stream NBC or CBS for news or sports but for the most part, I stay away from any broadcast network show. There is absolutely nothing on broadcast TV that appeals to me in any form. The networks have loaded their schedules up with hundreds of hours of reality TV, Dick Wolf dramas and some variant of CSI or NCIS. Gone are the days of classic TV shows. Cheers, All in The Family, Friends, or even Modern Family. They just don’t have the ability to write credible sitcoms anymore and that is a shame. Is it that they are afraid of offending some sub group? Or is it that pretty much every story has been written and rewritten. How many crimes are there? Bad TV is bad TV and I won’t watch it.
To top off that bad TV, you have to watch really really bad commercials. For example, I will put it here in print. I think that whoever at Verizon approved those commercials should be fired. The ad agency that produced them should be closed down and the actors that agreed to star in them, well, they should be sent to BAA (Bad Actors Anonymous). With a history of really really bad Television commercials, these commercials stand out. It started even before Kristen Wiig did some stupid dance and tried to be funny to these latest ones with Cecily Strong and that amazing thespian, Paul Giamatti as Einstein. I understand it is a paycheck but come on, endorse Papa John’s Pizza if you want a paycheck. In my old age I try not to lose it for no good reason but every time I see these commercials I want to throw my ATT Phone at my TV.
If you took a survey and categorized commercials in four columns: Great concept, nothing concept but gets the point across, bad concept, really horrendous. I am sure the vast majority of commercials would end up on the negative side of things. Do advertisers think we are stupid? Do corporations not have a clue? You just have to wonder about the executive at Liberty Mutual that decided that some smelly Emu would make sense as a symbol. Did they even research this animal?
The other thing that has been around in commercials for years is Man Shaming. Man Shaming is when one of the characters in the ad (99.99% of the time a woman) shames or puts down her male partner because he did something stupid. Think about it a little. How many commercials do they have a man saying or doing something stupid while the wife or girlfriend looks like the smart one. It is not a prevalent theme in commercials but there are enough of them that I have noticed.
Perfect example is the Progressive commercial where the couple is camping and the GF(wife) asks her partner if he packed the life jackets. He comes back and says that she was supposed to. “No No”, she says, “you said it distinctly, lets go to the video tape”. She throws the red flag (Like the challenge flag in football) and once again, he is wrong. Why? Why isn’t she wrong? Not in the 21st century she’s not.
Fabreze has a commercial where the boy is a pig so his Mom has to spray his room. Girls are just as messy as boys, if not worse, yet, God forbid you shame a 16 year old girl for being a pig. It’s ok to do it to 16 year old boy though. Not fair I say.
Or the LG commercial where the Mom is watching her son stare into a refrigerator, confused I suppose, looking for something and she comes to the rescue with another door where the soda is. The father comes in and does the same thing.
Not sure why men continue to be the butt of jokes in these commercials but we are. Funny is funny and I will laugh at something that is funny regardless of where the joke lands but lets have some equality here. Women need to break the glass ceiling here as well.
Creative ad agencies around the World rely on the Super Bowl to spotlight their genius and I will bet my last 50 cents that Verizon will have the same stupid commercials run three or four times. At 7 million dollars a clip, I would sell my stock and buy two bags of Fritos and a case of Heineken.
Peter how much are you paying Verizon WI-FI / internet? I pay $60 monthly in Montana.
Thanks, cut the cord long ago also.
M
Fantastic column this morning. You have shared what we all heckle. The "woke" culture has speed up this tv travesty but it had started long before. I gave it some thought, it might be the dumbing down of the American, possibly. I now believe its the liberal agenda of separation, divide and conquer which has an important part in their playbook. Again, Excellent!