The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
This essay was prompted by the exasperating length of the college football national championship game. Most college or professional football games about last three hours. The LSU-Clemson game took four hours. The additional hour was due to the additional time devoted to television advertising. In my opinion, that was one hour too many.
Without advertising, however, many societal advantages we have would be greatly diminished or nonexistent. These include such factors as commercial television itself, radio, newspapers, magazines, and many varied aspects of the internet. To give an example, Facebook is “free” because advertisers pay to make it feasible without cost to its subscribers. They know that millions of Facebookers will buy the stuff they advertise.
We are being subjected to increasing amounts of our personal time, either consciously or subliminally, taken up by advertising,. We see less program time on television and more advertising. Formerly a fifth to a fourth of the average commercial program consisted of advertising. Now it is a third or more. Well over half of sports events are devoted to advertising rather than to the telecast of the particular sport itself.
When we read something on the internet, interspersed with what we want to read are ads for every imaginable product, except that those particular ads are cybernetically selected for us by what huge unsuspected mathematical calculations conclude that we, personally, are likely to purchase. Big Brother on Madison Avenue is watching us.
Newspapers and magazines have become much smaller in content and size because advertisers do not spend nearly as much on print ads as in previous years. They have determined that print advertising does not “pay” nearly as well as television, internet, or other cybernetic media pay. “It pays to advertise” really means that where companies choose to advertise determines the “biggest bang for their bucks.”
This further means that the most reliable news sources -- the print media -- are receiving fewer and fewer advertising dollars, and the least reliable “news” sources (in quotes), which present the least reliable “news” -- the internet, especially the social media -- are receiving more and more advertising dollars.
To over-generalize, the least “substantial” print media (The National Inquirer, People, Us) get the most advertising dollars, because that is what the largest number of people read. The best print media (serious newspapers and news magazines) get the fewest advertising dollars, because that is what the smallest number of people read.
Advertisers don’t really care about the content of what people read or watch; they just care about how many people read or watch it. What often “sells” the most or the best or the highest, in terms of worthwhile content, may actually represent the least and the worst and the lowest in valuable content.
What is the most popular is not necessarily the best. Would that advertisers always promoted only the best rather than only what sells the best. Alas, it will never happen. And if this seems elitist, I suppose, truly alas, it is.
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.