Gripe of the Day: TV Commercials

Like most of us, I HATE TV commercials with a passion - even the ones I like, if that makes any sense.

Here's my list of issues with commercials:

1-They exist
2-There are too many
3-They are too long
4-The music
5-They seem to run on every channel at the same time
6-Narration
7-Sound condensing

1 - Why don't they get rid of commercials and build product advertising into the shows? I know they do this a little now but if they put in the effort, I'm sure they could find a way to get it done. I don't know about you but I was more interested in finding a good coffee house to hang at after seeing the Friends show than any commercial about coffee.

2 - Commercial space is more than 50 percent of air time on most networks now. Half of the show time is actually commercial time and then there are tons of commercials between every show. How about maybe no or at the most, one commercial break during shows and increasing the commercial time between shows. I know that only benefits the viewer because the advertisers want to catch you while you're watching the show but doesn't it say something about how successful you can be if you have to ambush the viewer. If the viewer is so turned off by the current way they are marketed to that they have to be forced to watch ads, that should tell the advertisers that they need to change something.

3 - I could probably tolerate more commercials and pay a little more attention to them if they weren't so damn long. The fact is that most commercials have a specific target market and what that means is that everybody else, us non-interested viewers, have to suffer through those ads. Make your point and move on!

4 - I remember watching some old grainy episodes of some old black & white TV shows I found on the internet once and they still had the original commercials attached to them. I loved it! There wasn't a whole lotta hyped up music which may or may not irritate the hell out of you because it may not be your genre of music. There was just a guy, in a suite, speaking with a normal voice, telling you about the product and demonstrating what it does. It was simple, to the point, not irritating and I didn't feel as though I was being conned by a whole lot of smoke and mirrors.

5 - Why, for crying out loud, are the networks foolish enough to not stagger their programming so that viewers of shows on competing networks can have a chance to see the show running on their network? When the commercials start, I start channel scanning but it gets me no where because all of the networks start their programs at about the same time and therefore, run their commercials at about the same time. It would seem to me that it would just be a smart tactic to not have the same schedule as your competition. I might be channel scanning and discover that I'd rather see the show on your network.

6 - The commercial voices/narrators/voice-over people or whatever their actually called, are frustrating. These are the voices yelling at you, attempting to get your attention. Someone needs to shoot these guys. Why is it that their voices seem to be louder than the sirens you heard on that episode of CSI you were watching? That brings me to my last point.

7 - I used to own a recording studio so I'm familiar with a very cheap device that most studios use called a "sound condenser". The device was designed to ensure that when a person sings while recording a song, their voice doesn't blare out through the speakers, even if they yell. It keeps their voice at the same volume no matter how loud they yell and if they don't speak/sing loud enough to be heard, it brings up their voice. Some condensers even reduce or remove background, white and static noise. So, with this relatively cheap technology being available since forever, why do I still need to watch TV with my remote in my hand trying to keep from disturbing my neighbors in my apartment building, while I'm watching TV late at night? I'll tell you why. It's because the networks don't have sense enough to run their broadcasts, commercials included, through a condenser. So I'm peacefully watching a quiet talk show for which I have to turn up the volume the hear properly, then a commercial comes on at a volume twice as loud and I'm scrambling to turn down the volume, which I'll have to again turn up once the commercials end. It's so frustrating.

Anywho, I'm vented.