Whether you use a dish or a cable, the price we pay for the garbage we are currently having sent into our homes just makes me want to fire everyone in the whole television industry.
I currently have cable and my 60 channel compendium of potential entertainment is a joke. Half the channels are some shopping network. I don’t know what the other half are since every time I click on one of them, I just get to see more commercials.
In the old days, people had to pay to try and sell us some garbage. Now we are paying for the privilege of being inundated with commercials and the whole concept shows how stupid we are to let this go on.
I’m especially tired of all the pharmaceutical commercials that currently fill most of a station’s air time. I don’t need to be told about rashes and itches in a person’s nether regions. I don’t need to see diagrams of a person’s insides when I’m trying to eat my snack in front of the tube. And I especially don’t need to be told about little blue or pink pills to make old men and women’s bodies act young again. Our accoutrements getting old, along with the rest of us, is Nature’s way of telling us its time to stop doing those things and to move on to better stuff…like maybe trying to save a crayfish or a porcupine that’s close to being extinct.
The new FDA requirement of clearly stating side effects of drugs makes me wonder why anyone would take any of the drugs that are currently being pushed on television. A recent allergy medicine notes potential side effects of dizziness, kidney or liver failure, chronic flatulence, and a possibility of thick, dense pubic hair growing out of a user’s left nostril after taking the pill. Personally I would rather have the itchy eyes and runny nose than any of those things.
I liked it better when I didn’t know my medicines were the reasons I needed to take other medicines.
Then there’s the new sleeping pill that has a commercial on every channel every three minutes. The makers of this little nocturnal relaxer warns that taking this sleeping pill might cause drowsiness and one shouldn’t drive or operate heavy equipment after dosing themselves up. Are they serious? Do they really have to warn us that a sleeping pill can cause drowsiness? Personally I always pop a few just before I fire up the old family bulldozer.
Once in a while, the plethora of commercials is interrupted by an actual program and those have all become jokes. I am hoping my new book does well so that I can be famous. A person has to be famous before they can fall from grace and become a “has been" and its obvious being a “has been" right now is where all the money is.
We have shows that are about: “has been" dancers, “has been" skaters and “has been" chefs. There are shows with stupid pet tricks and shows with stupid people doing tricks that are judged by panels filled with “has beens".
There are shows where a bunch of “has beens" get locked in a mansion together or spend eight weeks losing two pounds on a “has been" weight loss show.
The final straw has to be the ‘has been" game show where people who used to make $100,000. a week now are seen jumping up and down because they won an ironing board or a toaster oven. The whole concept makes me want to go take one of those allergy pills and get this whole thing over with. I already have the chronic flatulence anyway.
Of course the bigger the “has been" you become, the more often Larry King asks you on his show to push your new book about how hard it has been to be a “has been". Being a “has been" isn’t nearly as tough as being a “never was", but there never was a talk show host who wanted to have a “never was" as a guest.
The cable news shows drive a “has been" story into the ground as well. Just how many hours on John Karr not being the killer of Jon Benet Ramsey did we have to have? Karr not only was a “never was" but as soon as that was found to be the case, cable news spent days on his being a “has been". Couldn’t cable news producers find something in the news to talk about other than something that never should have been in the news since in fact it wasn’t news anyway?
Remember a few months ago all the stories about Olivia Newton John’s boyfriend popping up in the Caribbean? For twenty years Olivia Newton John was a “has been" who couldn’t even get on television to tell people she was still alive. She made the news ad nauseum before and after her “never was" boyfriend was found alive somewhere in suntan land. So the news spent hours talking about someone we never knew who was a boyfriend of someone we forgot all about. This is crazy.
The only times these types of stories leave the news is to break for live footage of a car chase somewhere in downtown Los Angeles. Car chases where some idiot stole a bag of cheetos from a convenient store and is being chased by the L.A. SWAT team and the state’s remaining National Guard units always make the news. Then again, we see these chases over and over again on the car chase channel. Even “has been" car chases make money.
Every year, more and more of the best rated shows on television quit production. Oh they tell us it’s because the story lines are getting tired or the cast has outgrown the original premise of the show. The truth is all the stars of these good shows are in a hurry to become ‘has beens" because they see that’s where the real money is.
Again I’m out of time. You know, I could write a 150,000 word book on television news and commercials being inane in just a few months. All I would need is to be a ‘has been" so that I can afford to take the time off to write the thing. Ah to become famous and then lose it all. That’s where the real money is.
Freelance writer, columnist, author and writing coach, ex-Chicagoan Mike Fak presently resides in Central Illinois. More information about Mike's services are available at his home website www.mikefak.com
Mike currently writes primarily humor columns for searchwarp bi-weekly and is the managing editor of www.lincolndailynews.com
» left by Anonymous (2 years 76 days ago.)
I tried one of those sleeping pills for awhile. Something is wrong when you take medication to sleep and you wake up more tired than if you hadn't taken the pill at all. Excellent article! Respond to this comment
» left by Gov hater from SF (1 year 43 days ago.)
I'm completely with you. Commercials are stupid. They target the stupid people in society. I have never bought things because the ads on TV.
AND, informercials HAS GOT TO GO!!! They've got enough nerve to run the infomercials during the mid day. HA!
All this is in thanks to our governments who allows.
You're right on. Respond to this comment
» left by steve post (256 days 13 hours ago.)
i agree.... a movie relevant to this theme is IDIOCRACY, which makes a great job in portraying how dumb marketing and commercials are and the dumbing down of society due to monopolistic corporations (and other factors).... Respond to this comment
Was this article helpful to you? Leave a Public Comment or
Question:
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
