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I was watching a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode on Thursday, recorded on a 10 hour tape back around 1996, I think. Rather pre-Net for if anything on the screen had a web address, it was only for Sci Fi magazine, at The Dominion. It was more of what was available on my VHS/DVD units at the time as I had dinner. It had been converted to DVD and I watched from there (I have the complete series on consumer DVDs somewhere).
As I recall, Sci Fi Channel showed those at six in the morning, followed by Dark Shadows at 7 am. TV seemed much more alive back then and one of the reasons was the commercials. They had ones for Special K with the wife trying on a new sexy dress, family toothpaste commercials, perhaps bagels, Noxema, and the like.
Commercials that made one feel alive.........as oppose to what came a few years later. First the Psychic Hotline and then Tech Schools and lawyers. The same ones each commercial break.
A lot of things turned me off from TV and looking back, I'd say the change in commercials was part of it. In my interpretation, they went from reminding me I was part of the population to "What are you doing at home during the day? You must be injured or uneducated! Improve yourself and get out of the house!". That the only effort they would really make to entertain was during prime time.
OF COURSE, commercials are aimed are target audiences. Lowe's and car commercials, for example, are shown a lot on Thursday, Friday nights because they are selling the weekend.
Further, commercials are not necessarily meant to entertain but to sell one something but as the GEICO Gecko once observed, "People think they are watching something entertaining but they are actually (he he) watching a commercial." (I think that is what he said).
Sigh, I guess, looking back, it was part of a slow change that chipped away at the compulsion to watch TV. Where instead of being pleased, I was being increasingly irritated to the way I was being jerked around.
OF COURSE, any commercial, then or now, tends to be a kind of being led by the nose. I know that, I've present projects that show the various techniques of propaganda used in advertising. I suppose it is like what I have to tell some men.......at least seduce me a little before you take my clothes off.
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