It makes sense now. Only old people are still watching television in real time, so all the ads are for boner pills and adult diapers and Medicare scooters. So, I guess I will either have to admit to myself that I am old, or I am going to have to stop watching live television.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
This is one reason why I am not as concerned about GOP spending on TV ads as some. The folks who see these ads are the real-timers you mention, who are 1) a rapidly-dwindling audience 2) likely already in the GOP camp so So What?
Maybe I’m wrong, but I am not sure that TV ads do more than preach to the choir these days.
Never saw the value of cable. Since digital TV became the only way to watch, I haven’t seen broadcast TV at all. Culturally, I have difficulty understanding what Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, or Breaking Bad were about or why they were so popular.
Most of the live video I’ve seen in the past decade has been streamed. And a whole lot of it never made live TV or even cable at all.
The truth is that the rest of the population is either working, looking for work, or studying for high-stakes tests. Who has time for TV? 😉
Of course, I got my heavy dose of live TV (which means something different today than it did then) from the shows in the 1950s. Imagine a 10-year-old watching Edward R. Murrow or a Paddy Chayefsky play because it was the only thing on the one station that we could get and it was the technology itself that was entrancing. Or a 14-year-old watching a 6:30 AM broadcast of NBC’s Sunrise Semester.
Heh, well, I liked all three of those things you don’t understand quite a bit. They were popular because they were compelling, just like any good novel can be compelling. The medium doesn’t matter. Is the story good? In the case of Breaking Bad in particular, the story was tightly wound, full of tension, and played with moral ambiguity and antiheroes from every possible angle, culminating in a well-written ending. That’s why it was popular.
Thanks for the report.
Just what we need in the current circumstances–more antiheroes. But I guess our cultural funk and lack of a vision of the future will continue as long as a small number of media outlets command our attention.
Chacun a son gout.
Don’t forget the Walking Dead. The most popular scripted show on TV. Big Bang Theory and the NFL are the only things that even play on the same level as TWD.
It’s an interesting take on morality in a crisis, especially when that crisis becomes a life-long thing (e.g. war on terror). It’s even to the point where viewers (read: me) have to question themselves about enthusiastically cheering a pre-teen girl being taken out back and shot in the head – Lizzy really had to go, but still…
Wasn’t cheering but if you can’t help a sick animal what do you do? I still think Mika was right.
Old people and sports fans watch in real time. Baseball season is upon us. The ads during the games are telling — half are for beer, the other for bail bondsmen.
Hey man, if you want to watch The Rockford Files on broadcast TV at 3 in the afternoon, you need to come to peace with “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” and “With Medicare and private insurance, your Hoveround could cost you little to nothing!”
The things we endure.
Well, I’m in those demographics. I’m entertained by some of those drug commercials where after the couple wanders through a wildlife preserve in the first thirty seconds, the last half of the commercial lists all the bad things that can happen to you if you take this wonder drug. Not sure, but I think that Latuda is a variation of the old “zine beans” we used to hand out to schizophrenics back in the seventies. You know, thorazine et al. Too long on it and you get the “thorazine shuffle”.
I’m a bit behind the high-tech times. Stuck on stupid with cable, never got around to ordering that box that lets you record shows for later. Figgered, not much good on teevee anyway, what’s the point. Plus would be paying still more to the local cable monopoly.
Have no idea where to start about getting tv online — not exactly confident enough in my digital ability to feel I should go there.
I can watch most old Twilight Zone episodes on YouTube — that I can figger out. That’s about all I need.
Have they made any good teevee since then?
Have they made any good teevee since then?
Uh, this era has been pretty conclusively labeled “The Golden Age” of television…
Most people don’t DVR stuff anyway, at least my roommates and I don’t. Stream it via Amazon,Hulu,Netflix, or use Xfinity.
Me too. No cable or over the air. Just Netflix and other forms of streaming over the internet. I’m a big U of Arizona basketball fan and I can pretty much watch any game on my computer. Not long ago, that was a dream.
Oh we have cable, but I could do without it; the roommates want it. I can’t complain, though. $995 for a decent sized room in house inside the beltway across the street from a metro. I doubt removing cable would do much to my bill.
That explains a lot! Also why there are soo many ads from lawyers hustling for some medical malpractice lawsuits.
Everybody watches in real time.
Older people, being less healthy and vigorous and most of them retired, are home all day and all night, watch more TV than others, and have less reason to time-shift.
But feel free to mock, jackass.