Comment Re:Change the advertising (Score 1) 157
Same thing occurred to me - North American broadcast television stops for commercials every few minutes, but there are places in the world where all of the ads are held until a program break. Generally this means that the advertisers must compensate by making the advertising highly entertaining or artful. Take a look at the Cannes Advertising festival some time, or old Clio Awards reels - European advertisements are more likely to have higher production values, edgy or daring aesthetics. Not that this is a universally good thing, adds are still used to push products of dubious value and make unsubstantiated claims (although a Hungarian gov't commission once disallowed a coffee ad that claimed "better taste", saying that this was a subjective judgement which could not be proven), and project the social and political ideals of the advertisers. It does make them more entertaining and easier to look at.
Note that I said "more likely" - there is still a certain amount of crapola. The problem of interminable repetition, by far the worst feature of TV ads, still exists, but is mitigated somewhat by the fact that there are less advertising breaks in general.
With deregulation challenging state-sponsored broadcasters in many countries, it will be interesting to see if French and Italian TV get flooded with Krazy Discount Appliance Warehouse purveyors. Will Austrian morning time slots be flooded with loser commercials for pawnshops, personal injury lawyers and correspondence schools? Will Norwegians spend dark evenings contemplating chat lines and psychic networks?
Note that I said "more likely" - there is still a certain amount of crapola. The problem of interminable repetition, by far the worst feature of TV ads, still exists, but is mitigated somewhat by the fact that there are less advertising breaks in general.
With deregulation challenging state-sponsored broadcasters in many countries, it will be interesting to see if French and Italian TV get flooded with Krazy Discount Appliance Warehouse purveyors. Will Austrian morning time slots be flooded with loser commercials for pawnshops, personal injury lawyers and correspondence schools? Will Norwegians spend dark evenings contemplating chat lines and psychic networks?
