This Space For Rent

I heard today on the radio (commercial free radio as it turns out), I heard to day on the radio that there will soon be a company using laser etching to place ads (specifically in this case for CBS TV) on the shells of eggs. I guess as advertising goes this is fairly tame. But I have to ask myself just when everything became all about advertising. On the whole I think we would be a lot better off without it.

Over on the other page I see advertising come up quite a bit. There was just a protracted disagreement between advertisers, producers, and creative unions over profits from product placement. I'm glad to know that when someone is now making something for media that so much of their effort is placed into making sure they wring every dime out of the effort by choosing the right soda to depict. There's also been some buzz about live action advertisements prior to performances of theatrical productions. It's apparently been going on for a while in London and Broadway saw its first instance recently.

I guess unlike the movies theatre skipped the previews thing and went right for the commercials.

I guess the argument here is that somehow the commercials reduce the end cost of the entertainment to the consumer. I am not sure that is a good argument though. Also, I think maybe it isn't why we went down the road in the first place. TV commercials are the children of radio commercials, yes? And then radio of newspapers. So maybe this was just so much learned behavior and status quo.

Unfortunately a TV commercial and a newspaper advertisement have a critical difference. One, one is passive and the other, less so.

Also, I really think early TV and radio spots were about sponsorship and raising of capital to produce programming. And, there is the issue of distribution. With a broadcast media you can't really collect from the user. Or at least you couldn't back in the day.

I am a mass market user of two non-commercial airing media services. I listen to NPR often, and I have premium cable channels. Somehow they seem to get by without much in the way of aggressive, intrusive advertising. Although NPR shills for money often, it doesn't appear to be going away, and HBO seems to be holding its own very well thank you. Recently there has appeared a fairly high appetite for subscription audio. Both satellite radio and podcasting are dominated by commercial free content.

Why do we need all this advertising? Who decided that our airwaves should be used so heavily for advertising? What is wrong with paying for the product?

I know someone will say that not everyone can afford premium channels, and I see that likely the cost of entertainment goes up if the commercial revenue goes away (although I wouldn't hold my breath there). But how much more do things cost because of advertising? If the people that make soap can't spend their money on TV ads and therefore the price of your TV goes up, does it matter if the price of your soap (the price of everything now heavily advertised) goes down?

Pay the soap people what soap is worth. Pay the TV people what TV is worth. What does TV have to do with the price of soap?

Likely this would also mean that it would be more difficult to break in a product. Without the tool of the advertising blitz companies would have to find another way to boost recognition. I say who cares. So they would have to find another way. Maybe they could generate word of mouth by making a good product.

I think this might have the knock on effect of making nearly everyone feel better about what they have because they wouldn't spend so much time being told they need something else.

I'm not even going to delve into the quagmire that is political TV advertising except to say that making one problem go away fixes the other.

How's this for a proposal: over the next 10 years broadcast media that use public spectrum must reduce the amount of time dedicated to commercials by 25% each year. If right now we get 22 minutes of programming for 30 minutes of broadcast then next year we would get 24. What would be left after 10 years would likely be akin to something at the top of the hour saying "this hours content sponsored by..." I can live with that.

Digital recording is paving the way for us anyway. With DVDs of TV shows, TIVO, and Podcasts a great many people are already enjoying the entertainment they set out to see without being subjected to sales they want no part of. Right now media companies are lobbying the FCC and legislatures to make it illegal to fast forward over commercials. Talk about wrongheaded. Commercials have been a bad idea all along, lets break the mold and find a new way rather than trying to cloodge the old mistake into the new technology.

And no more informercials. The rental on spectrum should say "no sub-lets."

When advertising went from print to broadcast it became intrusive. Perhaps it is time to roll it back and say that advertising should be passive. Print ads, fine, billboards, ok. You want to laser your logo on eggs, more power to you. Sponsor a sports team, go door to door, but get out of my face - I just wanted to watch the news.

Maybe they could laser etch the news onto eggs...