Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Pavlov’s Remote

I’m conditioned, you’re conditioned, wouldn't you like to be conditioned too!

                One of us.           One of us.           One of us.           One of us.       

I haven’t watched commercial TV with any regularity in many years. I've recently started watching Hulu again, I was there in the beginning when almost everything was free, and I've come to appreciate the commercial break. Is it because I grew up in the first real TV generation when the formulaic wasn't a formula yet. A time of “Gilligan’s Island”, “The Brady Bunch”, “Nanny and the Professor”, and “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father”. We were the first latchkey kids and TV actually was our babysitter. I’m fighting the urge to make this about TV in the 70’s.

I've noticed that the brief commercial break on Hulu is perfect for a moment of reflection. This past moment was spent reflecting on my seemingly conditioned response to commercials. Of course that led me to reflect on if the commercials created the reflection or if the reflections determined when the commercials occur. Then I thought about pie.

So how did commercials come to be where they are? Did TV execs use a series of tests? Did they hire psychiatrists or medical doctors to create a double-blind experiment (I can’t think of how they’d do a double-blind test either)? Did they throw darts? Or could it be they determined how much they could cram in and not drive us bat-crap?

Sadly, it’s most likely the last one, but I think they may have gone too far. My evidence, scant or imaginary at best, leads me to ask another question: Did the ever growing amount of commercial time drive the creation of technology allowing us to take greater control of our leisure time? Of course, leisure time is probably not the best descriptor of time we spend watching TV; TV has become the white noise that provides background for our lives. Or at least it had.

Entertainment today is not the passive medium it once was. Entertainment today requires commitment, effort on our part, so the commercial break is sometimes seen as a nostalgic throwback, a forced calm in the storm giving us a break from our entertainment. Why should we need a break from entertainment?

We are conditioned to always look for something better. I think this is an innate quality, but still conditioned by somebody. When I was young I lived in Los Angeles where we had 7 channels, 8 if we include PBS, but I was lucky; when I lived in central Utah we had 3, so it took only minutes to check if something better was available. Also, TV was a linear, time-driven medium; programs came and went, never to be seen again for the most part (like formulas, syndication developed its roots here). So you made your decision quickly and lived with it.

Today the choices are effectively limitless. There are more than enough choices so that new programming is always available because there are more choices than time. Among all this comes the forgotten commercial.


Kick back and enjoy them.

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