Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

We know why the addled number crunchers at V-NU played up this junk story about TV viewing going up: D-DAY is approaching. No, we don't mean Ike and the brave soldiers; we mean D as in DOOM -- for the AMERICAN SOCIETY OF WILLFULLY IGNORANT ADVERTISERS, for those with a psychotic compulsion to spendspendspend on television just as lawmakers must spendspendspend on us: TV-COMMERCIAL RATINGS ARE COMING. Everyone guesses they'll be lower than the programs they "sponsor"; the pall of CHEAP CHANNEL and its largely unsuccessful effort at clutter busting hangs over the biz. How much lower? And can ASWIA play tricks with the numbers? No doubt they can invent a few rationalizations, like a stickiness factor that would award a lower-rated show a higher proportional CPM if it retains more viewers. We'd further guess truly annoying commercials will not lose viewers. Nor would we surprised if the losses are in the single digits as so many people use their TVs as night lights. We wouldn't be surprised given the TV S&M phreaks if a few commercial pods drew MORE viewers than the programs. On the other hand, people don't buy DVRs for nothing; already there is speculation the high-commercial-load cable channels could suffer. We suspect also political ads would have by far the lowest stickiness factor, a potential disaster (we hope) on the local side that might force true reform on our money-grubbing elections. We have no doubt the idiot advertisers will find varied excuses to finance junk television whatever the numbers avoiding them; but we fervently wish that the numbers will be big enough to make television a losing proposition and might finally force change in the industry. We don't expect it, knowing that media are UNREFORMABLE, and because the hard-core viewers and ad-blurbists have a terminal case of STOCKHOLM SYNDROME.