Posted
September 5, 2007

We Can Turn the Ad Temperature Down

As advertising runs amok in the media, now is the time to say that excessive commercials are a form of obscenity.

In the late 1980s I arrived in Liverpool to deliver a speech. Finding my hotel room tv on the blink, I asked the front desk for a replacement. About 10 minutes later two strapping lads carried one in. Encountering an American, they wistfully envied the significant choice of channels available in the States. I readily agreed that we do have many more channels, but told them their envy might be misplaced since our programs are interrupted about every 10 minutes by several commercials. They looked at each other for a few seconds. Then, reluctantly, decided their system may be preferable.

Advertising is an acquired taste. I imagine if I returned to England, the same lads, now grown up, would view commercial interruptions an integral and normal and who knows, welcome part of broadcasting.

But perhaps I shouldn’t use the term “acquired taste.” Better to liken advertising to the temperature of the water in which the frog swims. If the water is heated up slowly, scientists inform us, the frog won’t notice until it’s too late, and it is literally boiled to death.

When it comes to advertising, we are near the boiling point. We began with ads on the hour, then on the half hour, then every 15 minutes. Watch the TV series 24 (and tens of millions do every week), and you’ll see commercials every 7 minutes or so. An empirical survey found that back in 2001, a typical hour of morning news had 18 minutes of interruptions for ads. And that was before pop-up ads. In the last year or two, we’ve been forced to watch commercials while the show is on. A part of the screen is taken over by animated promos for upcoming shows. Only a truly Zen TV watcher could focus on the program while these cartoon characters cavort across our retinas.

Like the water in which our frog swims, we have allowed the temperature to increase to the point where the harm is palpable.

One would think that our government, which seems to care so much about our competitive edge in the world economy and bemoans the state of our schools, would tackle what may be the leading cause of attention deficit disorder.

Commercial interruptions not only affect our attention span. They affect the world they report on. Live events are not truly live anymore, especially sports events where the action is forced to stop when the rules require the game to continue.

Only soccer, a continuous game, has been immune to commercial interruptions. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time. After all, soccer, the world’s number one sport, is embraced by nations new to broadcast advertising.

Our own form of football long ago succumbed. After more than a decade’s absence, I went to the Meadowlands to watch the Giants play football. After a kickoff I noticed the players standing or sitting on the field for what seemed an inordinate amount of time. One play later they again sat down. I suddenly realized that what for me was bizarre was, for the viewing public, perfectly natural. They were watching commercials.

It truly amazes me that a nation with mottoes like “live free or die” and “don’t trample me,” has allowed the temperature of our broadcasting water to get so high. Especially because we don’t have to. We have the authority to keep the water from boiling. We exercised it not that long ago.

Even in this era of privatization and deregulation, we still know the airwaves belong to the people. Why? Because even the most conservative Republican tells us so. The Republican FCC aggressively regulates content. They do so when they believe the content is obscene. So far the term has been applied to a fleetingly naked breast and a curse word. Many public TV stations will run the soon-to-be-aired seven part Ken Burns series on World War II with four words excised.

In the early days of broadcasting, excessive advertising was also considered obscene. In the beginning broadcast spectrum was so plentiful relative to demand that the Secretary of Commerce and Labor lacked the authority to deny radio licenses. Anyone who wanted to broadcast could do so. It was an era of what we might now call narrowcasting. There was little or no advertising.

By the 1920s, the wild west days were over. Signal interference became a major problem, especially for mass communications. Existing broadcasters sought to maintain control. The Radio Act of 1927 and seven years later, the Communications Act of 1934, which remains the charter for broadcast TV, created a new legal structure. Broadcasters would be given ownership of the frequency but licensees would have to operate in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” The Federal Radio Commission, created by the 1927 Act insisted, “the station must be operated as if owned by the public.” It is as if people of a community should own a station and turn it over to the best man in sight with this injunction: “Manage this station in our interest.”

In 1946, the renamed Federal Communications Commission(FCC) issued a general policy document, Public Service Responsibility of Licensees(popularly known as the Blue Book because of the color of its cover). The Blue Book offered four basic elements the FCC would use to assess a station’s public interest performance at license renewal time. One was “limits on excessive advertising.”

In the 1970s, the nation became enraged by the number and content of commercials on shows for children. To ward off legislation, the National Association of Broadcasters(NAB) agreed to voluntarily reduce advertising on children programming from 16 minutes to 12 minutes per hour during weekdays and to 9 minutes during weekends.

The Reagan Justice Department challenged the provision of the NAB?s voluntary code limiting advertising on children’s programming as a violation of anti-trust law. (And you thought that Ronald Reagan never enforced the anti-trust laws!) In 1982, that effort succeeded. Which eventually led to the passage of the Children’s Television Act of 1990. The Act mandated 3 hours of educational children’s programming per week that “furthers the positive development” of children 16 years and younger. And limited advertising on children’s programming to 12 minutes per hour during weekdays and 10.5 minutes during weekends.

A year later Sweden and Norway banned all advertising during children’s programs. At other times ads have not been allowed to target children less than 12 years of age.

I wish I could report that these early 1990s developments became the norm. They haven’t. Indeed, even as our TV screens are invaded by jumping cartoon characters aggressively inviting us to watch still another hour of TV with jumping cartoon characters inviting us to watch still another hour of TV, advertising has declared its dominance across our northern borders.

In May 2007, the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission announced that, starting in 2009, there would be no limit on the number of ads during prime time.

So here’s what we know. We have the authority to limit TV ads. In the past, we have exercised that authority. The number of ads has new reached the point where they may be affecting our nation’s ability to learn. The new pop-up, animated ads we watch while we try to watch our programs may be an indication that the temperature of the broadcasting water has begun to boil.

Which leads me to a modest suggestion: a national movement that tells the FCC and Congress that we view in-program pop-up ads as an obscenity at least as loathsome as a fleetingly naked breast or a curse word uttered by a soldier. The broadcasters have crossed a line here. The public interest demands that our government tell them to back up.

Yes, it is a wee step. But as Lao-Tzu reminded us, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. If we cannot persuade people to exercise their authority against such a clear and present danger, how will we persuade them to embrace the commons writ large?

Photo credit/ creative commons by: (A3R) angelrravelor (A3R)