Channel 38

Yo.

Happy New Year to all.  I hope most folks did more with the year’s first holiday than I did.  I sat and watched college football.

I sat so long, in fact, that I began to ignore the fact that I was seeing the same commercials loop again and again during the games.  And then I finally asked myself the question everyone already knows the answer to: “How is it that the F-150 is being advertised every single commercial break?”  Oh yeah…money.

Now I haven’t done the research on the financial figures surrounding prime time television advertising (let alone the specifics of college bowl game advertising and sponsorships) or their actual impact on viewers, but here’s what was easily ascertainable without the Internet or a library:  I’m not about to buy an F-150 any time soon.  Nor will I switch my car insurance to All State.  Nor will I give any of my money to Merrill Lynch.  I also don’t know of anyone who will be doing any of those things any time soon.

Despite my personal lack of intention to give those companies my money, they still are getting it.  Big time.  Just by my watching the game and commercials.  Bank of America, Ford, All State, and all the other mega-companies running their brands across my eyes are getting plenty of my capital, as well as the capital of anybody else who falls prey to their flood of visual commercialism.  Somewhere along the chain of capitalism, those guys own something for which you and I spend money–maybe not those guys, per se, but you know what I mean.

So all of the funny, all of the cute, all of the creative visuals you think are great entertainment are really just slaps in your face for all of the money that you either spent or will spend.  Soon.  It doesn’t matter if you think that woman on the Progressive commercials is extremely annoying (we all do).  The fact is that Progressive paid ABC/Fox/NBC/CBS/X network to air at a certain time, that network made a deal with your cable provider to be on their channel lineup, and you pay your cable provider to watch television.

Oh.  And somebody out there is bound to switch to Geico.  Or one of those insurance companies.  In case you didn’t know, you need car insurance in case you want to drive the F-150 you just bought.  That’s right–you have to pay to drive your car.

Damn.