Our Commercial World

TV can be a great source of entertainment for most people. It brings laughter into our lives as well as education and thrills. But there has been an unfortunate trend in commercials over the past few years that has left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

Imagine this. You and your family, after and long day of work or school come together for some relaxation and an enjoyable dinner. If you are like a majority of families nowadays, you have a TV close to your table or you are all seated on the family room couch. The food is great, you have your family all together to discuss your day and your favorite dinnertime comedy is perhaps on TV. Then it happens. The barrage of what our family calls “If” commercials. The unrelenting “If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with fill in the blank.” This alone is depressing enough, but then add the wonderful symptoms of said illness and you have a recipe for the mute button scramble.

Our family is full of “couch potatoes”, so the TV is on most of the day and night. In fact I don’t remember much time in our life that there wasn’t one on somewhere in the house. That being said, we see and hear many of these types of intrusive commercials aimed at people looking for law suits or people looking for medications for an illness they have.

Now, I understand that people have some wicked illnesses out there and they need help with them, but does the general population really need to see 5 minute long commercials about it? I have a cavernous angioma and I take anti-seizure medications, but I wouldn’t want to see commercials about it when I am watching TV for the entertainment value of it.

Seriously, I cannot watch TV unless I have the remote in my hand at all times for fear that some disgusting list of side effects is going to be blurted out and either ruin a meal, or just plain gross me out.

My opinion is only one and sure, many people will say to simply turn the TV off and that definitely is a way of dealing with it, but I shouldn’t have to.

I remember back when the annoying commercials used to be all the law firms trying to get people to sue someone. They were run to the tune of at least 2-3 per commercial break. It was utterly ridiculous. Sure, they paid for the advertising, but come on, enough is enough.

But these medication and illness commercials are just gross and nobody wants to see or hear that stuff when they sit down to be entertained. And we shouldn’t have to watch HBO or some other pay channel to get away from them.

It makes me think about back to when I was a child. Commercials were light hearted, usually containing no more than a cartoon character and a cute jingle to sell a product of some sort. The only one that talked about bodily functions were Alka-Seltzer commercials and those were even cute or funny. There were no commercials that brought up and blatantly spoke of the most disgusting of illnesses and side effects ever.

I think that even though these intrusive commercials are meant to “educate” people about diseases or to help guide people to a medication that might help them “if they talk to their doctor about it”, they are still overkill. At this rate commercials alone will be responsible for creating more hypochondriacs than anything else in this world.