I don't listen to the radio on a consistent basis in the car. Most of the time I treat my solo rides in the car as decompressing time from work with no noise. If my kids are in the car, we are usually listening to their iPods. I do usually listen on my ride
to work, and I always listen while I am getting ready in the morning at home. This is not going to be a rant about the radio but rather advertising on the radio and advertising through the media in general. Right around graduation time the radio station I listen to at home while I am getting ready played one particular ad over, and Over, and OVER again! It was an ad for a car company. The copy started out with a young graduate girl saying these words excitedly ( a little too excitedly in my opinion, translation: bad acting) "
When my dad mentioned the words graduation surprise..." She was irritating enough, but then the voice over switches to the Dad with the teenage girl squealing in the background. The actor they hired to voice the dad literally sounded like some creepy pervert who stands outside of a school yard drooling while he watches all the high school girls come out and go to their cars. I kid you not, one of his lines in talking about his daughter's reaction to the gift of the car was "
She was out of control!" said with this really creepy, lecherous inflection. I got to the point where I would almost break my neck jumping over my bed to get to the clock radio to turn off the sound that was offending my ears. If I could not make it to the radio, I would regress to my elementary days and plug my ears with my fingers and sing "La, La, La" loudly until I was relatively sure the commercial was over. There's another radio ad that I turn off every time it comes on. It's the one where the mom is riding her daughter's school bus because gas prices are too high, and she seems to delight in embarrassing her child. Then there's the one for the well known fast food chain that talks about living with a morning person, and the annoying roommate sings "
It's a new day!" Yes, I realize she is supposed to be annoying, but so annoying that the consumer no longer listens to the commercial? Probably not. And then there's television. Luckily I am almost never home, so almost all the TV I watch is on TIVO. The plus? being able to fast forward through all the commercials. Like the super annoying commercial for a well known Virginia amusement park where the family sits and screams at the kitchen table, not yelling words, but bloodcurdling, ear-piercing, shrieks. I cannot get to the remote fast enough! Or the ever popular, "
It's my money, and I need it NOW!!" or the screaming pig on the zip line. Then there are the commercials that are just disturbing visually like the one for the rainbow candy where a boy has a tree growing out of the center of his chest or the same company's most recent gross offering of a girl making out with a huge walrus. Then there's the lovely commercial for termite extermination that has a huge creature that would rival anything fabricated for an alien movie from an FX studio. My point is, when any of these commercials come on, I turn them off or worse yet, I change the channel. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that just the opposite of what I'm supposed to do?
