As much as consumers are gaining control over the media they consume and, consequently, the ads they see, good old couch laziness is here to stay. Market Researcher Veronis Suhler Stevenson reports Americans currently watch an average of 1,800 hours of TV and ply 71 hours of video games. In 2008, Americans will watch 1,900 hours of TV and play 98 hours of video game. That's hardly a leap off the comfy couch. After all, how would we live without satiating our voyeuristic desires now fed by the likes of Wife Swap, The Swan and Extreme Makeover.
Pfizer has been kicked out of the middle aged American male orgy to rejunivate itself after being dealt a mid-coitus, blue balling "no" by the FDA. It doesn't like Pfizer's horny teen boy-like omission of detail just to come to the party's happy ending. The FDA, like a scorned girl fighting off an animalistic suitor has said no to Pfizer's Viagra ad which shows horns sprouting out from a man's head. Apparently, a few details that, oh, could kill you, were left out of the ad. Remember guys, no means no.
Buzzmachine's Jeff Jarvis did a bit of digging and found just three people to be the cause of the FCC's $1.2 million fine against FOX for it's "sexually suggestive" Married by America.
Yes, just three people adversely affected free speech and caused a company to needlessly cough up $1.2 million. Jarvis correctly calls into question the sad state of affairs in this country which led to this and the recent freak out over whether or not to air Private Ryan.
We've gone insane. That's the only explanation for it. When companies and the government leave their back bone at the door and bend over for every individual complaint, we become not a democracy but a dictatorship run by individuals who have co-opted our Constitution.
It bears repeating. Three people out of 295 million caused the FCC to fine a company $1.2 Million.
Apparently all those weepy movies and an overdose of Dana Delany (although recent hotties Annabella Sciorra and Kelly Williams are the latest women in distress) has caused Lifetime to schedule the highest number of commercials in a break allowing viewers to go dab their tears and grab another twinkie before returning for more The Notebook like programming. A recent study by Media IQ shows the network runs 9.5 messages per break followed closely by equally weepy (for Behind the Music) with 9.37 messages per break. The not so emotional Weather Channel provides the fewest message per break with an average of just 3.53.
