Video in all its forms reflects the best of us as well as the worst. One of the more disturbing trends in today’s video is what is known as the “teaser”. In the 1950s, the “teaser” was used sparingly and harmlessly, meaning sitcoms and fictional dramas would produce promos, giving hints as to what and who was on a show without giving away the plot or climax. Nothing wrong with that.
Today, the “teaser” has spread like a virus! You see it in weather promos. They show a massive snowstorm somewhere and a voiceover will say “what are WE in for tomorrow?” and when the actual weathercast comes on, in about 20 minutes you find that the video was from some distant part of the country and that the answer to “what are WE in for tomorrow” turns out to be NOTHING!
Even the news itself isn’t immune to this phenomenon. From the dawn of television and up until the 70s, the likes of Huntley/Brinkley and Walter Cronkite simply read the news and that was that. No nonsense. News was simply a public service, not a show! In the late seventies and into the eighties, teasers began creeping into the news. People noticed and comedians would often joke, “world ends, film at 11”. Today, it’s even worse with newscasters at the beginning of a newscast teasing that “the hours on your cell phone are doing SOMETHING to your head! Find out in a few minutes!” Those “few minutes” often turn into the viewer having to watch the entire newscast and very often the very item you’ve been waiting for (and nervous about because they scared the HELL out of you) turns out to have been cut for time constraints.
The scary thing is how today’s comedians don’t bother joking about it anymore, because we, as an audience seem to have simply accepted it. We’ve accepted that just as we’ve accepted Walgreens putting out Christmas displays in August, Valentine displays when the box containing the just dismantled Christmas decorations isn’t even sealed yet.
All this in the name of money, profit, business. Nothing, it seems is as important as the next sale to be made, of getting that customer to open his/her wallet. Public service, informing the public, consideration, politeness, respect for the consumer/viewer, all this is out the window when it comes to the all mighty dollar.
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1 comments:
Now a days WE have millions of choices and less time to pay attention to them. The natural reaction is to IGNORE some of the details and only care about those that are directly related to our daily lives. Talking about of the all mighty dollar. Big Marketers know about the revolution of Social Media online. face book among one of them has experienced the fastest growth record in history. Faster than My Space. Running ads in the Face book network is far more expensive than go og le ad words.
Desperation is one of the tools marketers utilize to spread the word about certain product or service. In some people cause desperation. Other don't have time to care.
We all have different reactions to them
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