| I agree with KK that having congress tackle this is scary. I also agree that the commercials are too loud. I don't know what the best solution is to this, but as others have said, the clients are the ones driving this. As long as they want it as obnoxiously loud as possible, there's nothing we can really do. If we have a spec to meet, however, and it has legal teeth, then that might finally push the volumes down. Something should be done though. I don't think I know a person who DOESN'T mute the television when an ad comes on. I can't imagine that's the result advertisers are pushing for.
On a side note, I have aggressively cut television advertising out of my family's life because I find the content annoying and occasionally offensive. I cut off our satellite service earlier this year, and we now watch all shows via internet services (i.e. iTunes, Amazon VOD, Netflix streaming, network web sites, etc). The content is piped into media PCs connected to each of our televisions. This has created an amazing result: we spend far less time in front of the TV, when we DO watch we're only seeing things we're interested in and with very minimal commercial interruption, we read far more and spend more time together. I've also noticed that, since cutting these things out of our lives, I feel less stressed in general. I've also cut out radio advertising by getting a Sirius radio and listening to more podcasts/net radio. I love that there's always music playing when I'm driving. Well worth the little money spent. |