November 29, 2007 Issue

Over the years my relationship with television has changed. I was eight or nine years old before we even had one and it seemed magical. Families watched television together and what we saw often mirrored our own lives. Families had meals together, like they did on Father Knows Best and parental rules were set and enforced.

When I went to college I didn’t have a television. There was one in the common room on the dorm floor, but I can only remember making a point to watch the dopey Batman series once a week. After I graduated and moved to my own place, I didn’t have one because I didn’t need one. I was in my late 20’s before I had my own television and only then because someone gave me one. It was a small one and in color, which made television a bit magical all over again. Wait a sec, the bus to Memory Lane just pulled up. Care to take a ride with me?

It is astonishing for me to remember how good television was in the late 1970s. On Saturday night, there was All In The Family, M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart and the Carol Burnett Show, followed by the then emerging Saturday Night Live. Good television on a night when young working people are supposed to be working the bars looking for each other. Instead, you invited people in for a night of viewing, conversation, laughter, and maybe a little bit of drinking. Part of what made these shows outstanding was the caliber of the writing. People said things that real people would say. Certainly, some situations were exaggerated, but the dialog was not. Getting off the bus now.

Actors get all the credit for successful shows, when in fact I think most people appreciate good writing whether they articulate it or not. Recent television shows like Cheers, Frasier, The West Wing, Friends, LA LAW, Boston Legal and a few others are true collaborations between the talent of the actors and the talent of the writers, as people sound like people we might know. On unscripted insipid reality shows, many of the ‘contestants’ are incapable of coherent speech and it’s clear there is no writer involved.

Then there are the commercials. Just as one appreciates fine acting and writing in a show, we also appreciate those commercials, which don’t beat us over the head. Advertising is certainly necessary as revenue from advertisers pays the bills. Despite the high cost of producing these commercials, most of them are loudly annoying, which makes the non-annoying ones stand out so much more. Target does a nice job of letting consumers know everything they have to offer without insulting us. Often Target ads have no words, only music and visuals. Will I shop at Target? You bet. The ads have shown me they have everything I might need and then some.

Commercials have forced me into the practice of recording the few television shows I do enjoy. However, last week I failed to program the VCR and had to watch a show in real time. The show in question was NCIS—ladies, Mark Harmon, need I say more?—a fairly good and not overly violent cop drama. I decided to go all anal and keep track of the commercials. In the hour-long show, there were 25 commercials for products, nine ads for other CBS shows, which I consider house ads, or space that did not sell, and one public service announcement. Eight of the 25 ads, or just shy of one-third of them were for prescription drugs. The ads were played at a louder volume than the show, which is highly annoying and makes you keep the remote at the ready to either lower the volume or mute it completely.

It depressed me so much I wondered if I was a candidate for Cymbalta.

***
This paper is a big believer in nepotism and proof of that fact is that we have hired Breanne Boland’s brother Nick to take pictures for us around town. So if he comes into your place of business or approaches you in a restaurant and says he’s The Beachcomber photographer, he really is. Be nice to him and cooperate. He’s just a kid with a camera and a good instinct for photo subjects. Now that I’ve employed all of the Boland progeny, maybe Breanne’s mother will stop blaming me for her daughter’s move to Seattle. I had nothing to do with it. Honest.

More from Leah Stratmann