American TV

I've been in the US for a few days now, and though I have done and seen some interesting things, quite a bit of my time has been spent watching television. This is mostly because Steph is working and whilst I could maybe walk to the local supermarket or a few fast food places there isn't really much to do if you don't have a car.

Still, I digress. Watching American television is I think quite unique. I don't mean the programmes themselves. We obviously get quite a lot of them in the UK and by and large they tend to be of a high quality and entertaining/interesting. What makes US TV so different is the adverts. The adverts here are... odd. I realise that in the UK we have a plethora of bizarre and usually dodgy adverts for just about everything, but the American adverts are strange in very different ways.

First of all there are adverts for prescription drugs. That there are adverts for medicine is not strange. Its more the fact that each advert must clearly state the potential hazards of each product. That in itself is a good thing - this drug might do the following to you etc and is therefore probably not a good thing! However, the way this is done still leaves my mind in a state of bafflement even having seen countless numbers of these ads.

The template seems to go like this. Introduce the drug with a 'real' person who has used said drug and the goes on to warn of the consequences to family of not using it, or of the wonderous benefits from using said product. Whilst this is going on there will be people -usually children - playing in the background, the sky is blue, the grass is green and theres a gentle summer breeze wafting through the picture. Then to top it off a gentle piano recital will kick in. All in all a very mellow scene and not that unusal for trying to sell a product.

The strange part comes about a third if the way through. The image and the music stay the same, but a voice over starts listing what seem like hundreds of potential side effects of taking the drug. So it goes 'Digitise may produce headaces, loss of hearing, loss of legs and arms, servere diarrohea, chronic heart disease, mutations such as extra hands and feet, in addition to probable death.' And the crazy thing is thats not much of an exaggeration. The feeling I get at the end is that no-one in their right mind would buy these drugs, and thus why advertise when two thirds of your advert is saying your drug will probably leave you severely afflicted.

The second advertising oddities are perhaps not so much to do with the adverts themselves but more with the sheer range of products available in America, and more specifically products which seem to serve no useful purpose at all. The one that sticks in my mind was for an American Football television package (think Sky Sports) that had the ability to display on the tv who was calling you on the phone (ie caller ID). The advert was professionally made, very slick and was extremely enthusastic about the importance of knowing who was calling you whilst watching American Football in such a way that was displayed on the tv itself. Infact it made it sound as though you couldn't live without such a feature.

Now, if the advert was for the American Football television package and the caller ID thing was just thrown in as an extra then I could understand that. But it wasn't. It was for the caller ID integrated with your tv. I can't for the life of me understand the need for such a thing. Its just.. mind boggling.

I like it though. Its the oddities that make you appreciate America all the more.