The make more money, Television Networks have been allotting more ad time to their sponsors, which cuts down on the how long television shows are.
Did you know that television shows are on average seven minutes shorter than they used to be? How upsetting is that? Wouldn’t you much rather get a full 30 minutes of Modern Family instead of only 21? Okay bad example, 21 minutes might be too long for that show to be totally honest but you get the point.
Network executives sell way more ad time to car and deodorant companies than ever before, to line their pockets with cash. That’s all good and fun but give it 15 years or so and we’ll be skipping through the actual show just to watch Colonel Sanders bust a nut for his new chicken recipe.
So, how do marketing teams use the allotted time they have to entice their educated, independent consumers? That was a rhetorical question, so don’t answer it. They will just turn their commercials into 60 second operas. For instance, let’s take those Lincoln car commercials with Matthew McConaughey as an example.
It’s 45 seconds of falling in love with a southern drawl that will make you faint like a girl in a 60s-chick flick and when you watch him drive away your heart breaks. Then it’s five seconds of “Lincoln, buy it because an actor drives our car.”
Say what you want but an in depth and descriptive commercial like that really helps Americans choose what car to drive. By this logic, if you ever take a vacation and need to rent a car, use Hertz because since the 90s O.J Simpson has been using them and who knows more about needing a car on short notice than the Juice.
In today’s quick paced society, nothing can be slow. The rate of TV shows is faster, the pace of commercials is faster, even the news is faster. Literally, natural disasters occur way more often now because marketing teams need to keep their viewers entertained. This is a visible pattern in the modern digital age and by the time all the 20-year-olds are retired and have grand-kids I wouldn’t be surprised if TV shows just incorporated the commercials into their script. Remember this, so when you are old and gray and are watching Family Feud, you can bet that you will see a car being advertised on the show. Oh wait…
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