Pump Down the Volume
Why are radio ads and television commercials so much louder in volume than the program they are interrupting? As if I didn’t despise advertising in the middle of a program or music set to begin with, now I get downright mad because the ad volume is so wicked louder than whatever I was listening to, like they assumed I went deaf in the split second between the program and the commercial.
I managed to escape television advertising once I had satellite DVR. I never, EVER watch anything live because I would have to wait through the commercials. Even if it’s something I really, REALLY want to watch, I won’t watch it until after it’s recorded in my DVR so I can use my 30-second skip button and in about two seconds skip all commercials and get on with the content I was into before the advertising interruption.
When I visit my parents however, which is frequently, often 30 minutes (or sometimes 60 minutes) of the early evening are consumed by the news they watch (I tend to be messing around on Facebook and such on the iPad, I don’t really enjoy watching the news). We chat during the commercials. So here I am, sitting through the news with my parents (I’m actually using the news part of the time right now to write this blog post on my iPad), and then a commercial comes on. It’s at least five decibals higher than the news was, and worse yet, these days every commercial during the news is about erectile dysfunction, incontinence, urinary tract infection, and other topics that I don’t particularly enjoy watching (or hearing) with my parents.
Ha! That reminds me, some day I need to tell the story of “Why I Can’t Watch Certain Movies with My Dad.” For now I’ll just say American Pie wedding cake and leave it at that. 😉
I used to listen to the radio in the car, back in like, high school, and I would switch stations, mute the sound, or turn the volume dial all the way off when ads came on. Eventually I moved to only listening to CDs because I just hated being told what to buy or how to feel by an advertisement.
But my ranting today is actually about a new kind of interruptive advertising, at least it’s new to me.
When I was in chemo and was ridiculously sick and then even lost my eyesight to the point that I couldn’t read my computer screen, I started listening to Pandora internet radio. I would find some calming New Age stations and curl up in the enormous bean bag thing to wait out the pain or nausea or whatever. I would also play those Pandora stations in the background when I was writing my cancer journal and posting from it to my cancer blog. I didn’t have my CD collection with me in Sacramento where I stayed for treatment, and I was too nauseous all the time to be able to drive or ride up to my house in the mountains to get my CDs. Plus, the only space actually allocated to me in the house was a doorless half of what was previously a tiny screen porch. I spent all my cancer days in treatment or in this little five by ten “office.”
I loved Pandora then, all music and no ads, ever. But that was back when I was in chemo and radiation, in 2H 2008.
When I started writing more on personal & spiritual growth for Cielem’el earlier this year, I thought, hey I should go see if Pandora internet radio is still out there, and put on the new age music like I did during writing the cancer blog. It was soothing and non-distracting , and helped me stay at the computer longer than I would have been able to without it.
So some day last month I typed www.pandora.com in my browser and of course it still exists and still has the neat genre/station mixing that I have always found pretty darn cool. So I found a few New Age stations and had it on in the background while I wrote. After two songs, I was jolted practically out of my seat and definitely startled into forgetting what the heck I was writing about (which is especially annoying because I usually write to bring readers to an idea rather than just blast out a thought for consumption, and taking you on that path requires more thought on my part). I can’t think when a radio ad suddenly blasts out of my computer where there was previously this soft soothing background music. So I started hitting my mute button whenever an ad came on. Then of course I forgot to turn the volume back on and next thing you know I’ve missed a meeting reminder or an incoming instant message because my laptop’s muted.
This morning it happened again, BANG! 30 seconds of nasty-loud advertising for something I’m sure I won’t buy because of the invasiveness of the ad interrupting my flow. Scared me to death. I mean come on, I was only slightly awake, had just finished my morning meditations and was doing my Rune casting, so it was only about 5AM, pitch black outside, and I was still in the quiet part of the day when I’m only using a couple of pale lamps for light. It’s not always easy getting up really early, but I do especially love the first three hours of my day most, before I switch over to my day job.
So, BANG out comes the ad that scares me out of my chair and mind and I switch over to Pandora to just shut the damn thing down and never open it again, when I see the tiny little corner upturn and the “why ads?” link, so I clicked on it and saw the obvious statement that ads help pay their bills, but then I see another miniscule link to “upgrade.” Now here’s something smart, though they aren’t positioning it appropriately. Pay a (hopefully small) monthly fee and get as much Pandora as you want, without ads. Of course they offer for you to try it free for 24 hours, and apparently you can’t get pricing unless you actually click to purchase the service, which takes you to an embedded payment window. After all this, I did bother to find out the price, and later today (during the “lunch” of my day job), I’ll probably go purchase the upgrade to “Pandora One” for non-commercial-interrupted music.
Because me and commercials, we just don’t move in the same circles, if you know what I mean. 🙂