Every veteran news producer at every network and station has edited, censored, rescheduled, or refused to air programming to satisfy a sponsor. Even the trusted PBS News Hour cannot offend its corporate "underwriters." Note the lack of stories about nuclear waste (G.E.), agribusiness and GMOs (Monsanto, ADM), chemical pollution (Dow) etc. Sometimes the executive producers just think those programs are "not important," too complex for the time alloted, or simply not "interesting" to their viewers. Right. There's the missing information.

TV ratings, (and now web "hits") define the economic success of these media. The competition for TV ratings drives the entire medium toward speed, spectacle, flash over content, sound bites over analysis, and a whole range of "emotional pornography." Most advertisers aim for the same set of free-spending demographics, leaving whole segments of the population with media directed at someone else. In the news, two ratings-related factors tend to trivialize what might be real information about real events that have meaning. ONE: The need to end every newscast with happy endings and fluff: sports, weather, pet and celebrity stories. TWO: The interruption of the newscast and the tailoring of stories to fit around the commercial breaks. The conscious mind thinks it sorts this all out, but the unconscious blurs it all together and takes it at equal value. A wise pundit explained the essence of the subliminal message: the news tells you about the reality that you can't control, and the ads tell you about the one you can. Art used to imitate life, now our lives try to imitate the arty illusions that have colonized the screen. Teenager in the grocery line, describing an event the previous night: "It was so real, it seemed like a movie."

Commercial culture has turned most of our purchases into a chase after a false identity. We're seldom buying products, we're buying the image we saw in the ad, as if we can put it on and wear it. When information becomes a product in a market, it loses most of its informational value, and the information essential to democracy goes missing.
Two important principles of the economy of advertising. ONE: When corporate advertisers pay broadcasters for "time," they pay for EVERYTHING, all the costs of all the programming and overhead for ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and hundreds of other production and broadcast companies. TWO: Big corporations don't pay for the advertising or the programming. We do. We pay for it through the "ad tax" levied on every advertised product and vendor. Everything in the commercial broadcast industry is paid for by you and me, through corporations and advertisers, who obviously skim huge percentages for their own profits. Anyone think that's an inefficient method of funding?

At the end of WWII, the economy was so pumped up on weapons production, our "leaders" faced a dilemma: how to maintain that level of production without war? They realized they needed to create a level of consumer demand that would support massive industrial production. Hence the 50s, the dawn of the consumer culture and of advertising as a method of mind control.

It's impossible, without a research staff, to know what percent of the U.S. GDP, or how many actual dollars are spent on advertising. It's in the hundreds of billions. In some industries it's probably as low as 10%. But in others, like cars, drugs, electronics, athletic shoes and luxury buys of all types, it runs between 40% and 90% of the retail price. Air Jordans? You remember. The cost of an $85. pair of shoes, labor and materials, out the door of the factory in S.E.Asia: six bucks. Nike paid Michael Jordan $20 million for endorsements in one year, more than they paid all their Malaysian factory employees combined.

Overall, advertising inflates artificial value and degrades real value. It stimulates excessive consumption and waste, which pushes the whole economy toward a "balloon" condition, in danger of a collapse that would bring down the real-value market along with the waste economy.
Advertising created the mindset that drives the waste economy in the U.S., the primary cause of the global environmental crisis. The pace of TV is driven by the need to hypnotize. The pace of the economy is driven by the bottom line, which is not a static number; it has to go up every quarter. Haste makes waste. The faster and cheaper that resources and labor can be transformed into product, pitched, packaged, purchased, consumed and the leftovers thrown away, the faster and bigger the profits accumulate. It's why war is such good business ... and one of the biggest causes of environmental damage.

NeoCons "sold" the criminally wasteful, pointless Iraq Wars (I and II) using expensive ad agencies and public relations strategists. They have branded and packaged international belligerence as an endless "war on terror." All based on fear, false ego images, and a completely manufactured sense of entitlement, disguised as "the American Dream."

It's hard to calculate the fuel, water, resources, labor, hard cash and young lives wasted in propping up the U.S. economy and the NeoCon image of their imperial duty. But had those resources gone in a different direction, in 2000 say, or even 1980, we'd be living in a safer, more stable world.

Neither the TV programs nor the TV ads show any hint of the deaths, the toxic dumps, habitat loss, species extinctions, corporate crime, political corruption, material waste, and the impact of the war / waste / wealth economy on the poor of the world. So the consumer culture remains oblivious to the damage done in its name. The Advertising Tax, combined with the Iraq War Tax are a huge burden, levied against the health of the earth and the future of our children. They will be sapping our national strength and treasure for a generation or more.
The presidential campaign has turned into American Idol. Competitors are groomed and rehearsed by trainers and consultants so they "look good" on TV. The auditions ... um competitions ... um debates are run like quiz shows, with a heavy emphasis on the spectacular, the divisive and humiliating, the sound bite, the sneaky surprise, the embarrassing revelation, the hope for a gaff or a moment of brilliance. All possible exhibitions of vision, talent or honest debate are filtered out from the getgo. Focus groups represent target demographics. Audience segments are polled so that we'll know what to think. And the introduction of new technology. Wow! Watch the live graphs of audience impulses veer up and down, phrase to phrase, as candidates speak. We'll know second to second what our peers like and dislike.

Political races can't be run without advertising and the business of politics (are we really calling it that?) can't be conducted without lobbyists and corporate donations. Millions have to be raised to pay for the ads (corporations make huge profits on political ads). And promises have to be made for those millions. Politicians are not only constrained by the economic demands of television advertising, they are constrained by the "language" of commercial TV spots. Any actual ideas have to be translated into slogans and buzzwords so the voters will salivate or wince on cue. Candidates have to fit themselves into an "image mold" so they'll look competitive, like they belong on TV, like news anchors reading the teleprompter. Reagan in, Kucinich out. Once elected, governing takes a back seat to gearing up (raising money) for the next election cycle.
"Sponsorship" promotes the idea that the generous advertiser brings you the entertainment, drama and news that you want and need, for "free," in exchange for the privilege of telling you about their product every now and then. But your attention is really the product, the advertiser buys the broadcaster, medium, and program, and uses them to attract your eyes and mind so he can sell them to the corporation. So the unconscious message is you should be grateful to the sponsor for stealing your attention, selling your time and messing with your unconscious fears and desires.

And they know how to attract your eyes. It should not come as a surprise to you that advertisers use images of breasts, and butts, nipples and crotches, eyes and mouths and other images that sort of remind us of sexual organs. But it may surprise you to know that they tailor their camera work and their editing to keep your eyes moving, spot to spot on the screen, too fast for your conscious mind to register the images, but just right for the unconscious. Advertisers use laser eye-tracking systems, so they can see exactly where you are looking, on the TV screen, every 1/30 th of a second. The product will be in there, foaming, shining, wet or bulging or flashing by, and the brand name will have to be there. But your unconscious makes connections between the momentary image, the buzzword, the musical riff, and deep feelings of power and powerlessness, love and lust, insecurity and need.

Of course you won't learn about this on sponsored TV. (Try LINK or FreeSpeechTV.) The odds of FOX News running a story on subliminal advertising are about the same as the chance they'll ignore a celebrity murder.
The 30-second spot is the Sistine Ceiling of the 20th century. It contains more powerful, compressed, ideological information, cloaked in more emotional, archetypal imagery than any other form of communication in human history. Cave paintings by firelight, accompanied by drumming, chanting and scary stories could not be more persuasive. Big budget advertising makes the most powerful Nazi propaganda seem obvious and simplistic.

I wanted to be an advertising art director until the VietNam War taught me of the corruption of the military / industrial / corporate / political system. I think high end advertising is the most creative, powerful, well-crafted use of the most complex language we humans have developed. They make brilliant use of language and images, graphics and sound. The editing is precise, the timing riveting. So I love the talent and the effective communication in advertising.

I also hate advertising. I hate the waste of creativity, time, money and resources. I hate its effect on our collective unconscious. I hate its impact on the economy and I hate the way it skews and compromises everything it sponsors - news, entertainment, drama and sports. The "best" ads are also bad - evil - because they manipulate our unconscious fear and desire to sell useless, wasteful and destructive products. They motivate us to ignore our own best impulses, trust our worst instincts and waste the planet. They've led us to accept image and hype in place of genuine experience and meaning in every part of our lives. Even cheap, stupid ads grab the attention of the conscious mind by being irritating and insulting. The unconscious simply absorbs them.