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It's a chore watching TV. Real finger exercise. How much exercise depends on the type of remote control used. Mine is the old fashioned kind. To change channels, EACH NUMBER has to be PUSHED instead of tapping an instant quick view selector.

TV producers should take that into consideration when they allocate advertisement time slots. I imagine they lose a whole segment of their audience who, trying to avoid bad ads, skip to another channel.

They've lost me a couple of times. Due to digital impairment. It's hard work operating the remote. The buttons are so small that one misplaced finger sends you to a channel in the outer regions of Twilight Zone.

If news shows are your bag, you're in for a world of hurt. Face it, no one can cover world news in the 12 minutes alloted by the major networks. Only major disasters can be squeezed into 720 seconds.

And when they promise extensive coverage? Forget it. The networks are shooting you a line.

Try naming a mere thirty percent of the world's countries in twelve minutes! Even a glib speaker will trip over his tongue. So where does that leave world news coverage?

Which is why the news shows select one or two major events and milk them to death, giving us nightly postdates FOR THE NEXT THREE TO TEN WEEKS. Longer if they can get away with it.

It wouldn't surprize me a bit to tune into: Today's News Coverage, and hear: "Tonight folks, we're devoting the entire news show to a special update on the seedy atmosphere of the Crimson building on Plympton Street in the 1940's.

But I digress. The real issue here is slotting ad placement. Of every thirty minutes, EIGHTEEN are devoted to advertisements — which isn't my real beef. After all, rerunning Katrina every night takes money.

The real stickler is: TV producers think that anyone watching the news is sick. Needs medication.

The evidence is obvious. There are two hundred and sixty-three ads for pharmaceutical products between each three minute news blurb.

( Is this a new plot designed to discourage folks from keeping up with the Bush Administrations daily shenanigans?)

In any event, NBC, CBS and ABC "News" should be renamed. A title more appropriate for the half-hour's actual content. Something like: 216 Diseases You Can Acquire by Subliminal Programming.

Either that or the TV producers should reslot the pharmaceutical ads to shows where viewers need medication. Shows like CSI Miami would do just fine.
Ad Slots © 2006 Chaeli Lee Sullivan