Madvertising

Can I just say something? No? 

Tough – I’m going to say it anyway. Here it is:

I am bloody sick of adverts.

There – I’ve said it. 

Back in the day when I was just a kid, I didn’t mind adverts too much. Some of them were funny, some of them were interesting and I regarded them as having a purpose other than just trying to sell stuff. As I grew older, I started to hate them but I know that they served a purpose for me, though this wasn’t the purpose that the marketers intended. 

Basically, when the adverts came on, I could take a break, go to the loo, make a cup of tea, etc. without missing my favourite TV programmes. With the advent of video recorders I could record TV programmes and watch them later at my own leisure and just skip the adverts. 

That made me happy. 

These days I can download TV programmes and movies to watch and I can stream them on a variety of streaming platforms. Initially I paid good money for this and as a result I got unblemished TV content that was commercial free.

That made me extremely happy.  

Recently, though, things have become really annoying. Streaming services have upped their game and started offering cheaper tariffs – but with a catch. That catch is that you are once again bombarded with commercials. In order to remove commercials I have to fork out a lot of money and this is on top of paying for my satellite/cable service and paying the mandatory TV Licence we have in the UK. 

What is the TV Licence? In the UK the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) is free of commercials because we the public have to pay an annual fee to watch it. Perhaps it was the first TV service of its kind. Even though I don’t watch the BBC as much as I used to, I still have to pay it. If you don’t pay for your TV licence, the powers that be, the TV police, can came along and either fine you £1000 (at the time of writing) or be further prosecuted. We have no choice. The money goes to the BBC who spend it on content. 

Now, if I watch something on Disney+ or Netflix with the cheaper subscription rate, I have to suffer mandatory commercials. You can’t skip them at all. Effectively I am paying to watch adverts and in order to remove them I am expected to pay a fortune. Given the number of streaming platforms, that can add up to a lot of money. 

However, these days adverts aren’t restricted to television. They are everywhere.

ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE! 

And I can’t get rid of them without paying a premium. Here are some examples:

They appear in the cinema before the movie you have paid to watch. You can avoid many of these by turning up later and hopefully missing all the adverts. 

They appear on the radio. I rarely listen to radio these days but when I do I choose BBC Radio 4, which is a news channel effectively but has no adverts. The reason I don’t listen to other stations is that most radio stations have a melange of three things that make my blood boil. First, the DJ’s are usually the kind of shiny happy people that seem to think all the listeners want to listen to their inane bullshit as they talk over records. Second, the music is not my kind of music and if by a miracle it is, the songs are spoiled and interrupted by jingles and bullshit from the DJ’s. Finally, the adverts on radio are the worst and are awful.

I watch You Tube a lot for free but this means that I have to endure adverts every couple of minutes. I like progressive rock music, which typically has longer songs and if I choose to watch, say, a Dream Theater video on You Tube that lasts 10 minutes, it is interrupted at least once with adverts. One time, I tried to use a You Tube mindfulness video to relax into to go to sleep and I was just nodding off when a bloody advert tried to persuade me to buy a new smart watch thus rendering useless the previous calming five minutes of relaxing music and guaranteeing that I was now wide awake and ranting like a banshee, which resulted in waking up Mrs PM and the cats and all the chaos that ensues when I am foolhardy enough to do that.

I am using Duolingo to help me to learn French, Spanish and German. The problem is that I spend more time watching terrible adverts for Temu and other useless apps than I do learning a new language.   

I am on Spotify and have paid for the full subscription to avoid commercials while listening to music. I am afraid that having my music interrupted by commercials is something I cannot endure. 

Other apps that I use also swamp me with terrible adverts. 

This infuriates me. 

I think we are all left with a choice. We either spend a fortune to avoid adverts or we suck it up and endure them. 

At this moment in my life, when I am a happy retired gentleman I have to learn to find the power within myself to endure these dreadful commercials because there is absolutely no way I am going to give any more of my hard-earned cash to corporations who seem to love creating the worst adverts to defecate onto my TV screen or smartphone. 

I have started making a cup of tea when the adverts come on streamed TV programmes. I have started looking at Spanish, French and German books in the minutes that are wasted by Duolingo’s adverts. 

I have found soothing commercial-free music on Spotify to help me on the way to sleep should I need to. 

I will get there but in the meantime there may be some rants along the way. 

Actually, as a final word, I can cope with spoof adverts. If there were more of these it would be much better. I’ll leave you with a couple:

The Couch Potato

I have a routine now that I am retired but occasionally I have to summon some willpower so that I don’t fall into the trap to becoming a couch potato and spend the whole day in a stupor in front of the television watching daytime TV. 

The thing is that most people who watch daytime TV are also retirees like myself and at the moment I only reserve 45 minutes during my routine for watching daytime TV on Monday to Friday. The programme I watch is a quiz show called Countdown and is on Channel 4 in the UK at 14:10 in the afternoon from Monday to Friday. 

Countdown is a game where contestants try to make the longest words from nine letters within 30 seconds. For example the letters might be:

R L T C R A E E A

A contestant who makes the word LACERATE would beat another contestant who makes the word CATERER because LACERATE is longer. There are several rounds of the letters game and a couple of numbers games which are equally challenging. 

I watch the show because I can play along and it helps keep my mind sharp. 

However, there is a problem. Channel 4 is a commercial channel so I have to suffer adverts in the middle of the show. I have grown out of the habit of watching commercials since streaming and recording has taken off but in the case of Countdown I watch the show as it is aired (to fit into my routine). 

Generally, the people who watch TV at the time Countdown is on are older people like myself who have retired. And the adverts are targeted at us and boy are they depressing. This is the sort of thing I mean:

I was happy when I started watching Countdown and all the commercials are trying to remind me that I am an old git who will shuffle off this mortal coil and should therefore start planning my funeral right now!

So you choose to destroy any happiness I might have by thinking about the time when my body decides to release me to the afterlife? 

How utterly depressing. 

It’s not just funerals they advertise during daytime TV. We get insurance adverts, medical adverts and adverts for contraptions that miraculously make you able to walk better if your legs and feet are too old to cope with your body falling apart, for example:

I know I’m an older man do I need to be reminded of that on a daily basis?

I also think that they portray older people in a strange way. As you can see from above, you’ve got the active grandad up the ladder but you also get old couples who are acting like they are teenagers in love. 

I mean, really? 

Okay – enough about commercials. I must admit that there are some daytime TV programmes that start to draw me in if I decide to watch a little telly in morning with my breakfast. One example is Homes Under the Hammer is on BBC1.

For those of you who don’t live in the United Kingdom, Homes Under the Hammer is a programme about property development. An “expert” goes to a house that is for sale at an auction and tells us about it and the surrounding area. The house is sometimes in a dilapidated state and requires a lot of work and he or she make suggestions about what needs to be done to it. The house is then sold at the auction and the “expert” interviews the buyer asking what they are going to do to it. Later in the show, we move forward magically in time and see for ourselves how the buyer turned the wreck of a house into something that you can move into and what the buyer intends to do with it. And, of course, how much money the buyer could make. 

The show is quietly addictive, in the sense that you get drawn in and find yourself waiting to see how the house was transformed and before you know it, an hour has gone by. I have to dig deep into the depths of my willpower to switch it off. The good news (or bad news?) is that because Homes Under the Hammer is on BBC1 there are no TV commercials to remind me that perhaps I should be up and about instead of festering on the couch.

There are lots of similar (and sometimes more inane) programmes for example: 

A Place in the Sun – an expert takes a couple to Southern Europe to help them buy a holiday home.

Bargain Hunt – Two teams buy antiques and try to resell them at an auction for the biggest profit. 

Money for Nothing – an “expert” takes people’s junk from tips and tries to make some money out of it by modernising or repairing it. 

Escape to the Country – similar to A Place in the Sun but this time with city dwellers trying to buy a house in the country. 

Come Dine With Me – five contestants take turns cooking for each other and marking the efforts of their competitors.

Four in a Bed – Bed and Breakfast (B&B)  owners compete with each other to see who has the best B&B.

Most of it is inane drivel but there are occasions when I have been sucked in and ended up watching an episode without actually realising that I am completely wasting my valuable time. 

To be honest, I think watching daytime TV or even streaming decent shows in the daytime is a bad thing for me. Countdown aside, I don’t want to spend all day lolloping on my sofa when I could be doing something far more productive. 

Maybe that’s the role of these terrible commercials. Whenever I see one, my immediate thought it to rant and moan but then I realise that it is targeted at an idealised version of me that probably does spend all day on the couch watching adverts about getting deals for my own funeral. And that is a kick up the arse and makes me think – “Right! I’m still young (in mind) – let’s get up and do something constructive before it’s too late.”

In a weird way – they actually help. I hope that other people similar to me realise that talking about funerals and wishing your life away is totally depressing and counter-productive. 

I’m old – but not THAT old. 

Thank goodness I have a teenager in my head who screams “BORING!”