Cunobelin wrote:millimole wrote:reohn2 wrote:One simple way of skipping TV advertising is to record programs containing adverts then FF through them,I'm surprised anyone who such adverts annoy so much doesn't do it.
This is one of the main reasons we never* watch any live TV.
(*6pm BBC news excepted)
I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my gormless idiot phone.
Even the news is no longer "ad free"
The number of times that you see "News Stories" that are in fact really puff pieces for shows, programmes or promotions
Think how many times Celebrities Strictly skating in the jungle gets a mention
This is so. How are professional sports, the latest goods for sale at some shopping chain, what a celeb is emitting, etcetera any kind of news? Why are the doings or sayings of actors, pop-stars and professional cyclists of any interest whatsoever to anyone other than their drooling fans?
Even the subject-matter that used to form the real news is now mostly a regurgitated PR piece from some PR agency, since this is an easy and free way for editors to obtain copy. All the PR puff need do is seem to be about a proper news item yet somehow turn the event into a promotion for some product, service, political party, celeb, charity or whatever. The not-so-various news organs blindly copy it out everywhere.
******
For decades I've harboured this suspicion: why do all national and international news channels seem to have "stories" that are the same stories, even if they put slightly differing spins on them depending on their political party preference? Who decides this tiny subset of all the world's daily events and why do all the major news channels go along with the selection?
One feels that the news is nothing more than a manipulation of the masses (aka propaganda) by a self-appointed news elite who have somehow formed themselves into a cabal or syndicate. One even suspects that the various owners and other controllers of "the news" are the same rascals we generally refer to as the oligarchy. I believe they used to be called The Establishment.
Meanwhile, any number of dark deeds go unnoticed, unreported or even obscured by The Daily Spectacle and it's latest gush about celeb-doings, "revealed" gizmos-you-must-have, the discovery of a carrot that looks like Bojo's nose, the terribly naughty but exciting act of Mrs Jones of Kidderminster and so forth.
Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes