27 March 2010

Its a (M)Ad world

Its a weekend, that too, during one of the sweltering summer months. Time to chill out with a cool drink in front of the idiot box. As usual, hubby and I cannot agree on which channel to watch. He wants to watch cricket(ugh!) and I wish to see the golden oldie running on 'Filmy' (how retro!, retorts hubby). After a fruitless battle for control of the remote control we wisely call a truce. Ah, life (or is it marriage?!) is full of little compromises:( We decide to flip the channels in between commercial breaks.

Peace reigns for sometime. Eventually, I realize that I have been had by hubby. While the break between overs in cricket used to be brief, the break in the film used to be really long. After staring at the various ads being played one after the other, I had lost track of where in the movie we had taken a break. The ads too have become so innovative and glossy that they keep you glued to the TV. The concept, the catch lines, the glamor quotient, the sheer dazzling presence of celebrities - the advertisements on TV are much more enthralling than the long time saas-bahu family soaps churned out by Balaji Telefilms. Incidentally, I loved the jingle for BMW - its not only what you make, but what you make them feel that matters.

Some of the best ads in recent times - Aamir Khan's Tata Sky ad where he is dressed half as a man and half as a woman. The ensuing dialogue seems as if between a groom and his bride, rather than a soliloquy by AK. There is a series of Tata Sky ads- the latest ones with the wife avenging her hubby as he made her miss her favorite soap due to IPL are really good. Nowadays, the chat at the lunch-table is not about "Did you check out Parvati's get up in xxx serrial?" Rather it is around - "Did you see the latest Tata sky ad?" Other such series include the Kurkure series, the zoozoo series, the Wheel series, AXE series, the Maaza series, Bingo series, IDBI series - the list just goes on.

Fact is, watching ads on TV is as much entertaining, if not more, as the actual programmes these days. We did manage to watch a bit of cricket and movie in between the ads :)

2 comments:

Veena said...

Nice and simple ! :) Loved the way you "cruised" between the topics ..

Random Blogger 3 (Amit Shirodkar) said...

I totally agree. It seems as if ads have taken over television!
Recently I was trying to catch the news on a popular English channel. I switched it off after a few minutes. Why? Because the news channel was showing ads continuously instead of the news!

Nowadays you get to see the shows in between ads instead of the other way around ...

I know that channels need ad revenue to survive. But they should show some restraint, not make filling their coffers the main priority and think about the viewers too!!

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