I had the opportunity to watch the Super Bowl yesterday. It was an entertaining game, sloppy, but entertaining. I was glad to see Peyton Manning get the monkey off his back.
Of course, it’s not just a game, it’s a multi-faceted entertainment extravaganza. The commercials were fun (I liked the first Doritos spot and the hitchhiker with axe for Bud Light), and Prince was good (you got to have your act together to pull that off in the rain).
I have been purposely living without a T.V. for a little over six months. When I do get the chance to watch, it takes a little to adjust to the sensory overload. We are a world of multi-taskers and it seems that our entertainment is increasingly geared to the short attention span. Even while watching the news my eyes will drift to the ever present stock quotes and I don’t own any stocks.
Sometime in the early nineties I was walking through a mall in Albuquerque and I was asked to participate in a marketing study. I actually got paid $10.00 to watch T.V. for a half hour and answer some questions. They put me in a room with a remote control and a T.V. that had two channels. One channel was a Seinfeld and the other was a 60 Minutes episode. I was instructed to watch “just like you would at home”. So, I would watch Seinfeld and when a commercial came on I would switch. If there were ads running on both channels I would switch back and forth until one of the shows came on.
After my viewing time a young lady asked me several questions about specific ads and I had not seen any of them. She seemed flustered but gave me the ten bucks and I went on my way. Given even the smallest variety to choose from, I buy into the restlessness in a big way. I suspect that is not uncommon.
Here is an article about the worlds oldest newspaper, Sweden’s Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, which has stopped producing it’s print edition and gone digital. The paper was founded in 1645.
Newspapers are cutting staffs left and right. Newspapers are not conducive to multi-tasking.
Here is something that’s kind of odd, before there were practical digital formats all information had space limitations. Anything printed was going to be edited partially on the basis of ink and paper costs. Anyone making a movie or T.V. show had to factor cost of film. Pop songs are three minutes long because that is what would fit on a side of a record.
As we grew accustomed to these things we wouldn’t consider a 2,500 page book, five hour movie or two hour symphony.
Are we now becoming prisoners of infinite choices and instant gratification?
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