I hate commercials. They're an
insult to the intelligence. They're grating. They're repetitive.
They're unimaginative. They're a colossal waste of money that could be
spent on something useful to society. Mostly, they're depressing --
they show the low level of intelligence that big corporations can
profitably pander to, to hawk their dreadful, overpriced crap. And they
show the low level of creativity of Western society -- with untold
millions of dollars to spend in a medium that can present almost
anything imaginable, this garbage is the best they can come up with.
How can these bloated corporations and slimy advertising agencies be
surprised that the biggest hit of the last television season was TIVO
-- a tool that finally allows us to skip their god-awful tripe
permanently? And what can be more pathetic than millions of people
watching a football game each year just
for the ads, which are mostly for companies that sell third-rate
mass-produced beer and other products that are either bad for you or
manufactured in third-world sweatshops anyway?
Why get so worked up about this? Why don't I just turn them off?
Because they're one of the engines of corporatism, the means by which,
from a young age, we're brainwashed to believe that our possessions,
what we buy and wear and eat, determines our identity, our value and
rank in society. And because, just like politicians who bribe us with
our own money through 'tax cuts' (which are in reality simply service
cuts), corporations in their advertisements are pressuring us to buy
their product with our money.
The cost of advertising, which can amount to up to 80% of the 'cost' of
a brand-name breakfast cereal or sneaker, is passed along to us, the
consumers. And we pay it because (a) the ads that we're paying for coerce us into
believing that their brand name is somehow worth the hugely inflated
price, and (b) the huge market share that this coercion brings allows
these brand names to monopolize retailers' shelf space and drive those
that produce small, local, reasonably-priced products out of the
market. Such oligopolies control
every industry in our economy.
What's the answer? The usual solutions to deal with this problem are to
boycott
the overpriced, overhyped brands and the goods of socially and
environmentally irresponsible corporations and oligopolies, to educate
ourselves on alternatives by belonging to organizations like Consumers
Union, and to pledge to
buy local.
These are good ideas, but they are not enough, by themselves, to reach
a tipping point to bust the oligopolies, make expensive and deceptive
ads unprofitable, and squeeze the hidden inflationary cost of
exhorbitant ads out of the price of the products we buy. What we need
to do is to take back
the airwaves, to realize that the media bandwidth is a public
resource and it should be owned by, and for the interests of, the
people, not corporations and advertisers. As the owners of the
airwaves, we should allow them to be used only for public purposes. As
radical as it may seem to those of us in North America (it's not a
radical idea elsewhere in the world), advertising should be prohibited
on our airwaves -- it is not
in our best interests.
How then should programming be funded? Publicly, with the budgets for
programs determined by a public foundation with a mandate to support a
mix of entertainment, cultural and information programming, and guided
within limits by what viewers actually watch, and by a code to be
inclusive, politically and culturally balanced and courageous, and to
encourage creativity and investigation, and stretch the limits of the
media and the minds of the people. Yes, this would be paid for by tax
dollars. But remember, we're already
paying for it. Not only would public funding of the airwaves let
the people, not the advertisers, determine what we can and should watch
for our money, but the
profligate waste of billions of dollars in advertising could instead be
spent on real programming.
And the taxes that pay for the programs would be progressive (income taxes), based
on ability to pay, instead of regressive
(consumption taxes), based on how much you've been duped to buy.
Because of the savings on advertising, the cost (and hence price)
savings on products would more than offset the cost of publicly funded
programming.
We'd end up with, almost certainly, better, more varied,
commercial-free programming. The cost of many consumer products would
plunge. Oligopolies would be unable to sustain their stranglehold,
making many industries much more competitive, opening the door to more
small, local, entrepreneurial businesses with the commensurate boost in
jobs, and rewarding innovation more and brand less, which would benefit
the whole economy.
To those that find the idea of public ownership of the airwaves too
radical, think about information and the arts as a public good -- like
education, health, parks and public spaces. The neocons want to
'privatize' all of these things, too -- run them for corporate profit
and to hell with what the public wants. Most of us can see that in
education, health, parks and public spaces the benefits of public
ownership and stewardship in the people's interest far outweigh the
'efficiencies' of private, corporate ownership. We need to fight back
against the greedy corporatists -- in the private sector and in
government -- who try to bribe us with our own money and denigrate the
value of public goods. They're every bit as great a threat to our
democracy as terrorists.
P.S. Last week CBS refused to carry the Moveon anti-Bush
spot. Since those that control the media, our airwaves, won't allow you to
see this important message, you'll have to see it here. Too bad tens
of millions of others won't have that opportunity.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
