DAN'S PAPERS, April 18, 2008 Page 36 www.danshamptons.com
The Sheltered Islander Sheltered Islander #494 Night of the Hurdling Curdling Death Tuesday, April 6 at 8 p.m. It started about ten years ago. TNT began placing its logo in the lower right hand corner of the TV. A sheer, onionskin logo. I remember being annoyed when I first saw it. It distracted me from the program. But I let it slide, figuring that Ted Turner needed to label things that are his, the same way Trump has to label everything that belongs to him. Soon thereafter, other networks decided to put onionskin logos in the corner too. We all got used to it and trained our eyes not to
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notice them. Then some network got the idea to announce the title of the program you were watching on onionskins in the left lower corner. “You are watching ‘Night of the Living Dead’ on the Sci-Fi Channel.” I figured that was to benefit people who fell into one or more of three categories — 1) People who were distracted for a moment and then had completely lost track of what show they were watching 2) People who were walking behind the couch while someone else channel surfed and the show title would prompt them to say, “Wait, I wanna watch that.” 3) People who
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had fallen asleep in front of the TV and upon awaking would need to immediately know what program they were missing. The next phase of the onionskin pop-up labeling was to advertise what the next show would be. Prior to this, the onionskin labels were just identifying the channel and the show. Now they were advertising the next show before I was through watching the current one. It wasn’t enough that I had to mute through eight minutes of commercials every six minutes, now they were cheating by adding thin strips of advertising for “Flavor of Love” right over a crying kid’s face at the height of a dramatic scene. Then, another advertising executive thought, well, hell, why just advertise the next show? Let’s advertise upcoming shows! I have a clear memory of watching a Christmas special on USA, and while the chorus was singing, there was a strip ad for “Race with the Devil at 8 p.m. next Tuesday”. I really don’t want to see ads for satanic movies in the middle of “O Come All Ye Faithful”. It just proves that the strip ads appear according to a time schedule without regard to how incongruent they may be to the program they are defacing. Recently, I have seen ads for programs that are on at the same time as the one I’m watching. “Now Showing: Gomez vs. Alverez on HBO Boxing.” This confuses me. Do they want me to stay with the show I’m watching or turn to another one on a different channel — is it better than what I’m watching now? Do they want me to turn back to this channel for the next show on this channel, or should I stay with the other channel? Apparently people are not paying enough attention to the onionskin ads, so now they have to animate them. Case in point. This past weekend I was watching a 1940s movie with Barbara Stanwyck and John Payne. She’s very short. He was holding her by the shoulders, her eyes were smoldering in that film noir way and he began to lean in for the big kiss, when a small airplane shot out from her ear and circled the screen, heading towards the bottom left corner where the image of King Kong on the Empire State Building had appeared. The plane zoomed in and he batted it away as another plane came from behind her head, as she was now kissing John Payne, and flew towards King Kong with little machine guns flares shooting at him all the way. The strip ad told me King Kong was showing on that channel at 9 p.m., obviously something I needed to know at exactly that moment. If TV execs are trying to get us to watch more of their programming, they need to throttle back on these ever increasing pop-up ads. I barely watch TNT, USA or BET anymore because they load their programs with so much pop-up advertising. It really ruins your ability to get lost in the story, which is why you turned it on in the first place.