A strange phenomenon in the world of global TV advertising is that sales are projected to continue in a slow but steady rise for the next four years. There is still money in marketing.
We have adverts for chain stores that are sexist, paternalistic and downright rude- Tanja Cilia
More channels are now available to more people, and new-media viewing of television is par for the course. Yet there are more factors in play than these, some of which definitely do not apply to Malta.
Buying adverts in or from a country that has different broadcasting laws from one’s own allows people to get away with something that would not have been feasible, had they subscribed to home-grown methods.
This, of course, says a lot about the lack of foresight of whoever wrote the laws in these countries – including Malta. But they could never have known that someone would take advantage of loopholes to make a mockery of the local laws.
It helps when you know how to work the system – like the two-penny bit writer who signed her work with the pseudonym Nora A. Roberts, to hitch a ride on the goodwill of the Nora Roberts brand.
Locally, this happens in a more sinister manner – and as it is insidious, rather than subliminal, I would say the Broadcasting Authority cannot always put a stop to it.
We have doctors who, as guests on magazine programmes, tout the benefits but few of the minuses of Botox shots and certain inoculations. I don’t see the feel-good factor of looking like zombie mannequins.
Then there are those adverts that seek to convince men that they might have prostate problems, and women in a particular age group that they ought to get a mammogram. These are not illegal – yet they play on people’s insecurities, especially if they are hypochondriacs – in which case the adverts would be the final straw that might tip them over the narrow line into obsession. Is this fair?
We have chain store adverts that are sexist, paternalistic and downright rude, and supposedly funny visual gags that are actually forms of abuse. Who needs megabuck budgets when you can exploit the word ‘cheap’ in all its nuances?
At this point I will bite my tongue and not specify exactly who sounds like a magna sinkroinizzata, and why some agencies fudge the terms of their contracts with words like Jirranġawlek għall-ispejjeż tan-nutar which can mean a lot – or nothing.
There was a time – as evidenced by the number of women called Charlene and Sue Ellen, and even a gift shop and a local TV series, where the acting was even more wooden than in the original – when shows like Dallas and Dynasty, shown on Italian TV first and then locally, had a captive audience of people who didn’t understand Italian (or English) but watched them anyway because of the interior decoration and clothes.
This, too, was ‘product placement’, but nobody from Malta thought of contacting soapy J.R. Ewing for product placement or endorsement.
It happened the other way around, when shop owners said their wares were (and I quote) “like of Dallas”. Incidentally, none of the Ewing Oil machinations and plot-lines were connected with Malta, much less occured here, as has happened in other series. Now that would have been a marketing coup; even more so than the occasional $1,000,000 home shown in House Hunters.
Having said this, Dallas, with older but not necessarily wiser honchos, has returned (on TNT) as from last Thursday. So there’s hope yet.
The current series is not a remake – which would probably never have worked – but what is being called an “evolution” (read ‘reboot’) with 1991 melting not so seamlessly into 2012.
Now, J.R. has clinical depression. Aficionados of the series would remember that he had lost his son, his business and his home. He had been contemplating suicide.
If the continuation had been contemplated even back then, it would never have done for him to have gone through with it; so in the ‘reunion’ film it was indicated that he had shot his reflection in the mirror.
This is not the only way fans were cheated. When scriptwriters would have written themselves into a corner, they could always insert ‘it was all a dream’ or ‘it was only my imagination’ tropes and make everything all right with the world again.
These days, I suppose this would include having “…and Alternative and Sustainable and Clean Energy” tagged on to “Ewing Oil” – quite a mouthful for the secretaries answering the phones.
Sometimes, advertisers put their money where their clients’ mouths are, rather than their own – because they would never eat the rubbish they flog us; just as many doctors would never undergo some of the treatments they extol so heartily.
There are regulations about television adverts that would foster pester power; and these include rules about junk food and toys.
But these fall by the wayside in the same way that pre-election ‘reflection day’ rules are broken by candidates who visit homeowners, given that advertisers can catch kids through ‘clubs’, and electronic as well as traditional contacts.
It would be better, perhaps, to focus on the points raised in a paper by Marina Krcmar, a professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, carried in Pediatrics.
Krcmar insists it is not just the images adults find frightening that can scare children; and that their television habits can actually affect sleep patterns.
Whereas purple dinosaurs can appear benevolent, larger-than-life characters attached to certain advertising campaigns can be the stuff of night terrors, even though they are ‘benign’ or ‘funny’.
Despite what ‘everyone’ says, up to the age of six, children cannot really differentiate between reality and fantasy; so perhaps it would be best to remove watching news together with the young ones from their ‘me-time’.
television@timesofmalta.com