At what point does advertising in its many forms become counter-productive?

Over the past week or so ITV have been advertising a programme due to be aired on Easter Monday at the prime time of 9.00pm. I’m not interested in saying what the programme is, the point is that it was advertised at every advertising break (that is every half hour) by playing the same couple of clips over and over. I suspect that these clips are the best bits of the programme, but having seen them probably 20-30 times, I am actually less inclined to watch it for real. So the question has to be asked: why do they do that? It’s not an isolated incident, all TV channels use the same device. I suppose the reasoning is that, things like this have to be advertised otherwise people won’t know they’re on. Fair comment, but anyone who watches any of ITVs output will have had the advert shoved down their necks to distraction. The next programme to be overexposed in the advertising stakes is the one that’s on Monday next at 9.00pm, and again that will be shoved out at every advertising break. I’m sorry but am I being thick or oversensitive? No don’t think so, I accept that goods and programmes have to be advertised, but there comes a point when its ineffective. In my case it worked well because I had no intention of watching the damn programme and decided on Jamaica Inn instead on BBC1, which wasn’t anywhere as near advertised as much as the ITV one. Slight rant over.

On which point whenever I write a blog or make a pointed comment on someone’s Facebook page, I’m accused of having an ‘old gits’ rant. The dictionary definition of rant is: ‘To speak or write in an angry or violent manner’. I can profess to being neither angry or violent in my writing or in life in general. I just like to point out, sometimes I know stating the bleeding obvious, life’s foilbles and inequities. Is it just me?  Don’t think so. Have a read of Richard Littlejohn or Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail, now they ARE ranting and pointing out the same things as I do, BUT they get paid for it. No these observations of mine aren’t rants unless you want to label them as such, I just like to make a stand about things that I find unfair or stupid. So please don’t say I rant, because I don’t, so there!

Are countries in the far east getting a raw deal at the moment? First it was MH370 being lost and still being searched for, now its the Sewol ferry which unexplainably sank with many lives lost. That’s two large scale accidents which cannot be ignored. The Malaysian flight will probably be found, but is there any point in trying to recover anything other than the flight recorder or CVR (cockpit voice recorder)? After all this time there won’t be much left of the victims, best let them have the same fate as the Titantic which is not as deep as the aircraft in the Indian Ocean. It took two years to find the Air France flight that dived into the Atlantic in 2009, so I don’t hold out much hope for MH370. Beside anything lives could be put at risk looking for an object which won’t just be lying on the ocean floor, it will attached to a part of the airframe. Perhaps we’ll never will find out what happened to it, maybe the North Koreans bought bought it down, they could even have sunk the Sewol, who knows how their minds work? I feel so sorry for all those young lives lost in the ferry disaster and think back to the UK’s similar accident many years ago in the English channel when a ferry sank because the car deck doors may have been left open. Things happen. The movement of millions of people takes place in all forms of transport every day, yet thankfully most journeys end safely, but who knows if your journey will end badly? No-one can say for certain, even a short trip in the car to the shops could end in a tragedy, you never know. I remember an incident last year when a young mum and her daughter were waiting at a bus stop when they were mown down by a speeding drunk driver and killed. Just standing at a bus stop! How random is that? Perhaps we take the ease of transport too much for granted, after all a one ton car going at 30mph is a lethal weapon, but you wouldn’t think so seeing the way some are driven. Back to the Malaysian/S. Korean accidents, a faint hope but let’s pray nothing else like that happens.

By the way, today 23rd April is St Georges day. Not celebrated in England despite it being the countries’ patron saint. We embrace St Patrick though most of us aren’t Irish, March 1st is hugely touted as the celebration of St David, and St Andrew is shoved down our necks in November, but St George? No couldn’t have that; too altruistic, too parochial, too jingoistic. But celebrate it, have a public holiday? The juries still out. Enjoy the day anyway.