Anna's Guide to US TV: America, her 50 billion cable channels, and the things I am learning through sudden submersion into it, by me, Anna Pickard, hello.
I think I might be the only person in America who rewinds adverts. Everyone else – the ones who have been here longer than six months and are bored of the heavy selling and the crazy promises – zips through them all with the power of their magic thumb.
Because, let's face it: no one watches television live any more. No one but the foolish, the sports addicts and the easily amused. In this case, I am the latter. Well, mainly.
Anyway: these are the main lessons I have gleaned about adverts.
Shouting is good
I had no idea, before I moved here, that there was a real version of that annoying man from the Cillit Bang adverts. But there is, and his name is Billy Mays. "Most famous for shouting instead of talking" says Wikipedia, "both in infomercials and real life".
RING AROUND THE TOILET? LET ME SHOUT THAT OFF FOR YA!
And he's not the only one. Stay up late enough and dip too far into cable, and you'll find a whole universe of people just waiting to shout about you. Which seems a little harsh for that time in the morning.
Touchdown!
As seen during the Superbowl. Admittedly, the big American football game, which happened a few weeks ago, has always been where people who want to sell things buy really expensive slots – but so few people watch adverts any more that, when they do, it's an event.
This year I saw at least four pre-game news reports, 12 post-game news reports, two feature-length countdowns of the "best Superbowl adverts ever", and so, when it came to the actual game and I inched closer to the edge of my seat with every advert break, it was a disappointment to find that ...
... they turned out to be just adverts. You know, short clips of film encouraging you to buy things. Admittedly, this year's crop weren't supposed to be that good. Next year, I expect to see Oscar-worthy shorts peopled with movie stars, classic dialogue, heart-breaking photography and the words "Buy our sanitary wipes!" at the end.
"Gillian, you've suffered from occasional irregularity; tell us about that"
I had always thought movie stars went off to obscure foreign countries to do product endorsements, so it comes as a shock to see Jamie Lee Curtis sitting down on a sofa and talking to some ordinary woman-off-the-street about bowel movements. A doctor, I could believe; even a pretend doctor would be fine. But Jamie Lee Curtis?
You can promise whatever you want – as long as you provide the small print
There are lots of pretend doctors to talk to too, luckily. Pharmaceuticals are big. So big that sometimes, their adverts seem to fill whole advert breaks. Only 30 seconds of that will be about why you should be taking the product, however. The other four-fifths revolve around the company legally covering their behinds by informing you why you perhaps shouldn't. A happy voice will tell you that this is a pill that can make your depression better. The same happy voice will then go on to tell you, under images of people laughing and playing on beaches – and slightly more quickly and quietly – that the same pill can make you nauseous, unstable, prone to migraines, faint or feverish. It can also cause liver disease, heart disease, finger disease, tumours and death.
And then, after sitting there and thinking for a while about how awful this all sounds, the advert quickly hits you with the super-positive tagline one more time, then wraps it up. So you rush out and buy them. (Or get your doctor to buy them with your insurance company's money. Or something.) Ta-da! Happiness!
Take my erection! Please!
Adverts are a good indicator of people's attitudes towards discussing tricky social topics, and that's evident in America. Money? Love to talk about it, love to hear about it. Breastfeeding? Not really. Alcohol – not so much. But erections? Oh goodness me yes. You can't show a nipple on television, but you can have a couple openly talking about their love of his-and-hers sex jelly.
There are also adverts that haven't been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. They try to get around that fact with carefully worded promises that end with: "If our product didn't do something amazing, would we have sold so many?" and everyone sitting at home says, "Yes, because you're offering people enormous genitals!"
Our product? No no, it is like the opposite of spending money.
Of late, the greatest tool at any advertiser's disposal is the promise to stay with their customers through the current economic climate. "We care about you," they say sympathetically. "We know you don't have very much money. We want you to be careful with it. So spend it with us, yeah?"
It's a blatant move into "times of duress" sales lines. "Times are hard, so we're not going to patronise you with flippant breakfasts. Come and buy one of our very serious breakfasts instead. They're good if you've just been laid off. They have bacon."
(As we all know, the bacon line should be enough to sell it, full stop. But still, it's alarming to see how many companies are jumping on the "we fleece you because we care" wagon.)
IS it awesome?
Take a man with a magic power to turn everything to sweeties. I think it may be one of the only adverts ever to make me wonder whether I should be really sad or really joyful. It still doesn't make me want to eat sweets, so they're possibly missing a trick there - but that's not the point right now. IS it awesome?
These are the things I have learned this week. About television. I have learned other things about other stuff. But no one asked me about those.
