Report on Advertising During a Favourite Show
Watch a favourite TV show (including the commercials). Count the number of advertisements shown. What products or services are being sold? What messages are you being given by the ads? Do you or would you use any of these advertised products? Why or why not? Did you see any advertisement twice? Write about your experience in paragraph form. (150 to 200 words)
Here is a link to an English class in 2009 responding to this assignment.
27 comments:
My comment from 2009 (so don't expect to see these advertisements currently).
I watched Jeopardy and had the first impression that there were tons of commercials. I counted 23 during the 30 minutes. Three were repeated. One was an incredibly sexist view of women who attended a class on using bleach. The teacher was a peppy young guy wearing a garish orange “Spray ‘n Wash” sweatshirt. He condescended to the all-woman class and they lapped it up. Disgusting! The other interesting repeat was a Lotto Super 7 ad with a disheveled looking young guy (jeans and sloppy sweatshirt) standing in a garage full of exotic and expensive cars. This is the one product I do buy sometimes, so it was interesting for me to see the “ultimate” toy this guy had bought with his winnings—a monster truck with two-meter high tires. I sure hope real winners do better than that, but maybe by exaggerating the Lotto corporation meant to make me feel superior to him. A McDonald’s ad had a stereotypical black male executive in a goatee, but played him against type as a fuss budget (and a stickler for proper punctuation!). I found it quite fatiguing to pay such close attention; in the end, advertisers probably prefer a half-hypnotized viewer.
—200 words
Watching advertisement:
To tell you the truth, I didn’t realize watching commercials can be tiresome, especially at nighttimes. While watching Gossip Girls, I didn’t know there are so many commercials between breaks; it was about five to six for each break. From each breaks, they were mainly advertising for foods, cosmetics, clotheslines and cell phones’ providing companies. From watching commercials, it was an overwhelming for me to watch them because I felt like I was the target and they're shooting at me, not with guns, of course, but certainly with a myriad of commercials. Especially, when I see acommercial about selling a burger at Wendy’s, for example, they’re showing how fresh a meat is but in reality, the meat in the burger isn’t fresh at all; in fact, they’re half frozen! But whenever I passed through the Wendy’s, I see there are packed with people.
-148 words.
Prior to watching a specific program for this assignment, I began to notice the commercials for television shows that randomly made their way into my living room. For home décor, the commercials were mainly for cleaning products, banking for your mortgage, furniture stores and basically anything to do with the home. Court room drama was geared toward law firm advertisements and cleaning supplies. I finally settled in on the task at hand. I started with The Rick Mercer Report - a news comedy poking fun at Canadian Government- there were no commercials. It is entirely sponsored by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Now delirious I began to watch Ghost Whisperer at Midnight. It is kind of spooky and it makes me cry so I think its sponsors may be geared mainly to hormonal women. There were 40 commercials in a one hour period. Three were repeated: Healthtips.ca, KRAFT Hockey Ville CBC promotion and Scrubbing Bubbles. There was everything from Poise pads to Chevy Trucks, Chocolate, London Drugs, upcoming shows and IKEA. Some of these products I already use and if I had allergies I would try Areus. The commercial was funny and full of crazy people; I could relate to them.
- 201 words
While observing one of my favourite television shows “Daily Planet” I found out that there are a lot of advertisements between the show. Once I started thinking about these commercials, I found that they made me think more about what the messages are and how they send them. For example, some of the products being sold were various and didn’t make a lot of sense. One of these products was an American advertisement called the Pedi-Medi. This commercial made statements so extensive that while watching I just had to be skeptical. One of these statements was that once used “ you wouldn’t have to use any other pedicure product again”. Another statement that I thought was hilarious, was that they say “you can’t buy it anywhere else.” Yet if I were to go to Walmart , which is an American store, I would be able to find every single product from all the ads I have seen from Slap chop to Pedi-Medi. During the period that I have watched Daily Planet, I have seen this particular advertisement three times. Because it is so vague and it does not have very solid reasons to use it, I would never use any of these advertisements.
I have chosen “Mayday” on Discovery channel for this assignment. This show was interrupted by commercials every 7 minutes and I counted 45 of them. The advertisement of Telus was repeated 4 times. One was a commercial of a car manufacturer with the huge line of customers in front of the showroom. It looked like only this company makes and sales cars in Canada. The other interesting ad persuaded people to buy new houses and apartments using a special mortgage plan from a well-known bank in Canada. A happy family of three was enjoying their new home in this ad, and I had a feeling that this bank is a charitable organisation which is able to solve all problems in our lives. The designers did their best to make people increase debts. The advertisement of a common painkiller had a fit man with a sore arm. This medication treated him in minutes and he continued to work out in a gym. It’s just impossible to overcome a pain from a muscle pull in such short period of time. This was my first experience in paying more attention to commercials than to the show and I found it annoying. It seems to me that millions of dollars are being spent on giving people time to wash dishes during the commercials or to find something more interesting on other channels. Is that the best way of spending such huge amounts of money? – 200 words
Every time I watch TV, I usually escape the commercials thinking that they are boring. One of my favorite shows is “look a like”, which is about transforming the look of a person to a celebrity. While watching this thirty minutes show I counted twelve commercials. There were many different things being advertised, like cleaning products food products and body care, cosmetics and the up coming shows and many more. One of the commercials about a cleaning product called “scrubbing bubbles”, I would like to try it, because it seemed pretty good product, as it said, it keeps your bathrooms clean for four days. The other one was about Aero chocolate, which looked delicious; I would not buy this as it has a lot of calories. There were two repeated commercials, which were a fruit yogurt for kids called “Minigo”, and the cover girl smoky eye shadow. It was a good experience to watch the commercials, because now I will watch them more and it’s not boring, actually it’s somehow useful.
-171 words
I like watching News on TV, but not fun of TV shows. With this assignment, I had no option. I watched Twist TV and had fun!!! This channel has a number of commercials throughout. I counted 28 during the 30 minutes. Two where constantly repeated. The first one was about “Febreze”, which is a type of Fresh air. It shows a family, where everyone is concerned with the bad smell in the house. A bad smell from the bed sheets, shoes, carpets, sofas, kitchen and washroom. “Febreze” is a solution and brings in the house a nice Fresh air. Having a Fresh air in the house is my concern. I was interested in the product and I am hoping to buy it in the future. The second repeat was “Huggies”, the baby diapers. It shows a baby wearing a diaper running all over the house, feeling comfortable. It was also an attractive one for me, as my son is now walking and needs a strong diaper. Twist TV has interesting real life programs, featuring out-of-control kids, pageant moms, and life-changing health situations. As a parent, watching this channel made me feel like; I do miss a lot on TV.
-199 Words
After I finished watching the new episode of my current favorite show called “pretty little liars”, I was shocked to find out that there were a total number of 31 commercials being played during an hour long show where one was repeated 4 times and a few others were repeated a couple of times. The products that were being sold are nice n’ easy hair color, Doritos, oral B brush, coca cola, Mr. clean magic scrubber, cover girl foundation, crest white strips and etc. Some other advertisements were suggesting to raise funds, vote on face book, apply for the student awards, watch new episodes and purchase new CDs. I do use some of the products such as the hair color and Doritos chips. I would try the oral B brush because it seems like it would actually do the work better than the normal tooth brush but it’s pretty costly. The other item that I would probably try is the cover girl foundation because the product is affordable, enriched with natural extracts and has light weight feeling.
177 words.
As I am a food lover, I always watch Food Network East and Fine Living USA. While I was watching Iron Chef America this weekend, I was counting thirty- five commercials that were about weight loss, processed frozen food, and car insurance . Each ad repeated every ten or fifteen minutes, and sometimes they advertised same product in different commercials. They recently try to persuade people that some program or website can help them to lose weight in two or three weeks even they eat delicious food like pizza, cookies, and ice-cream three times a day. Interesting point was the price in Jenny 20 (weight loss ad) which you just need to pay twenty dollar to lose twenty pounds. But “plus the cost of food” was in very small size under it. An overweight lady‘s photo beside a slim tall lady that showed before and after using this program, but they were not look like each other at all. Although most of commercials are really silly, some of those introduce new useful products.
I watched Law & Order Special Victims Unit and found 30 advertisements in the one hour episode. The commercials were about promoting new models of cars, TV shows, furniture, charitable organizations, fast and frozen food, health and cosmetics products, RV rentals, B.C lottery and political advertisements. One was repeated twice. It was obvious; all the advertisements were describing their products and services in order to persuade the viewer to buy them. The one from RVing caught my attention. It shows a dad, who is coming home, texting on his smart phone. As he enters, his daughter, wife and son were busy too, using their electronic devices; consequently, everybody was ignoring each other. The dad walks to the kitchen and a photo falls down. He picks it up and finds the picture of his family. After this, he realizes that electronic devices are ruining his family life. He decides to rent an RV and go away with his family to enjoy them without technology. I found this ad quite interesting, because it gives a strong message to today’s families that are dealing with family isolation because of these electronic appliances. After viewing the ad, if I was in the same situation as him, I would definitely consider renting an RV to get away with my Family.
- 215 Words
I am not a TV fan. Even though I have a television set in my bedroom, it works very rarely. For movies my favorite day is Friday. While my husband is playing cards with his friends, I enjoy the Knowledge channel which is commercials and interruptions free. I made my deliberate choice, and I am extremely happy. The commercials do not bother and annoy me. I always get pleasure from my favorite movies or educational programs without any diverting advertisements. Between shows a viewer can watch the only commercial; the hosts offer the viewers to make donations to support “a unique "green space" on television.” Owing the generous support of the viewers, this channel pleases the audience with over 5,000 annual hours of quality and commercial-free programs. In this case, I can say nothing about numbers of advertisements, what products they sale, or what messages I being given by ads.
- 150 words
Every Monday, I watch Lie To Me. Continuing from 9:00 to 10:00 pm, the last episode had 15 minutes, 25% of the screen time, for advertisements. I counted four time breaks with 48 commercials, and seven were repeated. They promoted products for healthy eating, pills, bank services, cars, and the bulk of fast-food restaurants; Tim Horton’s, Pizza Hut, Quiznos Sub, and Wendy’s. I could not find something special; each promo uses the popular clichés - a sexy woman, a happy family, a smart price, a clever pet, and a ‘creative’ slogan. I have strong immunity to ads because of my experience in advertising business; I used to be a partner in a small firm printing outdoor billboards. Due to my critical attitude to advertisements, a commercial hardly ever attracts my attention to a product or service. Doing the homework, I noticed only one interesting detail it was microscopic letters in a bottom of the screen appearing in an advertizing of medications and warning that ‘this product may not be right for you.’ To read it, I watched the fragment a few times sitting close to the TV.
– 187 words
In my memory, there were tons of coarse ads in China TV show several years ago. I would like to see if there is anything changed recently. So, I chose to watch a Chinese TV show for my homework. I watched the First Time, an economical news program, at CCTV-2 (China Central Television-Finance channel) from 6:55am to 7:30am (local time). I counted in 16 ads, only one was repeated twice, which was the promotion of the program itself. Three local dairy factories sell their dairy products. Chinese dairy industry had a hard time these years, they were almost destroyed because of the inglorious poison melamine event. Still, they are struggling for survival. The dairy industry deserved such a punishment. There were also three smartphone providers promoting their newest products. All other commercials were for different products from different industries. The program is fast-paced, the number of commercials during the statistic period is acceptable. And, I could be a potential buyer of what they sell except the dairy if I were in China.
-172 words
I chose to watch one of my favorite shows, Two and Half Men on www.CTV.ca online. Why get interrupted by commercials watching TV when you can catch your shows on the internet? I snickered to myself. It turned out that the advertisement companies were already ahead of me. The episode was divided into 4 clips with two commercials played before each one. A few service oriented advertisements such as Speedy Glass and TD Canada Banks caught my attention. The 20-second Speedy Glass commercial showed a customer waking into a squeaky clean shop, whose broken window was fixed instantly. This commercial created an illusion that anyone who walks in their shop will get their windows fixed in no time. The TD Canada Banks advertised their late working hour policy by having two grumpy elders questioning their policy. It was interesting to compare how nicely the elders were treated and how they would have been treated in real life. Although the advertising companies spend millions of dollars to turn viewers into potential customers, I feel little impact on my decision to purchase their products. I simply ignore the advertisements and patiently wait for my favorite TV shows.-195 words
Repo Show!
I love watching Operation Repo. It depicts car repossessions performed by professional repossessors in California. The negative side of watching this show is that the commercials are half hour long and they showed nineteen commercials on yesterday’s show. The ads were about trying to sell something such as car sales, women’s makeup and Fido plans. Three commercials were repeated. Cover girl makeup was one of them. I would never use any of the products that are advertised because I do not want to waste time on trying out new things! I noticed that when they played the Covergirl ad, they made the makeup seem of such quality that there is no other brand that can beat it! In reality, Covergirl is a cheap brand and they do not have that much variety in shades for makeup. Who cares about ads! I just skip the ads and watch other shows on T.V during commercials.
Watching and paying attention on the advertisements in my favorite show was a “good” experience. Last night I watched “Rich Bride, Poor Bride” on the Slice. The show was interrupted by advertisements 36 times in 1 hour. There were four commercials repeated. One was really funny commercial for Excel peppermint “a young couple was enjoying dinner in the restaurant and a special smell follows them everywhere; the smell was onion, garlic, and ginger.” The other repeated was Wendy’s; Mouth watering delicious burger only in the Wendy’s. There were some advertisements for different types of snacks. Some commercials for children such as Family game night and kids 0–9 (home can). Some of products were related to fashion (H &M) and beauty (Olay). There were some products for air freshener and for cleaning such as Air Wick, Glade, and Lysol. I found one commercial was very useful, especially, for this time of the year which is H & R Block. One of my favorite advertisements was Chew Chocolate Chip by Quaker. I bought this product so many times and I love it. Even though these advertisements interrupted my favorite show many times, but I enjoyed my show.
---196 words
I watched the TV series “V” this is a sci-fi show, that runs for one hour, the show is based on the idea of alien invasion on earth (aliens vs. humans). During the show there were 6 segments of commercials, 7 commercials each segment and 46 commercials total. I notice 6 different commercials were repeated twice. I found many of the commercials were on digital technologies and new innovations like; new model Canon cameras, Kitchen-Aid appliances, new model car additions and beauty products. The Subaru commercial featured Suma wrestlers lying on hoods of cars with the slogan being “Sexy comes standard”. America’s Next Top Model previewed twice and there was a Maybelline mascara commercial, maybe this was highlighting the beautiful, flawless women in the show? I also notice that many of the sponsors and supporters for the program were local, like Vancouver Islands A News and community events, BC Hydro Power Smart, Co-op Gas, Victoria symphony and McCain Super Fries. Dogs were defiantly man’s best friend; there were so many commercials for Cesar dog food and Pedigree dental stix. Maybe the most predictable commercials were the movie previews for “Paul”an alien animation movie and “Battle of Los Angles”, an apocalyptic movie.
-201 words
I would like to select channel HGTV if I have time to watch TV. The section of “The Property Shop” and “Design to Sell” are my favourite programs. Last Saturday I was shocked that there were twenty-four ads in the forty-five-minute program after I counted them one by one for finishing this assignment. The advertisement of air-refreshment product named “Febreze” was repeated four times. A kind of food makes you sweet, sexy and healthy. Telus promoted their service by their logo animals. Yellow Page Group showed its coverage by two spider-men on the top of a skyscraper. The total length of commercials occupied at least 20% of the program. We are used to the commercials when we watch TV. It is a part of our life which sometimes influences our life. We can remember some famous slogans from advertisements which uses figurative language. No matter whether we like it or not, we have to face the advertisements although the programs were interrupted.
(163 words)
I watched the Wheel of Fortune and I’ve counted twenty commercials excluding the upcoming programs they will air after. Hilton Hotel and Resort is the major sponsor of the program which shows the luxurious and elegance of the place; it tells how expensive is to go there. Most of the advertisers are from food industry, hair care products, service providers, car manufacturers and grocery store. Some of those were repeated twice and the other thrice. It seems that advertisements consumed more time than the game show, very annoying. We can see how these big companies spend more money in advertisements to attract the consumers. Just like Walmart with the tag-line, “Save Money. Live Better.” I go there frequently, yet our lives are the same and we even spend more. Yes, as they offered lowest prices for some products, the tendency is to buy more, thinking that they get big discount, yet it end up in paying more. Sometimes these advertisements as well as “discounts” on products are misleading and most likely they teach us to be an “impulse buyers”, and consumers are always the victim. All in all, we must think smarter not to be carried away by the magic of the commercial ads.
206 words
During my favourite comedy show, “How I Met Your Mother”, I had counted eleven advertisements. Throughout the thirty minutes of my show, I had seen commercials of different types. Even though there were no repeats on the same advertisements, I did see similar ones. The BC Lottery and Millionaire Life both fell in the same category because they’re both Lotteries. These two Lotteries showed key phrases which were brought to my attention. “Play Now” was one of them, 19+ (showed the age limit), a symbol of a lottery ticket centre (showed location), and “know your limit” tells you to be responsible. The images that showed in the Millionaire Life Lottery commercial were things the guy bought for himself after he won. It is also saying that if you spend money on that lottery ticket, you can win and buy everything you want and need. Among the other nine commercials, that I saw, they mostly fell in the “necessities for life” category. The nine were: Coco-cola, Greek-yogurt (Presidents Choice), truck (RAM), mascara (Maybelline), toilet-paper (Cottenelle), milk-chocolate (Hershey), Dr. Scholl’s (foot care), pizza (Ristorante), and Speedy Glass. These ones didn’t show much extravagant objects or phrases other than the original product being shown. I feel that the products here were just to inform us consumers because they were quite simple. From the ads I have seen today, I would purchase and still continue to use Maybelline mascara’s. I liked how the mascara was being applied on the young pretty woman. They zoomed the camera right onto her eyelashes and applied the mascara on them; which gave her great definition and evenly spread lashes. Sometimes commercials can get annoying or bothersome while watching a favorite show or movie even. At the same time, they can also be interesting to watch because messages are being given out by the ads.
-215 words
I watched Home Improvement, it is one of my all time favorite shows. I have never watched commercials before, because thats when I’m texting or getting something to eat. It was interesting to me to actually see what people try to sell us. I counted 22 commercials all together. There were three that were repeated, NyQuil Cold and Flew relief, and Charmin Toilet Paper. The Tide detergent commercial caught my attention because they were going on about how Canadians are used to being in the cold, and “just because its cold outside does not mean it keeps us inside”. Then they start talking about how you can wash your clothes in cold water with Tide. I did not really understand how being Canadian and going out into the cold had anything to do with washing your clothing in cold water. Its actually funny to me because i actually use Tide. I have to be careful with products i use wither it’s make up, lotion, detergent, or soup. I tent to break out and itch. Other the Tide detergent, i do not use any of the other products that were shown in the commercials.
- 195 Words
Not having the patients to stick around and watch commercials prior to this assignment made me really not look forward to doing this particular task. My assumption ended up proving to be wrong, I enjoyed some of the commercials that would be played in between the programs I watched. One of the shows I watched was Pretty Little Liars and within that one-hour program I counted 27 commercials. There were a few that constantly appeared throughout the 60-minute show, Heineken commercials, tide commercials and the American idol commercials. Although I use both Tide laundry detergent and prefer to drink Heineken beer, I found that their commercials were very biased. Not often are you going to walk into a party and see only one brand of beer that is highly unlikely. As for the tide, I happen to only use it because my mother has decided to purchase it, big surprise there. American Idol is a show I definantly do not watch for multiple reasons, which if I were to list would tally up my word count past the thousands. Although witnessing each and every commercial during this time frame was somewhat amusing, it hasn't changed my perspective on watching commercials in between segments of a certain program.
207 words by the way, forgot to add that.
Last time, watching “Myth Busters” on Discovery channel, I tried to pay attention to the advertisements. I was surprised to see fewer ads, then I expected. During the 30 minutes show, there were two short brakes with the total of 14 commercials. Some ads of the Discovery shows, ads of auto and insurance companies – I do not remember the names. Two were repeated. One was Swiffer mop. In this ad, the woman, portraying herself as mud that has “standards”, says “Eww!” to the mops. But Swiffer mop takes her up and she likes its pad. The same ad, but with a piece of dust between bars on a keyboard who says, “Will love ever find me?” And then Swiffer attracts him while “What About Love” plays on the background. Am I sceptical or people really have troubles “attracting” dirt? Another repetition was woman-oriented Old Spice commercial with the striped to the waist man, who says, “Look at your man, now back to me ... he could smell like HE IS ME”. Disgusting and disrespectful!
- 174 words
I watched House Hunter International at golden time, here I found that there were 18 ads within thirty minutes. One especially interesting thing which I found was that they all had a similar subject: home, and family. One specific ad showcasing, "The Family Game Night," was repeated twice. I believe that this ad moves the viewer with it's warm friendly scene. As the father looked over at his two lovely daughters sitting around the dinner table, it reminded me that we should all spend more time with our families. I felt I would buy their product. Another ad which played over the thirty minute period, was a Golf car ad. The ad showed a car driving merrily along a country road, within the car sat a boy on the back seat, staring out the window at the wistful sky. While I followed along with the melody in the background, I felt that by buying the car, I would be able to gain everything shown in the ad. This ad did a good job of encouraging the viewer to buy their product. Finally, I found that all of these ads rather than take away from the overall theme of the program they strengthen it. - 203words
Thinking about the homework, I decided to watch something together with my daughter. I know that she loves watching TV shows and she specially loves doing that together with me or her mother. Cake Boss, a show about making special and artistic unique cakes is the show she excitedly suggested to watch together.
Right before the beginning of the show a series of advertising are shown. All together including the advertisings, the show is taking about 30 minutes. In every round of advertisings around seven ads are shown. From the beginning until the show ends with another round of advertising, I count four periods promoting different products, taking at least more than 15% time of the show, and some of them repeated many times. From successful young attractive woman in an elegant dress advertising for a college program, to fancy new car driven in a beautiful scenery, to young, slim, and sexy looking lady preparing pizza dinner, what I find common in all these commercials, is, that the best efforts are made to show the involved products with the best images possible with those specific items, and to leave the viewers with the best possible memories about those products.
199 Words
Since I don’t really watch TV, I started to watch random TV show called Biggest Loser on Saturday evening. It was pretty long show that lasted about two hours and I guess about more than 15 minutes of the show went through with advertisements. Commercials were showing up in every 10 to 5 minutes of the show and as I watch I felt like I was waiting to see commercials to come out again instead of the show. (Isn’t ironic? Commercials seem like longer than the show. At any rate, while watching the show I saw different types of advertisements like Capital One, Canada trust, Dove, Fido, Safeway, London drugs, holiday to Disney Land, automobiles and ect. Two of these advertisements showed up twice and Fido show up even three times. Fido’s unlimited calls and text messages for 35 dollars caught me the most since this ad repeated three times. I use Fido and I think it pretty good deal for 35 dollars per month; however I would rather use limited, because it’s cheaper and I don’t make too much phone call.
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