Wednesday, May 20, 2009

You are what you watch?

Yesterday, while waiting for some car repairs to be completed, my son and I had the opportunity to take in bits of an afternoon soap opera. While thankfully my reading material was good, and I didn't catch too much of the "plot," the advertisers gave a fascinating glimpse into a typical soap opera viewer.

A quick list; a couple of antidepressants, joint pain medication, diabetes medication, frozen comfort foods, and Wal-Mart. One would infer that the typical viewer of "Field Marshal Krankenhaus" is overweight to the point of joint troubles and type 2 diabetes due to over indulgence in comfort foods, and is somewhat down about the whole deal.

Since this is a "family" blog, I won't comment about what typical football commercials--beer, cars, and vasodilators--might say about typical football fans.

4 comments:

Gino said...

ahh,
but we, as in you and i, are not typical football fans.
we are Bears fans.

pentamom said...

In reality, the typical soap opera viewer is probably elderly, plagued by the diseases of the elderly which any of us could be subject to, troubled by depression which is a common side effect of aging, and less able than previously to cook for himself.

Bike Bubba said...

Gino: :^). But I'm still not willing to explain the concept of a vasodilator drug to my daughters.

Pentamom: yes, but my wife's observation during college was that a disturbing number of her friends knew what was going on. Most, maybe, but....

pentamom said...

Well, sure, college students have been notorious for watching soap operas. I do wonder if students these days are less into that sort of thing though, what with more modern forms of technology consuming their time. Be that as it may, the college students don't generally fit the profile of diabetes meds, arthritis meds, and frozen foods though either. So I doubt they're the target market in question, either.

What I do know is that the older elderly people I've interacted with(as opposed to the vigorous 75 year olds) find little to do with themselves other than watching TV during the day. One could argue that with effort all but the weakest of them could find better things to do, but the point is, they fit the profile of the advertising you describe perfectly, and we know there are a lot of them out there. It seems the simplest conclusion is that they're the ones being targeted, not lazy, gouty, unemployed young and middleaged people, though no doubt many such exist. (I'm excluding stay at home wives and mothers here since we're a vanishing breed, especially among those who aren't busy with homeschooling or the like.)