Over the holiday weekend I took one of my daughters to a movie. It was
one of the few times in her life that she was held captive to
commercial messages. You see, the movie theater ran six commercials
(then several previews, then 15 minutes after the advertised start
time, the movie itself).
Normally, I keep my kids away from commercials. They've long been
trained to fast-forward through commercials when watching TV (we have a
TiVo
in our house). When we're in the car, there's commercial-free satellite
radio. If they insist on listening to an FM radio station, I insist
that the channel be changed whenever a commercial comes on.
In these days of interactive media, the idea of forced commercials is
outdated. That I had to pay $9 per ticket to see a movie and then be
subjected to six commercials is outlandish, to my mind -- but in an
interactive age, it's also bad business. A generation of kids is
growing up with control over what they see -- including commercials.
Force-feeding them ads is going against the grain of what they know.
I think that as advertising evolves to fit in the interactive-media
age, it will be about enticing people to watch ads. My kids, for
instance, do watch some commercials; they flash by on the TiVo and an
engaging image occasionally entices them to play a commercial.
I hope the movie-theater chains figure this out soon. Meanwhile, I
won't be going back to the six-commercial theater or any other in that
chain anytime soon.
