The American media has a penchant for exaggeration and sensationalism. When I was young, my dad would often explain to me "Son, in America everything is bigger and better." I was too young to work out whether he was approving or disapproving of this particular fact, but either way there it was. Now I’m out here I realize that while some things are bigger and better, most are just made to sound like it after the local media has reported on it. The contrast of sensational and superficial coverage forms the bulk of American TV. I once made the effort to time an item on the news that was billed as an ‘in depth item’ (back in the old days when I had a TV). It lasted almost 2 minutes. Fortunately, there is one savior to the dearth of current information: the morning paper. This skimps on nothing. The daily paper squeezes it’s content into 6 or 8 sections, while the weekend papers presumably represent the death of a sizable portion of forest. I assume they just don’t care what is interesting and what isn’t, what makes the quality threshold and what doesn’t, it just goes in anyway. Thus rather than settling for a couple of cartoons, you get two broadsheet pages of cartoons during the week, and a whole section for Sunday. Meanwhile, the national and international news, is dedicated a whole page, whether the days events warrant it or not.
Of course a sizable portion of the newspaper is advertising. But in American the advertising is prevalent. There is no getting away from Advertising: my mailbox is refueled with a new supply of junk mail each day; advertising hoardings line the roads; and some nights its feels like all 60 TV stations contain nothing but adverts. Once again, exercising my stopwatch, in what I shall now attempt to pass off as in depth research, I recorded over 20 minutes of adverts in an hour during the TV premier of a film. What could possibly top that? Well, as it happens, the Superbowl tops that! The Superbowl is the national annual highlight of TV. Not surprisingly the lucky bidder who gets to show this extravaganza needs to show lots of adverts to cover the costs. Fortunately the format of American Football supports this requirement perfectly. It remains a constant source of amazement to me that a game that the ball is in play for just 60 minutes regularly takes 4 hours to complete. I have no explanation other than it just does. I should add that within that 60 minutes time is allowed for "timeouts", and many other scenarios in which the ball is out of play. I think a timeout is some sort of male bonding, team building, group therapy combo. Whatever it is, the teams huddle together, in a needless attempt to prevent the opposition (who are 50 yards or more away) overhearing the discussion above the sound of the 63,000 screaming sports fans that are there to watch the match. With a 4 hour time slot, plus the pre-game and the post-game, and only 60 minutes of entertainment and a small amount of sensationalized superficial analysis, that leaves a lot of time for adverts. And the following day the main topic of conversation is which advertiser had the best adverts. Even people who don’t like football tune in to catch the adverts. Even the local radio station gets in on the act and holds a phone in, inviting people to nominate their favorite advert. If I get my time again, I’m going into advertising.