the Tube in VL

[JEANNIE BERNIER]

Regarding 80's vs. 90's (and nought's) TV and it's place in controlling the
populace:

It's interesting that Vineland is set in a time when suddenly cable is
taking over, so rather than the 3 network plus 3-4 oddball UHF stations you
may have had access to in 1979, you suddenly have all these new stations to
choose from (I want my MTV!) and there's this novelty to sitting and looping
for hours through the programming, and advertising certainly took advantage.
This is the point at which the "niche" market started to become a reality -
rather than your product advertising having to appeal to the widest
audience, you were free to start targeting demographics based on which
stations you were airing on.

Now, advertising is losing some of it's power because there's so darn much
of it that it's become background noise.  The reasons that companies look
for more and different ways for putting their message in front of eyeballs
(those billboards on the back of bathroom stalls in bars come to mind) is
that overall advertising effectiveness is on the decline - you get less
sales for each dollar spent than 20 years ago.

And, as Josh points out, the net is taking time away from TV viewing -  now
you've got this whole new novelty medium to pay attention to - just in time
too, as it's dawing on us that you can keep adding channels ad infinitum (I
want my DirectTV!) but there's still nothin' on.