Commercials Consume Lives

If you had 2000 hours, would you…

watch ¼ million commercials for banks, investments & insurance in your lifetime, you'll spend 2000 hours watching ¼ million television commercials for financial services; you'll learn that bankers are really, really nice people	or	earn $40,000 doing your regular job if you work 9.00 am - 5.30 pm, with ½ hour for lunch, Monday to Friday, for a year, less 2 weeks vacation, you'll clock up 2000 hours, and, if you're a typical American, you'll earn $40,000; your boss might not be as friendly as the bank managers in the television commercials, but no matter what they say, the banks are not going to give you $40,000 at the end of the year

watch ¼ million commercials for pills & potions in your lifetime, you'll spend 2000 hours watching ¼ million television commercials for pharmaceuticals; you'll learn that there is no limit to the pills and potions you need	or	play soccer every Wednesday evening if you leave ½ hour to cycle to your local park, another ½ hour to cycle home, and play soccer for an hour while you're there, you could spend your 2000 hours getting healthy exercise every Wednesday evening of the summer, April through September, throughout your twenties, thirties, forties and fifties; it may not be the instant fix promised by the pharmaceutical companies, but it'll be more fun

watch ¼ million commercials for cars & trucks in your lifetime, you'll spend 2000 hours watching ¼ million television commercials for motor vehicles; you'll learn that cars & trucks are safe, strong and sexy	or	qualify as an auto mechanic if you enrol in an intensive one-year auto mechanic course, you'll clock up 2000 hours learning how to fix motor vehicles; the course manuals might not have quite the same production values as automotive television commercials, but it'll launch you on a career

watch ¼ million commercials for cleaners & fresheners in your lifetime, you'll spend 2000 hours watching ¼ million television commercials for household products; you'll learn that your house is dirty and smelly	or	write five books if you spend 4 hours writing 1000 words every weekend, within 2 years you'll have written your first book, and within 10 years, you'll have spent 2000 hours writing an oeuvre of five books; you might not be able to name the brand of the latest dust collecting technology, but you'll end up with something on your shelves worth dusting

Notes

You'll see so many television commercials in your life that if you cancelled your cable and watched commercial-free streaming instead, you'd save enough time to earn $40,000, qualify as an auto mechanic, play soccer every Wednesday evening, write five books, and much else besides

It seems incredible that television commercials could steal so much of your life, but if you do the math, that's what you'll find. The average hour-long TV show is 36% commercials. Let's be generous and assume that you don't see half these commercials, because you leave the room, channel hop or fast-forward on TiVo. If you're a typical American, you'll watch around 5 hours of television a day, which adds up to 140,000 hours over a lifetime. So the number of hours you spend watching commercials is ½ × 36% × 140,000 = 25,000 hours, more or less (see the Sources box to the right for details of the calculation and sources).

Figures for what proportion of television commercials are for financial, automotive, pharmaceutical and household products are difficult to come by, given my reluctance to pay a sizeable fee to a market research company. However, a rough-and-ready survey of the television commercials I have been forced to watch lately suggested that each of these four big categories accounts for about 10% of commercials (the other 60% are for cosmetics, telecoms, electronics, foods, drinks, restaurants, supermarkets, hardware stores, movies, games, political candidates, government propaganda, charities, online dating and countless other categories). To be really conservative, I took these proportions to be 8% rather than 10%, and calculated that the number of hours you'll spend watching television commercials in each of the financial, automotive, pharmaceutical and household categories to be 8% × 25,000 = 2000 hours.

One argument I have heard in favour of advertising is that it keeps us informed of new products. The numbers show this argument to be nonsense. It takes a few minutes to scan the supermarket shelves to decide which household products to buy, and you'll review your decisions maybe once a year if you really want to keep up to date with the latest cleaners and fresheners. Compare this with watching 2000 hours of television commercials for household products in your lifetime, and it's clear that whatever advertising is, it is not information.

Another argument I have heard is that people like advertising, which can be clever, funny and visually appealing. Car and truck commercials certainly have high production values. But again, the numbers show the absurdity of this argument: would you rather watch 2000 hours of car and truck commercials, or the top 1000 movies of all time? (You might think that movies cost more than commercials, but consider how much you pay your cable company to bombard you with advertising, compare it with, say, a subscription to a decent commercial-free streaming service, and you'll find that there's not so much difference.) By the time you get to movie number 1000, the production values may have slipped a little, but I guarantee that the movies will be more entertaining that the commercials, and a lot less repetitive.

So the choice is yours. Spend 25,000 hours watching television commercials, or do something else with your life.

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See If Advertising Were Abolished… for a comparison of life with and without advertising

More advertising made thinkable

More commerce made thinkable

Latest things made thinkable

Sources

The Nielsen Company – NTI Annual Averages – Time Spent Viewing: Persons – via TVB – in 2009, men watched nearly five hours (4:54) of television per day, women over five hours (5:31), teens and children a little less (3:26 and 3:31)

For the purposes of these calculations, I have assumed life expectancies of 84 for men and 88 for women, taken as an approximation for people in mid-life now, and taken children to mean 0-12 years and teenagers to mean 13-19 years

So an average lifetime's television is (3:31 × 13 × 365¼) + (3:26 × 7 × 365¼) + average((4:54 × 58 × 365¼), (5:31 × 62 × 365¼)) = 140,000 hours, near enough

Marketing Charts – Average Hour-Long TV Show is 36% Commercials – including in-show brand appearances

Kantar Media – Top 25 Local Broadcast TV Categories – Jan-Sep 2010 – via TVB – includes both local and national spot activity in the 101 markets measured by Kantar Media – these figures are for spot TV only, so are somewhat skewed (e.g. financial and pharmaceutical commercials are underrepresented), but give some idea of which categories are big

United States Department of Labor – Bureau of Labor Statistics – Household Data Annual Averages – Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers – median weekly earnings of full-time wage or salary worker in US is $747 – so annual earnings are $747 × 52 = $40,000, near enough

Career Overview – Auto Mechanic Careers – Depending how often you attend class each week, programs can provide intense training for anywhere from 6 months to a year – an intensive one-year course, 40 hours per week for 50 weeks, adds up to 2000 hours

Images

flickr – Mukumbura – Look after the pennies

flickr – Tracy O – Money!

Wikimedia Commons – Tom Varco – Prozac pills

flickr – ibm4381 – Soccer in the park

flickr – Fevi Yu – Unleashed

flickr – Robert Couse-Baker – wheel

Wikimedia Commons – M.Minderhoud – Schoonmaakmiddelen

flickr – Ed Yourdon – Writer

Date

First published 13 April 2011

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