Stop ! Dont change that channel !!

To me the most apt way of reading society is in the advertisments that we see on TV. Hold on, hold on, I know that youre probably laughing away to glory wondering now how in the world is he going to justify this statement ? Trust me I do have an explanation for this. Take your favourite TV show and for once dont switch channels when its time for a break. 90+ % of the time you will find that the products they advertise during that break will be directly targetting you. Now you may not buy that product / service but you know that if you didnt already have it and were probably looking to buy it , then you would be interested in that ad for sure. And not without reason, companies spend a fortune on getting data on the demographics of the people watching shows on TV & create and position their ads accordingly. For example you might find a lot of ads targetting kids (such as bubble gum ads) during Ten Sports' wrestling programs. Bike manufacturers will advertise heavily during major cricket tournaments. Who can forget the storm that Bajaj raised with its hoodibaba series of ads (which were a set of exciting incremental ads that really built a brand name for the bike) that were unvieled during the World Cup if I am not mistaken.

Which is why I was initially surprised while watching the ads during a break of MTV's Splitsvilla and noticed two different companies advertising their morning pill poducts. And they are regular avertisers on the program. Now MTV Splitsvilla is something that I never used to watch until a couple of weeks back and it involves a bunch of guys and girls competing to become the temporary King and Queen which grants them immunity while somebody else gets kicked off. What they actually are attempting to win I have no idea. Take one bunch of oversmart 19 - 20 year old kids who have narcissistic tendencies that border the abnormal and super inflated egoes that could actually have them float away into the stratosphere if they were not careful and add to it one generous helping of MTV's deliberate attempts to cause friction and you have one masala fest. Cat fights, non stop bitching and shameless politics that would put the BJP & Congress to shame is the name of the game. Basically its a crap show thats designed to grab eyeballs by providing cheap thrills to entertain our Indian audiences which are fortunately otherwise bereft of similar 'entertainment'.

Which is all fine except for the fact that I still cant digest the morning pill ads being placed there. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out that this means these companies have identified that among the large number of viewers of the program (I would roughly guesstimate that a substantial portion would be in the 15 - 26 age group) there is a substantial set that are having sex & require this pill assuming they have been daft enough not to use a condom, bloody Indians ! How many in this age group does one really think are married? Sigh, whatever happened to traditional Indian values ? Sometimes I think its better to stick to watching the shows itself and switch channels the moment an ad arrives.