TELEVISION, COMMERCIALS AND AMERICAN

Television is one of the major mass media in USA. At least 96.7% households in USA have 1 TV. America has the largest television network in the world. As of August 2013, there are approximately 114,200,000 American households with television.

A survey that was taken on first quarter of 2012 showed that people (American in this case) watch more television as they grow older. The survey showed that children aged 2-11 spent an average of 24 hours of TV per week. That number decreased to 22 hours for teens aged 12-17, but it goes back up to 25 hours for adult teens aged 18-24. After that, the number increases steadily until people over 65 with average 48 hours a week. Men spent more time in these activities than women did.

Watching TV was the leisure activity that occupied the most time (2.8 hours per day), covering for about half of leisure time (such as socializing, browsing internet, etc.).

Looking at those statistics, you could say that American spent almost all their times a day watching television. That way, people can not avoid watching commercials. In fact, some of them like to watch for commercials, to check on what's new today. Some research showed that number of TV commercials seen by the average person by age 65 is 2 million. Therefore, I can conclude that TV takes a big part of American culture.

Now, I'm gonna talk about how TV ads affect culture. Actually, instead of saying it affects culture, it more to how TV ads reflect culture. From time to time, TV ads always targeting on what the customers wants, what they dreamed of. For instance, some ads, lets say Victoria Secret's ads, they show how the look of Miranda Kerr, Rosie Hunthington, how sexy, pretty, and perfect they are after they used the product. That's what everyone dreamed of. Even though sometimes the product won't give you the result that you expected. How does it reflect to culture? Back to what we've said before, society pictured "beauty" as skinny. Well, in fact, almost all ads that average people watch everyday have one thing in common, they are idealized. Idealization here means that whatever's happening in the ads nowadays always follows where the culture is going right now.

In conclusion, TV is a mass media that we can't avoid in everyday life. People unconsciously spent a lot of time on it. They will also remember all the ads they have seen, because they will see it not only once, but over and over again. People usually buy stuff they saw on ads by expecting what they saw to happen. But, even though they don't get what they expect. They won't think too much of it. They will just stop buy those products.


By: C. Tanata

*This post is strictly unofficial. For educational purposes only and is based on student opinion and research. Not for any other uses.

References :

Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2013. American Time Use Survey Summary. [online] Available at: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm [Accessed: 17 Nov 2013].

Herr, N. 2013. Television and Health. [online] Available at: http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html [Accessed: 17 Nov 2013].

Hinckley, D. 2013. Americans spend 34 hours a week watching TV, according to Nielsen numbers Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/americans-spend-34-hours-week-watching-tv-nielsen-numbers-article-1.1162285#ixzz2kvXML9g5. [online] Available at: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/americans-spend-34-hours-week-watching-tv-nielsen-numbers-article-1.1162285 [Accessed: 17 Nov 2013].

Sundem, G. 2013. How do TV commercials influence American culture?. [online] Available at: http://people.howstuffworks.com/culture-traditions/tv-and-culture/commercials-influence-american-culture.htm [Accessed: 17 Nov 2013].