These Should be Better

One of the quirks of cable television is when a commercial pops up for a local business. You can tell when they're coming because you'll get a half-second of the national commercials before the local car dealer comes on with the commercial he shot in his back yard with all his cousins as extras. After the commercial ends you'll also be granted the final half-second of the commercial that you saw the beginning of. It's always a little odd when these things come on... usually right when we're getting to the part of the ticker with the score or story I'm interested in; only because it's not a national commercial its formatted differently and it takes up the whole screen and the scores aren't there anymore and by the time the commercial ends we've moved on to scores from another sport, meaning I have to wait another 10 minutes for it to roll back around again because all I caught was "...the injury could be career-threatening" which is really annoying cause now I don't know who they could possibly be talking about... Wait, what was I talking about again?

Oh, right, local ads. What I can't get over is that it is 2009 and putting together videos is easier than ever. There are dozens of applications and programs that you can put on your computer that make it very easy to create professional-level video. Honestly, a small child can work some of these programs and it comes out looking fine. Would it win any local Emmys? No, but it would still be an improvement. There is no need for this stuff to have public-access quality anymore. If you're going to spend the money to advertise, don't you want an ad that makes people talk about the product, not the shitty production quality?

A good example of a company that could afford to do better would be Bob's Discount Furniture. I get what he's going for, "I don't spend money on advertisers, and I pass the savings on to you!" Good premise. Only every time that store comes up in conversation, all people want to talk about are how awful the ads are. No one ever mentions getting a great price or how good the furniture is. It could just be that the furniture isn't that great in - if that is the case, then kudos for shifting the focus and forget I said anything. But if not, spend the extra $500 to shoot the commercial with a digital camera and pay a professional to edit it (trust me, there are a ton of cheap freelancers out there right now). It would make all the difference in the world.

-It's hard to complain about the 4th of July. I mean, what could there be to complain about a day devoted to family, food, patriotism and fireworks? But, there is this: the people who don't use their entire batch of fireworks on the 4th. As a result you can just hear people setting off fireworks every night of the week. It's a Wednesday night, sir, there is nothing worthy of fireworks tonight. Also, they should be better than the natural ones we've been getting around here.