Strange Advertising...

[Ben E Lou]

I just heard an ad on the radio encouraging teenagers not to drop out of high school. It was marginally clever, featuring a late teen-to-early 20's young guy (probably black) talking about the great time he's had at the Big League park since dropping out of high school. At the end, of course, it turns out he's selling peanuts and cokes.

That's all well and good, and I'm sure this ad will work wonders, reaching every single black high school student who happens to be listening to a fishin' show on AM Radio at 5:30 on a Sunday morning.....

WHAT THE HECK WERE THEY THINKING????????????

[QuikSand]

PSAs have a way of finding their way to "weak" markets...

[MIJB#19]

What the heck were you thinking, listening to a "fishin' show on AM Radio at 5:30 on a Sunday morning"?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally posted by MIJB#19
What the heck were you thinking, listening to a "fishin' show on AM Radio at 5:30 on a Sunday morning"?

Good question....

Once I finish my morning reading/prayer time, I usually go to the computer desk, turn on the radio for the news, and check CNN.COM before beginning any recreational use, such as FOFC, TCY, RoN, FOF, etc . The radio usually goes in and out of my consciousness when I'm on the computer, but I happened to be paying attention when that ad came on.

Oh--here's the other kind of funny thing. Not only was it a fishin' call-in show at 5:30 Sunday morning on AM radio, but it was a RERUN of a fishin' call-in show from SATURDAY morning.

[MIJB#19]

it was a RERUN of a fishin' call-in show from SATURDAY morning

[CamEdwards]

Public Service Announcements typically run when there are no "real" commercials that have to run in that time slot.

You're lucky it wasn't a commercial for "Maximo" or some other penile enlarging cream.

[kcchief19]

Back in my radio days, we were an NBC Radio News affiliate, and since the station got about .05 for every network commercial aired, we had to tape the commercials when they come down and we were off-network for something like a local show or sports programming. I swear to god Gold Bond medicated foot powder pours all their profits into buying advertising on NBC Radio News.

On another thing, I have always wondered about ads like that. I had a high school teacher who would always tells us that if we didn't apply ourselves we would end up as janitors. We had a kid in class whose dad was a janitor and it always pissed him off. Hey, we need janitors and peanut vendors. It's good honest work. Why would we rather them do? Something more profitable like dealing drugs, porn or bootleg Phish albums?

Now if the law of supply and demand works, if more and more kids go to college and don't want to become janitors or peanut vendors, eventually there will be a shortage of these people, which means wages will inflate. Any change we'll see the day where janitors and peanut vendors are driving sports cars?

[Buccaneer]

kc, that's the beauty of it. It should be all about supply and demand. If lower skills jobs become in demand for whatever reason, then those in the lower socio-economic classes will get a boost. We have already seen that in high demand, handyman type skills where we would pay through the nose for skills that does not demand any level of education (except experience in the field). Even in the extreme, we want our produce full on the shelves all year round and we have to import labor to have that happen. Adam Smith's brilliant model states that a rising tide lifts all ships would see the most common jobs in America making 100x more than the average wage of many countries (your sports car analogy). But I would argue that the same "tide" that can pay relatively decent wages on the low end would also allow for great wages on the high end. What skews this are some of the exhorbant wages paid to exces that are not tied to performance as well as government payrolls of which there is no productivity, only employment.

[Buccaneer]

Back on topic, it is a perception that those (like celebrities making news) sentenced to perform community service is really a joke. They have to tape a commercial (TV or radio) telling them not to do drug (or something like that) which 1) doesn't really target the audience and 2) can be hypocritical to the extreme. I have read a while back that each airing of a 5:50am PSA counts toward the 1000s of hours one may be required to serve.