Commercials and Advertising

As I have listened to Zack's comments about the cultural impacts of many of the commercials on television during football games, I began to think about solutions. Solution-making seems to be a default setting of mine, a setting that I have had to learn to adjust at times as I have realized that some people are looking just for someone to listen instead of someone to solve their problem, but in the case of television commercials, I'm searching for a solution. Though I take a more conservative stance on the impact of television images on kids and adults, I do see how amazed Ellie gets when something other than her show or my sporting event takes to the television. Commercial influence goes beyond television also. Television advertising revenue is falling as though gravity is working double, so there is also a need to keep our eyes on internet advertising and advertising sent to mobile phones. Both of those areas are worthy of comment, but I digress to stay minimally focused. My realization for this week is that we no longer live in an era of live television. Sure, this isn't news, as we have been watching youtube videos and taping television on our DVR or TiVo for some time, but I do believe that the shift has taken hold for a growing plurality of our country, which is all it takes for a fad to become a tradition. With the death of live television, we have also gained more control over the culture button in our homes. If it is true, as Andy Crouch states in Cultural Making, that our role as Christians is to interact with culture wearing the hat of an artist and/or a gardener so that we can at times create new culture or cultivate the current culture by fertilizing the good stuff while also pulling the weeds, then our digital video recorders are perfect tools for cultivation. Ellie is to the point where she says to me, "Daddy, go through the commercials." Sure, I love to watch the last quarter of my favorite college football games live. There are magic moments in college football when I want to feel like I'm at the Big House in Michigan or at the Horseshoe in Columbus with 100,000 of my closest friends, but I can also reinsert an hour of family time into my schedule by taping the event and catching up along the way. In the mean time, no beer commercials, no sex commercials, so just for the today, just for the moment, I can control the conversation. I can control the content. Technology is often times an amoral advancement, and it takes creativity and perseverance to make it work for us as Christians, so we should bend the trend that technology is racing past us too quickly and harness those things that can allow our families to benefit. Finally, here is a great link released on 9/15 about the impact that our changing technology is having on society

-Bob Dillon