Television companies generate revenue using a common business model, that is, they sell a product to a market.

It's amazing to me that in our merchantile society, in which television is a pervasive force, few people can correctly answer the following questions about the television business:
What is the product?
Who is the market?

The twist with television is that advertisers are the market and the audience is the product. This dirty little secret may seem counter intuitive, but like everything in the Orwellian world of television it is not by accident but by design. Television companies receive no revenue from the audience, instead they sell the audience to advertisers.

Consider that a beer company pays the network broadcasting a football game one million dollars to air a 30 second beer commercial. Why? What product is the network selling for the one million dollars? The answer is: you, the audience. The larger the audience, the more an advertiser will pay for it.

Why would a beer company be willing to spend one million dollars on a television advertisement? Because it sells beer. Their message interacts with the minds of the viewers to convince them to buy their beer. This is fundamental and we all understand how it works.

If we are willing to accept that the messages from advertisers that we see on television influence our behavior (strongly so, since we are willing to part with our hard earned cash in response to an advertisement), shouldn't we be concerned about the myriad other not-so-overt messages that constantly bombard us?

Because the advertisers are funding the show with the intention of maximizing their return on investment, doesn't it make sense that they would shape the environment to their advantage?
Every aspect of television is designed to put viewers in a frame of mind that the advertiser can exploit to motivate the viewer to purchase the proffered product.

Television is not just selling products
but a point-of-view
a culture
changing our notions of nature
love, life, beauty, politics
in essence creating reality
channel by channel
moment by moment

Television is an addiction
a prison for your mind
reality distorted to condition your mind
to view the world through their lens
and compel you to consume

Turn it off