Myself, I guess you could call me a television traditionalist. While I was only alive for the last few years of "host-selling", I could understand why it was done and honestly at the time, it made good sense. I love watching the old shows with the embedded commercials in them.
This was a time when social issues were different than today. The nuclear family at the time was a mother and father, the mother stayed at home and the father's income was enough to manage the household and have a few of those great things in life. Divorce was a taboo subject, especially when there were children involved.
Parents spent more time with their children and were able to provide them with the guidance they needed, including differences between real and make believe and the difference between right and wrong. If children could tackle these two issues, they should also be able to tackle the difference between a program and a commercial advertisement, even if the endorser of the product is a familiar face.
This was also a time when television was still very limited. Before the All-Channel Receiver Act of the 1960s requiring TV sets to have UHF tuners in addition to VHF, the number of stations were very limited. Some communities would be lucky to have all three networks. This limited a child's choice and it also limited the kids shows on the air. This gave children more time to engage in physical outdoor play and study.
Times have changed. We now live in a 500-channel culture where children's television is available 24x7 on channels like Cartoon Network, The Hub and the many flavors of Nickelodeon. This is also a time when some (not all) parents do not spend the same amount of time with their children than children of previous generations. Because of crass consumerism fueled in part by the media, our level of greed in this country and our desire to compete with our neighbor in a game of "whoever has the most toys wins" has turned us into a culture that is obsessed on material objects. This obsession is driving up prices and causing rents to assume a two earner household and with wages and benefits going down as a result of investors wanting more of a bottom line, our economy is in a tailspin.
Our children are no longer encouraged to use their imaginations and their creative abilities. Before television, radio was called the "theater of the mind" because unlike watching a motion picture, you do not have a picture of what is going on, you have to imagine it. Even in the early days of television, early childhood shows like "Romper Room" encouraged children to be creative, express themselves and even exercise. That was also a time when broadcasters had more of a responsibility to their community of license. Over the years, the FCC has deregulated many aspects of television where stations which were once public servants have been downgraded to mere real estate. What is more important is making the most profits for the station and its investors.
Because of this highly competitive media which includes broadcast television, cable, motion pictures, radio, video games and the internet, our children are more exposed to violence in a controlled setting that has substantially increased the glorification of gang violence and drug usage thus making it unsafe for children in some areas, especially in the inner-city to be able to go outside and do anything physical.
Because children do not get the same attention and supervision they were able to get generations ago, it has caused young children to not be able to distinguish the difference between a program and a commercial.
Being the caretaker for a special needs child in the first six years of his life, I could see the impact that commercial messages have on children. In the first few years, he watched Baby First TV, a commercial free subscription channel. As he got older, he was exposed to commercial TV and PBS. You could see a definite difference in his behavior he was wanting the products being advertised. With his disability, he was not able to comprehend speech well, but he definitely was able to say the commercials verbatim. This was scary to me.
The bottom line is simple. The government has done everything they could do to protect our children, the final decision rests on the parents.
Links of interest
