Once in a while, mass media outlets give a fair hearing to radical ideas that make sense. But those ideas have little chance to take hold -- mainly because followup is scant. Instead of bouncing around the national media echo chamber, the offending concept falls like a tossed rock.
That's what happened a few weeks ago when Parade magazine featured an essay directly challenging the nation's TV commercials.
"With the advent of television, the nature of concentration was altered," Norman Mailer wrote in the magazine's Jan. 23 edition. "Yet children could still develop such powers by watching TV. Video and books had a common denominator then -- narrative." But television did not long retain the continuity of "uninterrupted narratives." Before long, for viewers, "there were constant interruptions to programs -- the commercials."
Year after year, the situation has worsened...
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