I em grabbing ur eyez

The endangered Brazilian ocelot kitten, El Conquistador, was born at the Louisville Zoo Sept. 23 and is doing very well. (Credit: Kara Bussabarger, Louisville Zoo)

Dan Rather's Lament

An article in the New Yorker reports:

[Dan] Rather was anguished. “For two years he’s agonized about his reputation and finally said the hell with it,” says his close friend David Buksbaum, a former CBS News producer who accompanied Rather on several of his Central Park walks. “He couldn’t believe the company he bled for for 40 years would do it to him. It’s not about money, it’s not even about ego. It’s about vindication.”

Outfoxing Tivo

The bulge in the demographic snake's stomach known as Baby Boomer should force some changes in the patina of advertising, but it may be a tad early to see it, and it may be too late for it to work.

I noticed an almost brutal cutoff of TV programming of interest when I turned fifty. The advertisers, hence the producers, are uninterested in over-50 eyeballs and it shows. You don't have to be cynical to describe popular entertainment as written by and for juveniles, and advertising as the mendacity of omissive, commissive manipulation.

Thank God for PVRs. But back to the Bulge. Will agencies be forced by ennui-soaked retirees intent on spending the kids' inheritance to abandon the mystery and "get real?" If they do, will it be received as were the efforts of a company during the 1950's, who went so far as to satirize what is now being TIVOed out of existence?

I refer to Petrofina, who advertised that filling one's tires with pink air was coming soon, while simultaneously sloganizing, "work hard, sell a good product, and don't try to kid anybody."

The coming culture may be too old and wise to take advertising seriously.