Consumer Appeal

Essay by cbecerraCollege, UndergraduateB, March 1997

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CONSUMER APPEAL

Advertisers of today have strategically combined commercials and television shows in order to sell products. Gloria Steinem discusses a similar idea in her article, 'Sex, Lies, and Advertising.' She repeatedly demonstrates how advertisements, particularly in magazines, are complementary to the articles around them. In the same manner, so are commercials to television programs. They are both aimed at the same groups or types of people, such as sex, age, gender, etc.

Many times, the time of day or day of the week a show is aired has a lot to do with the types of viewers the program will attract. Thus, the types of commercials will also differ. On Saturday nights at 10:00 p.m., the program 'Profiler' airs, a mystery-thriller series. The story line is of a young, beautiful white female trying to capture a serial killer/stalker, who killed her husband and continues to stalk her. The show is very detail oriented, in the sense that the viewers need to pay close attention to what is going on to be able to follow along with the mystery.

It tends to 'suck you in', so to say, because it causes the viewers to become involved and engrossed in solving the mystery.

The assumed target of this series is mainly adults over the age of twenty-five, with the exceptions of those viewers that do not watch it at the time it actually airs, but they tape it to watch later. Because of the time it airs, the viewers are very select: children under the age of ten are presumably in bed, junior and senior high schoolers are out, and anyone out of high school and under the age of twenty-five is either out or working. This leaves a majority of the older crowds watching the program.

According to Gloria Steinem,