Excuse Me TV, But I Do Have the Internet

A few years ago Aflac Insurance came up with the clever idea of providing trivia questions that were used as a lure to keep people watching what ever show one was watching. It was a pretty smart innovation of advertising. The way it worked was simple, at the end of a segment of a show -- typically a news program -- they would ask a trivia question that you would have to wait through the break in order to the see the answer. What was once clever is now irritating. Furthermore, it reminds the audience how TV is declining in importance and is being surpassed by the Internet.

Recently I was watching Kudlow & Company on MSNBC and they tried a similar concept. Just before a station break they announced that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was no longer the most powerful woman in the world any more according to Forbes magazine. They expected me to sit through the break to wait for the answer as to who replaced her. Do you think I waited? With my faithful notebook computer right next to me I had the answer before the first commercial was over. The world's most powerful woman was now Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, according to the list. By the time the break was over I was no longer watching Kudlow and had found my way to other on-demand news and information from the Internet and could care less about the rest of the program.

Instead of keeping viewers, this form of advertising only made TV seem less relevant and accentuated the importance of the Internet.