Stay calm...

I was going to write today about the accidental inclusion of distractions in the making of TV commercials. I have been making TV commercials for over 35 years. An ongoing dread is that your finished commercial will contain some viewer distraction that will negatively impact your commercial message. Years ago I made a commercial that included the word "gauge" (as in rain gauge) in an on-screen graphic. Today, on-screen graphics are created on a computer and are easily corrected. Back then, if you wanted an on-screen message, such as "50% off every item", an artist lettered the message on a piece of art board. In the studio, this board was shot by a video camera and the resulting video included in your commercial.

Either my artist or I misspelled "gauge" as "guage". Our sponsor received scores of calls correcting the spelling, but virtually no sales.

Currently I notice a commercial for a language learning program called Rosetta Stone. A user of the product taped a testimonial in which he said he had tried other "mediums" without satisfaction. Mediums? Did he mean media? Or had he actually tried consulting fortune tellers?

Another current commercial, for Taxmasters, asks the viewer with the help of an on-screen graphic, if the IRS is "garnishing" their wages. Garnishing? Does that mean a sprig or parsley attached to your paycheck? Did they really mean "garnishee"? Or has the accepted definition of the word garnish changed since my dictionary was published?

Doesn't matter. In both cases I was so distracted I missed the remainder of the message!

I've had commercials include a picture of a person wearing a lettered T-shirt. It is very hard to look at such a commercial and not try to read the lettering on the guy's T-shirt. Big distraction!

That is what I was going to write about. Then I heard that the President had signed into law the "CALM Act". It stands for Commercial audio loudness mitigation, or some such nonsense.

Wow! As I wrote on October 1, that concept is "Dumb and Dumber". It is also impossible. The commercials I make may air in all sorts of programs. Programs in which the audio level may range the entire gamut from a whisper to a scream. Will the TV station's engineers have to adjust the audio level of every commercial to match the surrounding programming? Should I be happy that engineers in many different stations will be tinkering with the audio level on my commercials?

Think about it! How stupid are the people who are making our laws?