Near Futurology

[nancylebov]

These days, people can escape tv advertising pretty effectively, thanks to Tivo and DVDs. For some decades, politicicians have been selling their souls because tv advertising is so expensive.

What happens to politics when tv advertising is gone?

I like to think that political advertising will take to the skies--there's something charmingly surreal about hot air balloons shaped like politician's heads.

However, that's not going to work very well--the sky, oddly enough, seems to have limited bandwidth.

Politicians might have to become interesting. It would be nice if they rediscover oratory, but I don't think I'll be totally surprised if they go in for pie fights.

Alternatively, the only people who vote are news junkies and those who can be pushed into it by organizations. For all I know, that's already what's happening.

What do you think?

Comments

[kallisti.livejournal.com]

I don't think you balloon thing will fly, as the US has many people with guns...

I do see "Product Placement" type "ads" in popular TV shows, local news shows...and then more interviews in public affairs shows. Blogs will become important toget their message out, as has been evident in the recent election here in Canada. A candidate who was promoting DMCA style legislation here was recieving lots of contributions from the Canadian equivelent of the RIAA, MPAA, and their like. They held a $500 a plate dinner for her a few days ago, for example. But SF writer and Electronic Frontiersman Cory Doctorow, who used to live in her riding, caught wind of what was happening, and through the blog BoingBoing.net, managed to let people know of her contributors, and raised a redflag that was picked up by a number of other blogs, and then the newspapers...

Ms Bulte was the incumbant in the seat, and had been expected to win easily, but after all this publicity, she lost by a good margin.

Blogs are becomming very powerful political tools...

ttyl
Farrell

[madfilkentist]

I tend to agree that politicians will increasingly try to buy, threaten and otherwise influence the news media.

[zenlizard]

I kind of liked the pie fight idea.

[redknight.livejournal.com]

Co-ed naked politican jello wrestling! %-)

[sethg]

Well, they could just make advertisements that are entertaining enough to watch that people don't want to skip past them.

In the last election, there seemed to be a lot of advertisements that were distributed only on the Web--I guess the idea was that partisans could pass along the links to those ads and get people more motivated to go out and vote for whatever party they were already kinda leaning toward.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

In all honesty, one reason I wanted Howard Dean to become president is that he was so much more entertaining than all the other contenders.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Blogs have already been mentioned; what hasn't been mentioned is that many of them have ads.

There are political podcasts, but I think downloading them is voluntary.

[cellio]

I agree that blogs and "product placement" will become increasingly important. But I also think that most voters are sheep who line up behind their affiliations, so it won't make a big difference.

Ads never die

[nwl.livejournal.com]

Politicians might have to become interesting. It would be nice if they rediscover oratory, but I don't think I'll be totally surprised if they go in for pie fights.

Oratory has never gone away, but the attention span of the general public has gone way down - the ads are considered too long! Who's going to sit through a two hour speech? Maybe they will combine pie fighting and oratory: "Four score and [splat!] and twenty years ago, [splat, splat!]..." It would get people to tune in.

[madfilkentist]

It looks as if editing facts out of Wikipedia is an up-and-coming technique.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks--very interesting. However, preventing bad news from getting out is no substitute for getting people to want to vote for you.

I'm hoping that the whole story of the attempted edit gets attached to that politician's wikipedia article.