I read today that those wacky zany kids at Channel Seven are rolling out something called “Pump TV”. I thought they’d gone all naughty and were setting up a new digital porn channel, but it turns out they’re wacking in TV screens into petrol pumps.

Well that’s a great leap for mankind. You need to get a bit of Mel and Kochie action while you’re filling up at the servo. Actually Beauty and The Geek will look a whole lot better while you’re topping up the brake fluid.

How’s it going to work? Are they abridged, five-minute episodes of everything – or the time it takes to do your business and screw the cap back on? Or will we be faced with oceans of Shell V90 flooding out over the concrete Zoolander style, as motorists are totally engrossed with the latest love tryst between Dr. Rachel, Alf and Hugo on Home and Away?

Seriously, are you fair dinkum David Leckie?  Why do you need to watch TV at a servo?
These days, it seems you’re not safe anywhere from John Logie Baird’s bastard lovechild.
As another David, Byrne, from the Talking Heads put in their song Television Man,” The world crashes in, into my living room”. Sorry David, it’s now airports, supermarkets, banks, department stores, doctors’ and dentists’ waiting rooms, restaurants, and public toilets – anywhere one or more person may congregate for longer than a nanosecond.

George Orwell was right.
An apartment we used to live in had a TV in the bathroom. I know the telly can bore the crap out of you, but that’s pushing things a bit far.
In Singapore they have TVs in buses. Which is a bit unusual, because the longest bus ride you’ll have is about an hour, and that’s if you don’t have a life and collect rain gauges.
You can even get a TV in a fridge. Well not quite in the fridge – that little light when you open the door is far more entertaining than “10 Years Younger in 10 Days”. This is a digital-multi-media-fridge with a TV, mp3 player, built-in Internet, microphone and camera. Now you’re just getting silly. Who are you going to email from the fridge? The toaster?

Someone who doesn’t think it’s silly is the lovely Lola from New York who gushes in an online review and I quote “It was awsomes (sic) we have 3 now the kids love then (sic again) and so do i”. Thanks for that Lola, I suggest you unplug the fridge and go and read a book, preferably a dictionary.
Speaking of expanding the reach of quality television programming –  which we weren’t. Memo to the boffins at Channel Seven: You might want to have a chat with China. Apparently it has the most TVs in the world with 400 million.  No surprise there. Christmas Island has only 600, but it’s a growing market, with plenty of reality TV potential: “I’m a Celebrity Asylum Seeker – Get Me Out of Here”. Now I’d watch that at a servo.

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5 comments

Show oldest | newest first

    • ja says:

      09:57am | 16/11/09

      Genuinely frightening…

      Surely on a deeper level the practice of viewing people as nothing more than a ‘target demographic’ is dehumanising and immoral.  On its own the concept of marketing is understandable and potentially a positive thing, but it seems to me that its’ increasing presence into every corner of our lives is linked, as with many other things, to a decrease in respect for the individual. 

      Marketers, there is a social cost to commercialism.  Take a step back and smell the eucalypts.

    • KeIthY says:

      03:34pm | 16/11/09

      That’s genuinely disturbing alright!

      We invade other and kill millions of innocent people because we are a bunch of drunkards glued to the circus that is television! Capitalism is a joke if you care to think about it: it’s simply a tool that provides goods and services but it sure as shit doesn’t provide all goods and services necessay to have a functioning society!

    • stephen says:

      05:42pm | 16/11/09

      Actually, if BP’d put on a troupe of dancing bikini-girls instead of the tele,I’d buy a car, and spend all me money on fuel.

    • stephen says:

      08:06pm | 16/11/09

      Actually, if Shell’d organize a troupe of dancing bikini-girls at the servo’ instead of the tele, I might buy a car, and spend all me money on fuel.

    • stephen says:

      09:12pm | 16/11/09

      Any oil company ?

 

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