Two items: first, a report that Japanese auto manufacturer
Toyota decided to pay big money to place its new
geared-to-the-youth-market pickup truck in the Schwarzenegger
”
Terminator 3
”
movie because its research showed that the attention span of
American young adults is too short for them to pay attention to the
entirety of a 30-second commercial.
Two items: first, a report that Japanese auto manufacturer Toyota decided to pay big money to place its new geared-to-the-youth-market pickup truck in the Schwarzenegger “Terminator 3” movie because its research showed that the attention span of American young adults is too short for them to pay attention to the entirety of a 30-second commercial. Seeing the truck, brand name prominently featured, for a few seconds at a time while the target audience is enraptured by the car-chase scenes is more likely to be effective.
Second, last Thursday ABC news celebrated the 25th anniversary of its 6 o’clock news with Peter Jennings by showing snippets from the first 1978 broadcast, with Jennings offering commentary. One of his observations was that “news pieces were a bit longer then than they are now – something about our attention span.”
Our declining ability to stay focused on any one topic could be a matter of serious concern, I suppose, if anyone could stay interested long enough to analyze the phenomenon and tell us whether our brains are actually rotting away or not. It certainly seems to be true that we, both as individuals and as a culture, increasingly tend to wander off in search of new stimuli. This is no doubt a function of the ceaseless bombardment of our senses from a veritable hurricane of information, some important, most so trivial that one wonders why we’re even told of it.
But it’s all coming at us, jostling for our attention – things to buy, things to want, things to be afraid of, news about government, news about Hollywood, weird stuff that we hear about solely because it’s, well, weird. Armies of information-spreaders are jumping up and down waving their arms saying “Look at me, I want to tell you something.” There’s a new cure for some disease, there’s a new diet pill, that diet pill was just recalled, your taxes are going up or down, refinance your house, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez got married or divorced or pregnant or sued, some woman in Wahoo, Nebraska just had quadruplets, a storm killed 10 people in Sri Lanka, the president said or did something, you should be taking a purple pill called Nexium, kids love the taste of whatever we’re selling, a jazz musician you never heard of died today, AIDS is getting worse but not by as much as before. … On and on.
No wonder our heads are as cluttered as a Victorian parlor. Soon we’ll be unable to hold a thought, any thought, longer than a few seconds. The Lords of Information will have to devise new ways of getting their message to us in usable form. Coming soon, no doubt, to a news broadcast near you:
“Good evening, this is Peter J with the 6 o’clock news … in our top story tonight, the Sec. of Def. announced that we have finally found Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. They turned up on an air force base near Akron, Ohio in a storage area marked ‘Property of the United States.’ ‘We know Saddam is fiendishly clever,’ said Don, ‘and he’s had plenty of time to ship them here, mislabel them, and…’ And in another story, the USDA has determined that all cows are … a plane carrying 300 members of Congress has mysteriously … scientists are saying it’s only a matter of hours before the Hubble Space Telescope begins to … and now these words from our sponsors … Buy a Ford; Buy Breck Shampoo; Get Out of Debt Now; Eat More Fiber … And in other news, the International Olympic Committee has canceled … Senator Kennedy said … this was denied; however … Dow up … Japan’s main island sank into … cold storm coming down from Canada is expected to … over 200 billion dollars … Actor Jack Nicholson has been … within 100 yards of an elementary school in Taos, New Mex. … and that’s it for the news; it’s 6:01. ‘Night.”
