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Everybody knows we live in a world dominated by mass-media, especially television, newspaper and magazines. And mass-media need publicity to survive. Nowadays, even if it is not correct, also the national television are regulated by money from advertisements. Private channels are made to make money, and it is the same for newspaper and magazine, so we expect it, but it's not fair to pay a tax to be allowed to watch a channel full of publicity anyway .
Then, our towns are full of coloured images of products ready to be bought. Advertisements are everywhere: all around the streets, on public and private buses, in every public place... With a written sentence, publishers try to attrack people, offering great results and no problems, often showing beautiful young girls and boys, and abusing of people's ignorance .
I have not offered a nice image of publicity, until now, and therefore many things that really irritate me: one of them is untold publicity. In this cases somebody tries to publicize something without saying it clearly, without admitting it. For example, if we make a movie and in a sequence somebody talks at the phone we (the director) can whether pay attention just on the actor (as it should be) or we can pay attention on the name of the telephone .
Off course, we follow the 2nd way if we have some interests in doing it .
I really dislike it, and I hate it when it happens on national tv. As I said, private channels are factories, and are made to make money, so when it happens, I'm not surprised. But I cannot stand it if happens on the * RAI *, as it was in * Maresciallo Rocca *, a tv movie who went on in the last season: everytime somebody was at the phone, we could read * TELECOM *, the name of the Italian company for telecommunications .
And it's not all: some program (as Striscia la Notizia) make fun on these stories, accentuating even more the unclear promotions, illegal and unfair. Unfortunately to many interests are involved, and the matter can be far (for) more intricate: for example Paolo Bonolis in one of his program publicize a certain company of ice-cream, but in another program makes a girl talk instead of himself because the sponsor is another ice cream company .
The second advertisement, that has irritated me, is a program titled * Mitiche * that goes on almost every afternoon on a private channel and is 1 1/2 minute long. The program consists on a classification (just the first 3 positions) based on a certain argument, from a certain point of view .
For example, if the talk about sport, they choose the 3 most popular soccer player and they announce the third and the second position, then they spend a minute talking about some sponsor, before going back and announce the winner. Obviously there are no prices, no loteries, nothing ufficial. It's a way of sponsoring a product .
The third type of advertisement I do not like is concerned to the tobacco business. I do smoke, but I do not agree with cigarettes on tv .
I don't believe it's a good idea to show people smoking, especially for children. In the United States the problem is bigger, because they have almost no rule in regulating cigarette sponsor ships, but they have laws about smoking in public places .
In Italy it's the contrary, we are allowed to smoke almost everywhere, and sometimes we do it even if it is not permitted; but the tobacco companies are denied to directly publicize themself on tv or simply around the streets .
In reality, they found a way to avoid the law by sponsorizing something else (I'm talking about Marlboro Country or Merit Cup...), but fortunately we do not find the * Marlboro Man * at every corner as in the States .
Most of what I've said regarded television, but there are things I do not like about magazines: it's not possible that every 2 pages there's at least a page dedicated to publicity; I stopped buying this kind of newspaper because it was becoming hard to find informations between all these advertisements; and probably there's something even worse: if we watch tv, every ten minutes the program is stopped for commercial informations .
How can we avoid then? If we try to change the channel we find the same elsewhere! Maybe it's good to use these breaks to do something else, like order the room, washing dishes or similar, and then come back to our program; or maybe we should turn of the tv and read a good book, there's no advertisement in it .
