Daytime TV and radio advertising - the work of an evil empire?

Sat at home with a cold, I have been experiencing the joys of 'Good Morning' - it's your typical, cliche day time TV, aimed at the idle, the old and presumably the housewife. Like most day time TV shows around the world (they all adhere to the same format), they have the nice but dim male presenter - eye candy for the menopausal? - the badly dressed female, normally a failed newsreader or similar, devoid of intellect, but suitably bland for the audience. In NZ we have the addition of the token gay male; this seems to be the latest must have for any TV show (How to look good naked, Graham Norton, etc....).

Anyway, what is it with the 'advertorials' - the five minute product placement of bizarre and pointless inventions. First up was the steam mop - the link is the actual advert - wow, I didn't know steam could kill bacteria! We all hate those dangerous harsh chemicals, etc. FFS - let's all steam sterilize all of our homes, why bother having an immune system when you can sanitize.

Then there is my personal favourite, the Woolrest Biomag - wow, a fleecy sheepskin with magnets underneath that provides pain relief. Why do all the users have an average age of what looks like 80? Even more bizarre is that they claim 300000 New Zealand households have one - 300000 mugs taken for a ride. Of course there must be some efficacy? Their website has conduct a literature review and claims 75% of the studies claim that it is an effective form of pain relief.. Hang on, 11 out of 18 (their figures) demonstrated some improvement in pain relief, that means 7 out of 18 did NOTHING! Indeed, googling other papers it is apparent that the placebo effect readily occurs. One study used 'magnetic' insoles for plantar problems, and guess what, the placebo group had similar levels of pain relief than those who had magnets. Of course the author of the seminal Biomag research is from the Chiron Clinic - a bunch of naturopaths from Harley Street - hardly unbiased.

Contrast this with radio advertising; on the way home from the school run I heard, four times in 10 minutes, the same advert for a local bottle shop. They were offering a dozen Vodka Cruiser cans- 8% alcohol content, for just $21 - so the same alcohol content as 6 full bottles of wine for one green note and one gold coin. Now, I am not a prude, and I can talk with experience of being hammered at a young age, but never on drinks designed to taste like a soft drink. Everyone bleats about the drinking age needing to increase, how about actually looking at advertising? We have banned tobacco advertising and reduce point of sale displays, with the result of denormalising tobacco usage. Isn't it time that someone had the simple idea of stopping all alcohol advertising? Recent media coverage suggested that supermarkets and off licences are in fact new age drug dealers - I sniggered at this thought, but after hearing that advert I thought, you know what, they are make lots of cash from a whole lot of misery.