As many of you know by now, New York
is a key electoral college player
in the political scene. During election
seasons such as a hotly contested
federal election like the one we
just finished surviving, New York
television is converted from a safe
haven of entertainment into a beast
of burden that nobody can escape from.

Let's start with the fact that our
mailboxes are flooded and the Robo-calls
on our telephones and answering machines
are overwhelming all by itself. On
any given day my entire answering
machine filled up with robo-calls
or repeated attempts by the machine
to call my home ending in an empty
hangup.

Piles of junk mail doubled my rate
of garbage going to the dumpster.

But then television became so repititive,
so annoying with the lame attempts at
scandalizing where no scandals actually
existing, and so Oh My God monotinous
to even be in the room with, that for
me and other people I have talked to,
the ultimate decision to just turn
it off until after Election Day
became the only way to get a minute's
peace.

We had 3 minutes of TV, and then 8 minutes
of political ads and an entire 1 hour
show was completely mired and lost in
all the Blah, Blah, Blah.

YV networks sunk to new lows. None
of them apparently regulate how frequently
any one ad can run within a single show
period, or even accumutively over the
span of the prime time viewing hours
at night.

I swear, looking at any one political
ad some 25 times a day was not uncommon
here in New York. then multiply this
across 15 different ads who all did the
same exact thing and then you catch
my drift about what happened here.

It was easier for me to miss my favorite
TV shows completely at their regular air
times, and then use the internet later on
to view the playbacks on video at the
network websites. That and increasing
my Netflix DVD rentals and this is
how a lot of New Yorkers regained their
sanity in the final days leading up
to the election.

Elections have become yet another
ordeal process in excess which is
need of serious change. To what end
is all of the repititious advertising
costing all of that millions of dollars
of money, only to have the public
so overwhelmed and annoyed that they
wind up turning the TV off completely?
What an incredible waste under
the false delusion that somehow
mind-numbing repitition of the same
thing over and over again is also
the very element that wins elections.

When home viewers are pushed to a point
of annoyance with television, then it
is here that a larger question has
to be asked whether campaigns are
really doing anything at all other
than wasting millions of dollars
in ad money and to no avail at that.

There was nothing at all that was
going to save John McCain in the
state of New York, and I do mean
NOTHING! He was voted down
with a 2 to 1 margin, this after
he dominated the enter row of levers
on the voting machines with Barack
Obama only holding a single corner
lever in the first slot and nothing
else. If that doesn't get your
attention then nothing will.

John McCain did not have a friendly
ear in New York for sure.

Television is apparently unregulated
and is starting to take itself down
the road of "out of business" if it
doesn't draw in the reigns and start
limiting the annoying outcomes of
wanton repitition, useless scandalizing
that isn't real, and too, too, too, too
many ads which all say the same thing
and look the same way too.

It's all too much and at some point,
a great national viewer uprising will
occur, I predict, where everybody
just gets up off the couch and turns
it off right at the very same moment.

The debates were also not very advancing
in the process. After the first round
was seen, everything else after that
in X 2 and X 3 amounted to the same
as the first one only repackaged in
different paragraphs. One can debate
whether 3 presidential debates are
actually too much.

The $3 million half hour informercial
put on by the Obama campaign, was
only good for those who wanted to
see it. On the plus side, the infomercial
was a rational departure from the
ads up to that point, and had more
of the look of a mini-film. But then
going back from that to regular ads
again was to enter the halls of
annoyance for a second round and
it was back to the great turn-off
that so many people have said they
were forced into.

Television networks need to figure
out in the future, how much is too
much when it comes to political advertising,
and what is the breaking point of the
home viewers who refuse to play along
and watch it all just because it's there.

The blow by blow accounts of the
candidates dominating CNN news
was another atrocity from TV hell.
Every thought they had in there
heads suddenly became "headline"
level news. When did THAT start,
exactly I would love to know?
CNN needs to get over themselves
because news flash: garbage news
and useless news is NOT interesting
and does NOT keep people sitting
at their TV's. Life is too busy
now and there are other things
to be done, and todays TV viewers
are starting to reduce or eliminate
the garbage in their lives that
doesn't make any sense.

The Republican Party could have
easily saved itself hundreds of thousands
of dollars in New York, because Wall
Street lives here and there is no
fooling the North Country. So for those
of you who wasted precious dollars
in donations, please know that it
sat on the other end of a blank
and darkened TV screen while people
switched over to their CD's and DVD's
until the advertising nightmare was
over.

Blame the TV networks.