Self-Defeating

You know how commercials sometimes blast you out of your chair when they come on the air because they're so loud compared to the show you're watching? Don't you think this is rather foolish on the part of whoever is running the show at the various networks? Ked and I are watching a movie on FX (cable) right now, and the volume change is almost unbelievable. The thing is, though, it's really quite self-defeating. The advertisers want to get our attention, but they grab it so hard that we scramble immediately for the remote control to get to the blessed mute button. If the ads came on at a humanly tolerable decibel level we might just let them roll over us without bothering to silence them, thus allowing them to seep in subliminally at least, even if we didn't pay active attention, but as it is we can't push mute quickly enough. We don't listen a nanosecond longer than we have to. Seems like somebody needs to rethink this plan.