I have never liked, nor watched commercial TV. By ’commercial,’ I mean sit coms, and stuff the networks carry endlessly. The canned laughter and shallow plots, make me ill. I watch PBS, and my favorite channel is Turner Classic Movies. I do watch History, Travel, Fox Business and Fox News, and this brings me to the subject of this diatribe. Commercials. I know, the bills have to be paid, and it is commercials which pay the bills, but they have gotten to be so extreme, that if you happen to have a stop watch, do as I have done, and that is time the commercials.
Hee Haw is on re-runs Sunday night, and not only is it great fun, but you can see and hear long dead artists sing and play again. Last week, I watched Roy Acuff sing “The Great Speckled Bird,” and it was great. I also timed the commercials. Why? Because Hee Haw is about 45 years or more old, and it was an hour show. I therefore, could time the commercial space of 45 years ago. Well, guess what? The Hee Haw show, had two one minute commercials, and three two minute commercials, or eight minutes of commercials in an hour’s show. I am certain that was common 45 years ago, as it was for all commercial TV. In other words the commercials now occupy three times as much space in an hour, or maybe even four times as much as they did 45 years ago.
Now go to History or Fox, and time commercials. Four minute and fifteen second commercial breaks are common, and lots of them. As a matter of fact, on today’s TV shows, at least the ones I watch, commercials occupy close to HALF of the air time. Just a couple of years ago, on Fox and Friends, they would say, “We’ll be back in two minutes.” No more. Pay the bills? Maybe the bills are too high, shows cost too much, or the owners of the shows don’t realize that maybe the decrease in TV watching is caused by their greed. All the latest statistics show a marked decrease by Americans in watching TV. I haven’t checked the commercial networks and their sit-coms, because I couldn’t stand a minute of canned laughter, but I’ll bet their commercial breaks are equally nauseating. Actually, some of the commercials are funny, and worth a watch, but if I hear the word ’misotheleoma’ again, I may be tempted to throw a shoe through the screen.
I got fed up with Direct TV, after being abused by them after being a customer for 21 years, and I got cable “Optima”, which is cheaper, and has far more High Definition, plus two history channels and two western film channels. No more big dish to look at on the outside of my home either. I love movies, and consider film one of America’s great art forms, other than current films with gobs of ’special effects.’ I love acting, not special effects, and the best acting and direction seems to come back in the thirties, forties, and fifties.
People around the world love America, in part because of our western movies. The scenery, action , and bar fights, which every western has to have, make people everywhere want to come to, and become Americans. In westerns, the good guys always win, the horses never tire, and the gunshots always reach their targets. Corny I am sure, but the world never gets tired of American westerns, and especially with John Wayne, Randolph Scott, and their like. John Ford, loved to film John Wayne westerns in Monument Valley, Arizona, which is one of the more spectacular places in the American West. I capitalized “American West,” because it is so spectacular with its glorious sunsets, big skies, endless sunshine and friendly people. I was born and raised in Washington D.C., but I’ll never go back east again with its liberals, humidity, graffiti, crime, gangs, and racial problems, and that goes for California too, which used to be great, but now is a shadow of its former glory.
I am no chartist, but it seems to me, that when gold breaks $1400, it will take off like a rocket. I have no crystal ball, but I do know that at the lows, gold did reach its cost of production, and it can only go from there, which it has begun to do. Another interesting fact is that silver has lagged behind gold in price, the
ratio now being 62.2 to one. It was 48 to one a year or so ago, as I remember. Why? Because I believe that the entire world is scared of their various paper currencies, which are backed by thin air, and they consider gold as ’safety,’ not silver, although both are safety, for sure. The world is also afraid of banks, and the possibility that banks may appropriate their money as was done in Cypress. You know what the stupid bankers did with the $38 billion Russians deposited there, don’t you? They bought Greek bonds, and lost it all, bankrupting the banks. The Ruskies thought Cypress was a safe place to store their rubles. Is there a safe place to store wealth, other than gold and silver? I don’t think so, and I hope it isn’t going to happen, but I think the stock market has gone far beyond a safe place to store money, which may have been removed from suspect banks. Time will tell, and no one can predict the future. Those who make endless predictions, are usually all wet, and yes even those widely respected like Jim Sinclair. Just be logical. Gold and silver require investment, exploration, machinery, plus a lot of capital to produce. Stocks and dollar bills require pieces of paper or computer entries. Which historically, is the real, true money, in all civilizations? Even in Biblical times, money was gold and silver!