Truth in Advertising

Monday, May 21, 2007

I have decided that since tomorrow is officially the first day of my summer vacation, I should stay up a little later than usual in some sort of celebratory gesture. I neglected, however, that Sunday night television sucks. After a short burst of Arrested Development (which I still hold to be the best show on television) I decided to find something to watch.

I've never seen the show Cheaters. I could tell from the first time I heard the title that it was a show about cheating and it was probably something that would not tickle my proverbial fancy. I flipped through the channels and I saw the last 30 seconds or so of Cheaters before a commercial break. I was right - the show is about infidelity and it doesn't interest me. The first commercial of the break, however, did.

Those crazy "CALL FOR PHONE SEX LOL" commercials are standard late night programming fare. They actually preceded television, and commercials for dirty phone calls could be heard after FDR's fireside chats in the 1940s. I was not surprised to see such a commercial in the rotation, seeing as how it is after midnight, which seems to be the official time to be in the mood to talk to hot singles in my area. I was very surprised to see a commercial like this come on after a show called Cheaters.

"Aha!" I yelled, pointing at the TV as the commercial began, "so that's how it works!" You see, the show Cheaters was created to oust, well, cheaters. To have a reality show that tracks cheaters, you have to have a couple in which one member is unfaithful. To be unfaithful, you must first be tempted. You see, I would be very surprised to find that the dirty phone sex people even had to pay for that advertising space. They're basically saying "Hey, want to talk to local singles and make an appearance on the show you were just watching?" The fine folks at Cheaters would be crazy to force people to pay to create potential cheaters. It's the most brilliant advertisement campaign I've ever seen!