The New Year’s holidays were more than homely this time. The blistering cold made many people to spend the night at homes. Neither the events organized by the City Council or other entertainment outside shows still didn’t make people leave home and go out to enjoy. The cold has also made people ignore the mutual home visiting measures. Under these circumstances the best option for people’s entertainment would be the TV shows. It would but it didn’t happen. The shows were unbearably interrupted by commercial breaks. The pre-holiday and holiday period is an opportunity for people to make money. No law can ban the activity of our TV companies. And on these days there is wide-spread commercial on TV. Everything is advertised – starting from anti-sanitary packed pork ending up by miraculous medical pills. The abundance of commercial made us pay attention to the level of preparation of commercials. For example, Armentel placed the same poster all over the city. On the red background it shows a child. Next to the child there are the words, “continue growing up”. No one knows whether it’s Armentel’s current Russian owner’s or the previous Greek owner’s fault to believe that the children here are like Peter Pan and don’t grow up. In fact Armenia reminds them of a land of fools from tales. Another commercial advertises a store opened a week after Christmas, which offers to do the post-Christmas shopping there. If I am not mistaken the name of the store was, “Street 8”, which degrades the level of commercials in our country. And this commercial is almost on all channels. He didn’t save money on that but he saved money on the quality of the commercial. I bet this New Year commercial will be stretched up until spring. And this commercial is not the only case. While the commercial is asking “how many times have you tried to quit smoking and answers, “this will be the end,” it offers to take a new medicine. The policies of advertisement have never been regulated in our country. As medicine they advertise whatever they want. For example, as a urinate causer medicine they advertise the product of the brandy factory. It has great population among people at an older age. The reason is not that they have urinary obstruction. The advertisement takes them back to their memories. This reminds of Soviet times. During Soviet years when the Soviet tourists were visiting swimming pools in the Western countries they were always feeling uncomfortable. In the 60s the Western swimming pools were adding some material in the water. If the person would like to satisfy his/her small needs in the water it would immediately get red around him. Later the guard would ask the swimmer out and fine. The Soviet tourists were gathering to pay the fine with the whole group. One of the brandy commercials showed on our TV channels often reminds us of the situation. The beautiful young lady tastes a glass of brandy offered by the waiter near the swimming pool. The beauty takes a sip of that and swiftly jumps into the water. It’s not hard to imagine what the young lady does in the water because the water gets colored right after her with a color of urine of a sick person. The waiter immediately disappears from the screen perhaps of being ashamed or surprised by the great side effect of the brandy offered by him. At the end of the commercial they show the bottle of the brandy and the smiling beauty. Of course it was not pleasant to tell about this failed commercial but at least it has a plot unlike commercials of lotteries and TV gambling TV shows. These commercials as a rule are not only moral but also illogical. One of those offers to present a car to the friend or relative by buying a lottery ticket. One may assume that there is a car hidden in each of those tickets. In a normal country any person, who would sue the authors of those commercials will definitely win the case. There has never been a case like that in Armenia because there is no strict supervision on commercials. The RA government is currently developing a new draft law on advertisement. It may perhaps legalize the advertisement of illegal alcohols, which is prohibited now. In parallel with that it’s anticipated to establish a body supervising commercials. But it will hardly work productively. This opinion is formed based on the work done by the language service. This service has legal levers against those companies, which refuse to use Armenian letter in their posters or name tags. But this fact doesn’t improve the mood of people, who were sick of watching the same commercials all the time during the holiday season.
