I’m starting to realize that the faces I recognize in obituaries are outnumbering the new friends I make.
And all my favorite TV commercials are locked in the distant past.
Sure, I recognize Flo from the Progressive Insurance campaign and I understand sponsors gamble millions of dollars on starstudded Super Bowl spots; but commercial viewing has been hit or miss for my family since June 2009.
That’s when the U.S. switched from analog to digital TV broadcasting and the Tyrees (even though residing near a golf course and the industrial park) found out we live in the boonies.
Although most Americans using an antenna reaped a cornucopia of bonus “pointone and point-two” channels (“Scraping the bottom of the barrel never looked so highdefinition!”), we suddenly lost most of the main network affiliates.
(I would quote Mr. Spock’s “The good of the many outweighs the good of the few,” but I might get weepy over memories of wondering if the warp drive on “Star Trek” was powered by Geritol.)
Goodbye, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Goodbye, Olympics. (And if NBC ever gets exclusive rights to celestial bodies, Good Night, Moon.)
Satellite TV was not in our budget, so we finally gave up and have somehow survived more than a decade and a half with DVDs, YouTube videos with the ads stripped out, online weather forecasts and other workarounds. Sure, there’s some “second-hand hucksterism” in a waiting room or nursing home room, but that’s about the extent of it.
(Yeah, yeah. There’ an unspoken social contract where we’re obligated to commit every advertisement to memory for the sake of Madison Avenue and the Hollywood elite, but that ship already sailed when viewers first shouted, “Bathroom break, ahoy!”) On the spur of the moment, I did purchase my wife another of those indoor signal boosters for the TV last Christmas, but its wiring was incompatible with our television and would probably have been a disappointment, anyway. It was one of those fly-by-night “As seen on TV!” gizmos. (Not as seen on our TV, you package-embellishing bozos!)
At least this gives me incentive to promote the longevity of my peers, so we can continue to reminisce about the good old days of Mr. Whipple, Josephine the Plumber, “ring around the collar” and their ilk. Don’t shame me with “Did’ja see…?” queries about contemporary sales pitches.
Yes, I loved watching the Purina Chuck Wagon dog food spots (with a dog bewildered by a “real” miniature chuck wagon) and squabbles between cereal mascots Quisp and Quake, but nothing tugs at my heart strings quite like the claymation antics of the California Raisins.
In the autumn of 1986 when my father was recovering from seven coronary bypasses, the nurses at St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville teased him because his barrel chest and skinny legs reminded them of the Raisins.
After a month’s hospital stay, it’s a wonder Dad didn’t cast a glance at his bank account and belt out, “Don’t you know that I heard it through the grapevine? Not much longer would you be mine…” Go ahead and enjoy your up-to-the-minute Travis Kelce endorsements and breathtaking CGI mini-movies. I’ll stick with my analog reveries.
Ah, but enough about advertising now. Join me for next week’s column. It’ll be revolutionary, extra-absorbent, doctor-recommended, as seen on bathroom walls… Side effects may include nausea, vomiting, skipping straight to the crossword puzzle.
Copyright 2026 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected]
