My TV made me want a Wii!

We have an old pair of rabbit ears to attach to our television that we keep in storage. We take it out a few times a year. To watch presidential addresses, the Olympics, thanksgiving day parade and a few other random things. In general though we just get static, movies and video games on our TV. Our reasons are plentiful and we have been tv free our entire marriage.

Recently with TV seasons coming out on DVD, Serona and I have watched a few shows we were curious about and from time to time I watch some reruns on the computer. Nothing is yet to convince us to get TV back into our home. The invention of DvR technology might one day allow for it - but nothing has impressed us enough to deal with the downsides for our family.

Anyway I digress. Thanksgiving morning we watch the parade. This year Serona and I were up late the evening before so we set everything up and allowed the kids to watch it together without us. About an hour or so after they started watching I came downstairs and said "Happy Thanksgiving" they responded in kind and then nearly immediately Rhiannon said "can we go see National Treasure II and Enchanted" and Ciaran pipes up "I want a Wii!"

I actually had to hold back a laugh because I realized this was all new to them, commercials. We talk about advertising a lot in stores or when we watch films. What makes you want that and why. It actually is a game we play. So we talked about their requests. In reality that wasn't too bad because we already planned to take them to see those films and as for the Wii well who wouldn't already intuitively KNOW that Ciaran would want a Wii?

So in a way I did not feel too bad about their requests because really the only commercials that seemed to stick with them were things they were already prone to prefer. I asked if they saw any other commercials they liked and wanted something from? It was a good discussion. Then we did an experiment with turning off the sound on commercials. A funny thing happened - they stopped watching them and started talking to each other. Even commercials they watched before. We talked about that. Anyway it was interesting to me to see their reactions to commercials.

I am thankful I don't deal with that on a daily basis. I know DvR eliminates some of that - but still it is one battle I don't need to deal with as frequently. So will they go see the films and get a Wii? Well our decisions on those questions have nothing to do with the commercials they watched.