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Viewers claim TV with regular ads is more pleasurable, but only because the ads break up the programmes, not because they are worth watching
In common with kitsch art, TV commercials may be one of those paradoxical creations that are so bad they are good.
The parallels are not that close, since kitsch strayed from its roots as meretricious tat to become a statement of post-modern irony - it's a kind of fashionable joke to own an Elvis Presley lavatory roll holder - whereas TV ads have stoically held fast to their essential tattiness. The similarity is that each, in its different way, achieves a measure of virtue in its badness.
According to research at the NYU School of Business in New York, viewers find television more pleasurable when they watch commercials. As a first response you may say, well, that's just Americans for you - bad taste is, after all, one of that nation's great strengths; so great, in fact, that it is exported all over the world. But no, the US viewers who took part in the survey said they preferred to avoid TV ads. So what is going on?
The answer, it seems, may be found in a version of what economists call the...