An Ode to the Ad
By James Lileks

When we first got VCRs, we all captured our favorite shows for future viewings, certain we'd want to see that primo "Miami Vice" episode a dozen times. But when DVDs arrived, well, the tapes went into storage. No point in watching grainy low-res TV again. There's something the tapes had, though, that DVDs lack: the ads.

This summer I'm spending the rainy days sorting through basement boxes of VHS tapes, converting ancient recordings to digital format. Couldn't care less about the shows: I scan for the semiotics of the Reagan era, watching the '80s come back to life. Legwarmers! Neon! Brick walls! People who believe in Crystal Light because they believe in themselves! It's not like finding the Dead Sea scrolls. But it is like finding a newspaper from the day the scrolls were hidden.

In the process of conducting this video archaeology I've come to a conclusion: We need an all-commercial TV channel. Not another shopping channel with seven-minute close-ups of ugly costume jewelry, but a highlights channel for the best of the best. From today's cheekiest spots to forgotten Buster Keaton endorsements of regional beers. You want a true history channel? Run ads for '60s rhinovirus treatments. Few of us remember what John Kenneth Foster Galbraith Whoever said, but 50 million people recall that Contac contained Tiny Time Pills; some of us would enjoy revisiting that revelation.

Sure, it sounds crass. Nothing but ads? Please. And we'll all wear paper jumpsuits and pop Soma pills.

Since the 1950s it's been almost mandatory among the smart set to profess snarky cynicism toward advertising. An Alka-Seltzer spot? Why, that's nothing but a Madison Avenue plot to make the dull-eyed hoi polloi push away their Swanson's foil-wrapped dinners and rise en masse to mindlessly, conspicuously consume.

But, with few exceptions, ads reveal the time more than the shows they interrupt. Granted, "Dynasty" tells you something about the Eighties--shoulder pads were in, oil was New Economy. But the ads say more. A soap opera in the end is just a soap opera; a soap ad is current events. The fashion, the music, the buzzwords sum up the era with more pith and zip than an entire season of lugubrious drama. We all know who shot J.R. But who shot that Pontiac ad? It rocks.

Some of the best shows on TV have no ads, and that's fine. Commercials would ruin the mood. Larry David's HBO comedy "Curb Your Enthusiasm" would feel like "Seinfeld" if it broke to hawk dentifrice; the brutal, cruel absurdity of "The Sopranos" would be difficult to sustain if punctured every 12 minutes by a dramatic climax leading to a Fritos pitch.

Some of the best shows, though, seem to need ads. For example, FOX's minute-by-minute action series "24" presumes that the action continues while you're watching the commercials. Watching it on DVD without the ads is more intense--all gallop, no canter. (Once you're used to seeing it sans spots, the broadcast version looks like it has ADD.)

In one sense, we already have an all-ad channel: the Internet. Scattered around a hundred sites are archives of moldy old commercials, digitized and posted for the ages. On sites like bestadsontv.com you'll find treats from around the world. Youtube.com has become a spot for amateur archivists to upload old favorites--from the Flintstones hawking cigarettes to beloved cereal ads from the '70s. But that's still the old way of seeing ads--short bits here and there, passed around like naughty postcards.

This will change. The less people pay attention to ads, the more advertisers will strive to earn our eyeballs. Soon we'll see drama combine with product placement on a grand scale. And there are plenty of us who would gladly swap today's commercial interruptions for that. A show with all the actors and sets and sweaty desperate drive, and, incidentally, a can of Diet Coke in 24 percent of the shots, is the commercial of the future. We won't just watch it, we'll save it for later.

We'll also leave behind fossils for the next generation to scrape off their hard drives. And they will. They'll love this stuff. Two-dimensional non-synthetic actors? What sweet retro goodness!