While I appreciate the agreement about Spike TV's enormous promo \"bugs\", my whole *point* is that there's no logic that goes, \"Man, that looks like a really, really interesting show that I would enjoy watching. But because they ran the promos too many times for my taste, I think I won't tune in. That'll show 'em.\"
There is a logic like that, it's just that no one follows through.
If I had decided to throw a hissy fit after ABC cancelled
WWTBAM, I could have said, \"I'm not gonna watch any ABC shows for the next year!\" and put it on the page. But (1) it's tough to follow through (\"Man, Jennifer Garner looks hot -- well, just five minutes of
Alias and nobody'll know!\"), and (2) in this age of media conglomerates, it's hard to practice what you preach (\"I'm not watching ABC, but I have watched ABC Family, The Disney Channel, ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN News, ESPN Classic Sports, I've gone to four Disney movies, I bought three Disney DVDs, and I gave money to Jerry's kids because John Ritter and his hot daughters on his show asked me to...\").
One person won't make a difference. It has to be a big group (tens of thousands), it has to be organized, it has to have media saturation, and it has to stick.
For bugs and obnoxious promos -- which have become so prevalent in the last decade that a half-generation of TV viewers don't remember when they didn't exist -- it's just not going to happen.