The other day, I was listening to Hot 99.5 on the way home. I’m not a big fan of the station, but I occasionally hear a song I want to download on iTunes, so I keep it in my radio presets. For those of you who don’t know, Hot 99.5 plays contemporary hit music/ pop. So, you can imagine how shocked I was to hear a commercial for a classic rock station.

But, what bothered me about this particular commercial was not the fact that it was for a classic rock station. No. I was more annoyed by the fact that this particular station – I want to say it was 104.3 but I really can’t remember – thought that it was clever by trying to reach a younger demographic using the popularity of Guitar Hero.

Now, my memory is a little fuzzy, but the commercial went something like this:

Female announcer: Do you remember this [clip of some classic rock song] or this [clip of another classic rock song] or what about this [classic rock song clip #3]? Well, Guitar Hero has made them popular again.

Then announcer went on to say how this classic rock station has been playing them all along, and urged listeners to tune in so they could hear the hits from the game – in essence, they could feel like they’re playing the game when they’re not playing the game.

She also delivered this line at the end of the commercial:

We were red, green, blue, and yellow before they (she meant Guitar Hero) were.

What the [expletive deleted to keep this blog PG]!!!!! Has our society gotten so bad that we need to relate everything to video games to reach young people? I mean, it’s bad enough that little Timmy plays video games so much that he’s turned into a fat vidiot that has no social skills, but can beat Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare in 36 minutes and 56 seconds.

It’s gotten so bad that instead of Timmy’s parents kicking his fat ass outside to play, they buy him a Wii so he can get exercise WHILE playing video games. Fat Timmy needs a video game to get exercise!!!!

And now, in essence, Classic 104.3 – or whatever radio station it was – wants fat Timmy to listen to their station so he can feel like he’s playing Guitar Hero without actually playing it? Am I the only one who thinks there’s something wrong here?

Don’t get me wrong, now. It’s not Classic 104.3’s fault; they’re just trying to capitalize on a craze. But, come on. Does everything need to be related to video games or some other form of technology to reach fat Timmy?

Apparently, older mediums like TV and funny pages are resorting to mentioning Twitter all the time. Classic 104.3 is telling kids, “Hey, we play music from Guitar Hero, listen to us.”
 
It’s like the Army recruiting video from Family Guy.

The U.S. Army. Awwww Yeah!

I guess that if a medium (or company) doesn’t appear to know about what’s trendy and popular, then it won’t attract a younger audience and will not be able to sustain itself in the future. So, I really can’t blame them for doing it. But, it certainly annoys me that they have to.

USA Today was boasting a little while ago about how they completely reported a story using Twitter. They should not be proud. Someday, local TV stations are going to stop having broadcasts, instead just posting to YouTube.
 
When I conducted my last job search, I found several jobs that mentioned social networking as one of the tasks. One job was even for a “social medial specialist.” This person would be hired to essentially maintain a company’s blog, Facebook page, and Twitter and YouTube accounts. Are you freakin’ serious?

A company is going to pay someone to waste time on the internet? Well, I guess millions of companies do it every day, since you’re probably wasting company time reading this entry. But most of us don’t spend the entire workday on the internet.

I guess these are all signs of the times we’re living in and all you can do is shake your head, and as far as I know, there isn’t an iPhone app for that. (See I can drop my trendiness in this blog too.)