Legality of Commercials

[CaldwellYSR]

This is a bit of a rant but it comes to a point. The main question is last so if you don't feel like reading the rest of it feel free to skip below

I'm aware that this country was bought and paid for a long time ago by big companies. So even though I understand how this pet peeve of mine is allowed to happen, I'm still curious about the legality of it all. So I'm wasting my life and my health away on the couch watching ESPN when a commercial comes on about high school dropouts. (Rather funny commercial since Lebron James is the one talking and he skipped college for the NBA but anyways...) He says 7000 kids drop out of school every school day. Now I have a VERY hard time believing that is true, but for the sake of this argument I will let that slide. He continues to say "that is 26 students per second".

What?!

Now LeBron didn't go to college but it doesn't take really difficult arithmetic to figure out that 7000 students a day does NOT in any way result in 26 students per second. If you take a 24 hr day you have:

7000 per day / 24 hrs in a day = 291.66... per hr
291.66... / 60 min in an hour = 4.8611... per min
4.8611... / 60 sec in a min = 0.08101852 per second.

Well 0.081 students per second doesn't come anywhere near 26 per second! "Well a school day isn't 24 hours long and they clearly said 7000 per school day!" is one response I got when I brought this up around the people I was watching tv with. So let's check THAT math then.

7000 per day / 7 hrs in a school day = 1000 per hr
1000 per hour / 60 min in an hour = 16.666... per minute (uh oh)
16.666... per min / 60 seconds in a min = 0.2777... per second.

Yep.... 0.28 per second. That's alot closer to 26 per second but still NOWHERE NEAR IT!!! It's blatant misinformation just to make their cause more powerful and their message more clear.

Now...

I picked a bad commercial to pick on because they have a good message. We need to help these kids so we don't have so many drop outs because there are alot of dropouts and I bet legitimate statistics show that a good number of those dropouts don't lead very successful lives after they drop out. That being said this one stuck out to me because of how blatant it is and how easy it is to disprove. So...

TL;DR see question below

Is it really LEGAL for companies to get away with completely false statistics? It seems to me that it should not be.

 

[Private-I]

In the UK one of our prime ministers said this:-

"There's lies, damn lies and then there's statistics"

 

[wayback64]

Nice point right there but I could not understand why watching ESPN commercials can affect our health. Radiation perhaps?

So I'm wasting my life and my health away on the couch watching ESPN when a commercial comes on about high school dropouts.

Retin-a

 

[chrishirst]

Nice point right there but I could not understand why watching ESPN commercials can affect our health. Radiation perhaps?

It's not the watching commercials per se. ....





... But being slumped on the couch watching mind numbing crap that is the problem.

 

[Phreaddee]

... But being slumped on the couch watching mind numbing crap that is the problem.

and then analysing the absurd statistics. and inherant irony in the ad. man you would have a field day with some of the mindless crap they play on tv here.
not only that
the latest assault on me which I would rant about is the latest offering from coles (supermarkets). they've been running with this campaign for about 2 years now where they get folk with massive red hands pointing down over this really annoying tagline "down down prices are down!" displaying random generic coles brand food and grocery items literally pushing a dollar with the price down to the new price.

nothing really outrageous there obviously just crap ads but just recently they got an old aussie rock band with massive red hand guitars and they sing in a monotone voice. "down down prices are down" over and over and over again.

then if you ever go shopping at coles they have that ad playing over the speaker over and over and over again.

and then i get nagged at to go shopping at coles and I just dont want to...
it freaks me out.

and it gets stuck in your head. and thats when it really starts eating away at your brain cells 3 words one 3 times over and over again its painful. it takes a while to remove. I need an evening of music therapy afterwards just to regain my brain patterns.

 

[chrishirst]

In the UK one of our prime ministers said this:-

"There's lies, damn lies and then there's statistics"

Benjamin Disraeli though it is usually attributed to Mark Twain


Though as Homer (Simpson that is not the Greek poet) puts it;


"Facts are meaningless. You can use them to prove ANYTHING!"

 

[chrishirst]

By the way,

The Homer "quote" is a paraphrase before some one out-pedants me by pointing out it is

"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true."