Blipverts!

Max_headroomBack in the 1980s there was a TV show based on the character Max Headroom.

It was called (unsurprisingly) "Max Headroom."

Or sometimes, "Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future."

Whatever.

Anyway, the pilot episode of this show (which also has a British version that is somewhat different) tells the origin story of Max Headroom.

It seems that 20 minutes into the future, ace news reporter Edison Carter is being shoved off of a story by his employers (Network 23) because he’s getting Too Close To The Truth.

The Truth is that the station’s major sponsor–the sinister ZikZak Corporation–has begun using a new advertising technique called "Blipverts," which are very, very short ads (just a few seconds) that have unpleasant side effects . . . like causing some of the viewers who see them to explode.

Eventually, sinister forces decide to bump off Edison Carter. They fail, but in the process a virtual quirky sorta-clone of Carter is created, and thus is born Max Headroom.

Why am I telling you this?

Because some advertisers are now considering using a new advertisting technique, which would be . . . you guessed it . . .

BLIPVERTS.

Edison Carter, call your office!

BTW, my favorite line from the Max Headroom show was the following explanation that one character gave to a couple of girls who had grown up in the TV-saturated, cyberpunk culture of the show: "It’s a book. It’s a non-volatile storage medium. It’s very rare. You should ‘ave one."

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

17 thoughts on “Blipverts!”

  2. Is it just me, or does that picture of Max Headroom look a little bit like Tony Snow?

  3. Anyone know what they meant by “20 minutes into the future” means? I don’t know if they ever explained that (I was very young when it came out) or if it was just meant to sound cryptic.
    Tony Snow? I don’t know… but Ryan Seacrest looks kinda like Max.

  4. Hmmm. My favorite quote took place when two of the characters find themselves in an apartment where they discover a television which has a knob which allows you to turn it off! Remarks one character to another, “Isn’t that illegal?”

  8. “20 minutes into the future” just meant it was set in the near future, not the far future. It was supposed to make you feel even more paranoid and the show feel more edgy.

  11. Does anybody remember the Doonesbury character “Ron Headrest”? Pretty good takeoff, even if I don’t necessarily agree with Trudeau’s politics.

  12. One-second spots are hardly new. I remember advertisers sponsoring the reading of the time of day. For example, in my town, the announcer would read the news and the weather, or whatever, and then say: “King Edward Cigar time is 6:00”.
    Similar things are still done on radio. They’ll say, “Traffic brought to you by JimmyJoeBob’s Pizza and Knitting Supplies”, or “This weather report is sponsored by Giantco, makers of fine high quality huge metal machines of obscure purpose”.
    In fact, signs at sporting events, bus posters, logos on race cars, movie product placements etc. are all a kind of “blipvert”, if you think about it. Even the disc on the back of this laptop’s screen is a blipvert.
    Nothing new under the sun, folks 🙂

  13. I agree: Tony Snow. I thought the exact same thing when I saw the pic. Free-kay!
    I loved that show back in the day. Matt Frewer was my perfect dream-nerd when I was a girl!

  14. It is a classic show. Still has a lot of potential.
    I saw something like blipverts in the late 80s, TV commercials that flashed a series of images by so quickly that your mind wasn’t given time to recognize the image, and accept or reject it.
    I suspect that is what the new blipverts are about, too.
    It isn’t that the commercial is short, but that you are not allowed to cognitively reject the advertisement.

  15. I was under the impression that this kind of advertizing had been around for a long time. You know, when your sitting in the theatre watching the movie and all of a sudden something red flashes momentarily. The next thing you know you have an uncontrollable urge to go out to the lobby and buy a giant Coke.
    Actually, I’ve heard something like blipverts on the local heavy metal stations (not to say too much about the kind of music that I sometimes listen to). It’s much less subiminal but still kind of creepy.

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