• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, October 2, 2006

Huge demonstrations of African-Americans and Latinos have broken out in cities across the nation to protest what participants say is an excess of commercials and advertisements that have begun to appear in publications and programming controlled by minority-owned media. An estimated five million protestors have turned out in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Detroit to say they are "mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore."

In recent weeks the number of commercial minutes in black and Latino-oriented television programming has soared from 22 minutes an hour to 49 minutes, leaving little time for plot development.

"I sit down to watch "106 and Park" or "The Black Carpet" and I see about a minute of the show when the commercials start," said one Chicago protestor. "After about five minutes of ads for cars I can't afford and fast food I don't eat anymore and soda we don't allow in the house, I get to see another two minutes of the show before those damned commercials start again. I switch over to see reruns of "The Jeffersons," "Bernie Mac," or "Diff'rent Strokes," but I am lucky to catch 30 seconds of the show before a commercial break. What in the hell has happened to black TV?"

Minority publications such as the New York Amsterdam News, which had been running about 40 percent advertising in each issue, has exploded with more than 30 pages of additional display ads that have reduced the news well to 1.3 percent of the paper's total content. The result is nearly wall-to-wall advertisements that are angering subscribers and newsstand buyers.

"The News is like reading one of those fat fall preview issues of fashion magazines where you have to flip through a hundred pages of ads before you even find the table of contents," says a New York-based demonstrator. "It took me over an hour to find the editorial page yesterday."

"This is a little embarrassing," said a spokesperson for New York City Councilman Larry Seabrook, who blasted ad agencies for not attending a recent public hearing on minority-owned media, saying they "ran like chickens."

"We ran, alright, straight to our media departments--and bought up every pod, flight, column inch and pixel of minority-oriented inventory," said one agency executive who asked not to be identified.

The result has clearly not pleased minority audiences, although owners of minority-oriented media have been conspicuously silent since the demonstrations began. There have been unconfirmed reports that Edward Lewis has bought Bernie Ebbers' Angelina Plantation, a 21,000-acre farm in Louisiana, and that Linda Johnson Rice has acquired The Star of Africa, a 530-carat diamond that until last week was at the Tower of London set in the scepter of King Edward VII.

"I don't know who's behind this," said a Latino protestor in Los Angeles, "but they ought to have their asno golpeado con el pie. Even Anglos don't have to put up with all these doloroso ads el craping their shows and magazines."

"You know, I had a really hard week last week," Association of American Advertising Agencies Senior Vice President Adonis Hoffman might have said, but didn't. "Can't you just leave me out of this? I mean, we're damned if we don't and now we're gonna be damned because we did."