When it doesn t happen, our attention drifts. A new form of TV commercials evolved in the mid-1990s. It had become trendy to edit videos with extremely rapid cuts. Some shots were so brief they were virtually subliminal. Young People See the Cuts Marketing researchers ran some tests to see how much of the information in these commercials could be retained by the audience.
Commercial time is precious.
No reason to increase production time and cost if the product doesn t work. They found that young people who had grown up with television and video games could see all the cuts. Older people whose learning process as youngsters developed without television could not see some of the very quick cuts. The theory from that research is that heavy doses of television at an early age sharpen the natural ability to see and retain visual information that flicks by in milliseconds. . . . In a voice-over story, the anchor begins to read the story on camera.