TV programs are lures designed to deliver an audience to advertisers.

Sunday morning interviews and news programs - featuring "talking heads" and "thumbsuckers" (complex topics) -- draw an audience of older adults, interested in politics and public affairs, who are often the leaders, the elders, the movers and shakers of any community.

Ads sandwiched around these news programs are often targeted at those people, the "Haves" with surplus money (ads for investments, stockbrokers), enough disposable income for luxuries (ads for expensive cars, cruises) and "Protection" ads (life insurance).

Furthermore, some persuasive messages are targeted at such local leaders to influence public opinion: "issue ads" and "advocacy" ads (about specific issues, such as taxes or regulations), and "feel-good" ads (corporate image-building ads) to encourage a general feeling of good will toward a corporation and its policies.

For example, ADM -- the Archer Daniel Midlands corporation -- spends tens of millions of dollars annually on "feel good" ads to promote its image as "Supermarket to the World," using soft-focus TV ads with patriotic "amber waves of grain" imagery and other Americana scenes. What ADM omits in these ads was that ADM is the major player involved in advocating the use of ethanol -- made from corn -- as a gasoline additive: that ADM was the largest single contributor to the Republican Party (over $1 million) in 1996; and, that in 1997, ADM was indicted on 2,300 counts on illegal price-fixing charges, and had to pay a record-breaking $100 million dollars in fines. So, in 1998, ADM hired the recently retired TV Anchorman, David Brinkley, a trusted elder, as its spokesman to help repair its image, a move that stirred many of his journalist colleagues to denounce this as a cynical betrayal of trust.

Television news magazine programs (such as "60 Minutes," "20/20," "48 Hours," "Prime Time," "Nightline") also attract an adult audience, more educated than the norm. With such demographics, this smaller audience is valued by some advertisers because of their greater purchasing power. Compare the ads accompanying these programs with the Sunday morning ads.