My suite-mates have been watching a marathon of “Say Yes to the Dress” on television today. After watching for several hours, they began noticing that TLC shows the same commercials over and over again. These commercials consist of advertising for their own shows, cat litter, jewelry stores, clothing, etc. Their revelation reminded me of Charles Dickens’s method of advertising by connecting the products to the story. However, instead of advertising wedding dresses or venues which is probably what Dickens would have done, this targets single women in less obvious ways such as the cat litter, and that is not a joke; they advertised cat litter. Dickens chose similar products, but the targeting of specific groups of people did not occur as much. He aimed for a much wider audience, so this type of targeted advertising would not have been quite the same as his.
Dickens produced works that were targeted at people in general, all people could get something out of all of his works. Today though, media seems to specifically target certain groups, like single women with TLC programming, and the other option for men which would be Sunday Night football. It is interesting to consider what programming today would address the wide audience Dickens did if that is even possible today,