Do They Think We're That Stupid? Yes, They Do.

Lately I've been hearing these strange ads on radio. They're promoting NBC TV shows. They feature two guys and a gal acting as if they're having a free and open discussion about what's on TV tonight. It turns out, however, that they only mention what's on NBC and they always love it.

The odd thing is, as far as I can tell, we're meant to not only think this is an honest conversation (I have no trouble splitting infinitives, by the way--I promise to never do it when I write in Latin); we're also meant to think this isn't an ad but actually some sort of radio show we're catching a few seconds of (I also have no trouble ending sentences with prepositions). It seems pretty obvious it's an ad to me, but they sure must hope they're fooling others.