Paid programming just took a step up on the annoyance scale, just when you thought it wasn't possible.
In dial-flipping last night I went by F/X on my television. I was greeted with a generally static picture of the roman numerals IV, and a clock counting down from six days or so. It also had a Web address: http://www.rockstargames.com/iv/.
And here's the good part, every time a second elapsed, a sound effect came on that was like someone using a sledgehammer to pound iron. Boom, boom, boom. It went on for 30 minutes; I could only handle less than a minute of that before running to the medicine cabinet and the remote.
Upon visiting the site, the ad is for the arrival of the trailer of Grand Theft Auto IV, a video game. I didn't know the trailer for a video game warranted such attention, but the last computer game I owned was Super Nintendo.
I don't know if the ad will lead to sell any video games, but it sure will sell some aspirin.
