SUNSET DRIVE EAST OF KETTLE CREEK Television came to our neighborhood around 1948 and somebody in our select circle of ten-year-olds invited us all in to take a look at the thing. “I Love Lucy” came on. Lucy, Ricki, Fred and Ethel yacked and yacked while everyone howled and hooted. Was I disappointed! I could think of hundreds of places and things I would rather look at. Then the commercials came on. From that day to this I have wondered why talking to people as though they were idiots, would cause them to buy more soap.
In 1966, I sat before the company psychologist and his bell-shaped curve listening to “You scored up here.” He was satisfied that anyone who could read this well was a social misfit and should stay well away from sales. Near as he could tell, the truly successful in sales tended to score in the average range.
Preview House in Los Angeles is not that far from Hollywood and Vine. In 1974 our family marched in thinking we would see a trial run of one of the upcoming TV shows. We did. First of all, however, we also watched about fifty-six different variations of an “Ajax, the foaming cleanser” commercial. Every seat in the house was wired up with an on/off switch to register our responses to each variation. Reactions of viewers in the back rows were carefully calibrated with sweat sensors. Never before had I seen dead center mediocrity carefully measured with such efficiency. By the time the preview of the upcoming TV show started, I was thousands of miles and hundreds of years away.
At long last I understood how intelligence could evolve where the race is not to the swift.

For a free color postcard of the bell-shaped curve send mailing address to George Noviss (http://www.gnoviss.com).



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