Everyone who watches television appears --to me-- to be all of the same class of enchanted being. (And not the good kind.)
Here's one line of questioning that I might pursue:
If the technology existed (which it does) to lay a second video or audio track, at a constant but sufficiently lower level than the main "programming," to be used for the purpose of "behavior modification" ...and if someone wanted to sell the audience something, ...might that technology be employed for television programming?
It would be an interesting experiment to take the video and audio from some finished but pre-broadcast stage, and compare it, digitally, against the broadcast version. ...See if there's any boxes in the path that you don't know what they do...
