Can you hear me now?

     Am I the only one who has noticed all the full page ads in the Baltimore Sun for hearing aids?  No wonder hearing aids can cost thousands of dollars.  Those full page ads on the pricey back pages of newspaper sections don't come cheap. Newspapers are still the right type of media because of their readership skewing to an older demographic.  I mean who under 40 still gets a daily newspaper? I guess I shouldn't be surprised now that the Baby Boomers are getting old.
      As someone who had hearing loss develop in my left ear in my 30's I know how hearing loss can impact someone.  I have trouble hearing in restaurants with the background noise and I always try to position myself to the right of someone talking to me so that I can hear with my good ear.  This is a real problem when I am driving and the radio is on.  The one time I tried on hearing aids for someone with my type of hearing loss I thought everything sounded like it was coming out of a transistor radio.  This isn't surprising as the hearing aid in my good ear was designed to transmit the sound to the aid in my bad ear at an amplified level.  I decided my coping mechanisms with my hearing loss was preferable to hearing the world through a transistor radio.
      The media for advertisers of other products directed at the Baby Boomers it also noticeable in the ads on any nightly news program.  Reverse mortgages with former teen TV stars (really Fonzie, have you no shame?) and drugs for conditions that older people just had to live with in the past now are wall to wall on the news programs.  I have blogged before on this reality and have always been amazed at how there now are drugs for the most intimate problems of growing older.  I love the ones for adult diapers by actors and sport figures who start out by saying "I don't need this product but........."  These first seemed directed at women but now I am starting to see the ads directed at men.  The only ads funnier are the ones directed at men who have lost their "potency."   I bet many of the older women in the past looked at this men's developing problem with relief.  They probably are not thrilled with the products now marketed for these problems.  It's a relief to know that this potency problem only occurs with men who have a week's worth of stubble on their face, own horses and still drive a 1960's Mustang convertible.
    Oh, for the days when these were the types of commercials aimed at our age demographic.