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There’s an old trick that professional writers use when they want to slant a story for a particular magazine. They study the advertisements that the magazine carries.

Those ads are an excellent insight into the magazine’s audience. They are carefully aimed at the kinds of people who read that magazine. If you want to write a story for a particular ’zine, write your story for the people you see in the advertisements.

I thought about that a couple of nights ago while I was watching television. The advertisements tell you a lot about who the TV industry is aiming to influence.

Sports shows, for example, are heavily supported by ads for automobiles, sporting goods, power tools and medications for erectile dysfunction (ED). I guess the audience is assumed to be macho handymen who’re having problems in bed.

Pills are advertised on almost every show. Pills for aches and pains, pills for asthma, pills for allergies, pills for menstrual cramps and — of course — pills for ED. Plus pills to help you sleep, pills to help you stay awake and pills to help with either diarrhea or constipation.

It’s almost ludicrous when TV news shows do stories about the war on drugs. We are a drug culture, like it or not. Pharmaceuticals are a multibillion-dollar industry. If we ever legalize narcotics, I can envision the television advertisement about the benefits of marijuana or cocaine.

The ads for pharmaceuticals always include warnings about possible adverse effects. If you listen closely, you can hear them mention (hurriedly) everything from sleep-walking to cardiac arrest. One asthma medication includes a warning about the possibility of causing “asthma-related death.” That’s enough to start me wheezing.

Then there are guys in suits who smile as they tell you that they can help you get out from under the Internal Revenue Service. “Do you owe thousands to the IRS?” they ask. “Are interest payments on your back taxes eating you alive?” They’ll get you off at a fraction of what you owe, they promise.

Now wait a minute. How did these poor souls run up such big debts to the IRS? By not paying their taxes, that’s how! If they had paid the taxes they owed, they wouldn’t be in trouble now. They don’t need financial advice; they need a stretch in Leavenworth.

And by helping these deadbeats to avoid paying the taxes they owe, these smiling, friendly tax advisors are running up your tax bill. And mine. Every dollar that the IRS doesn’t collect from a tax evader means another dollar added to the tax bills of those honest and frugal citizens who do pay their taxes, like you and me. We grumble about taxes, sure, but most of us pay up on time, like it or not.

Which reminds me of those ads that promise to allow you to buy whatever it is, even if you have poor credit, no credit, or even if you’ve gone into bankruptcy. Believe it or not, such advertisements are still being aired.

The current financial crisis we’re in is the result of extending credit to people who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) pay their bills. Foreclosures and bank failures are the result of making bad judgments about credit risks. It’s still going on, despite daily headlines about a credit-crunch-caused recession.

Unbelievable! Yet true.

Then there are those ads where the voice-over has a British accent. They sell makeup and perfume with a British accent. They advertise sports cars with British accents. Even power tools! Why?

Apparently, the decision-makers in the advertising industry think that Americans are impressed with British accents. They think that we think British accents are more cultured, suave, knowledgeable than ordinary Yank-speak.

OK. I’ve been a member of the English-Speaking Union and I treasure the language of Shakespeare, Keats, Tom Stoppard. But I don’t think a brand of booze is classier because there’s a British accent cooing its praises on TV.

Frankly, I’d put more weight on what Steven Jobs has to say, or Muhammad Ali. I still thrill to the memory of Winston Churchill’s pugnacious speeches from World War II Britain. But I wouldn’t buy a used car from Winnie. Harry Truman, maybe.

Which brings us to the advertisements for automobiles.

Since at least the post-World War II years, autos have been sold in this country not as transportation, but as sex symbols. Hey guys, buy this zillion-horsepower car to impress the ladies. Show them how powerful you are by showing them your powerful new speedster.

Much the same technique is now being used on women buyers, too. Buy this sleek, sophisticated automobile with the satellite radio and Bluetooth phone technology. Show ’em that you’re with it, girl!

The ads always show the cars zooming along a country highway, or speeding down a city avenue that’s empty of all other traffic. Looks impressive, but the truth is you don’t drive along empty roadways with the wind in your hair and a movie star sitting beside you. You inch along traffic-jammed streets with the idiot behind you blaring the horn while talking on the cell phone.

There is a slight ray of hope. With gasoline prices bouncing on the $4 per gallon mark, some auto ads are mentioning the fuel economy of their brand. Quietly, almost as if they’re ashamed of getting away from the macho zoom-zoom.

But you’ve got to be careful. Some ads brag that you can drive 400 miles without needing to fill the gas tank. That’s a factor of the size of the car’s gas tank, not the economy of the engine in terms of miles per gallon. Don’t let them fool you. Get the mpg number.

Maybe, when gasoline gets to $8 or $10 per gallon, ads for cars will stress fuel economy instead of machismo vroom-vroom.

After all, we’ll still have all those pills for ED.

Naples resident Ben Bova drives a Toyota Camry. He is the author of nearly 120 books, including “Mars Life,” his latest novel. Bova’s Web site address is www.benbova.com.