commercials during the show

[joeq]

I am not talking about commercials during the commercial break.

I am talking about those cartoony promos for OTHER shows that are shown in the lower corner OF THE SHOW YOU ARE WATCHING once you come back from commercial break.

It sucks bad enough that you only get 39 minutes of show per hour of viewing, Now they destroy the mood of the show when it finally comes back by running promos DURING the show. Sure you can TIVO your show and zap the commercials, but if you zap this you are missing part of the show. Often these little animations cover up the opening credits of the actual program or important parts of the shot.


So you are trying to watch a cowboy show and a couple of little detectives are shining their flashlights in the lower left corner of the screen. You are watching a science-fiction movie and a couple of cowboys are drawing their six-shooters in the corner of the screen. A scary or dramatic movie is trying to set a spooky mood with music and lighting and your peripheral vision catches some comedy character doing a spit take.

These stations are barely worth watching anyway. If they weren't included in basic cable I would not pay 10¢ for them. Now they are KILLING the few shows someone might want to enjoy by filling them up with advertising.

The little figures have gotten larger and larger and the length of them has increased over the past six months as well. At this rate, by next year, the promotional corner of the screen will probably remain active throughout the entire show.

This has gone too far. I am boycotting any show that is promoted in this manner.

So far I have "Monk" "The Closer" and "Psych"

[rainsinvelvet]

YES! I hate those little promos that run DURING the damn show. Seriously, it has gotten out of hand. It would be great if we could get a boycot together and make a statement...or something......

ERic

[HetMasteen]

I don't think that show creators should suffer loss of their viewer base and face cancellation because of a ratings-thirsty network. Especially since TV is undergoing a second renaissance of sorts. There is so much good TV out there lately, and I can't help but feel that I might be missing out on something truly great just because some over zealous exec decided that little cartoony previews are useful.

[joeq]

Originally Posted by rainsinvelvet

It would be great if we could get a boycot together and make a statement...or something......

OK boycott it is. I say we boycott the shows that are advertised, not the shows that are advertised on.
As I said so far I have
Monk
the Closer
Psych

what else?

Or perhaps we should boycott the station that does it altogether
I notice it on TNT and USA.

I think in order to have an effective boycott and spread the word we need to reduce the entire discussion to a slogan or soundbite. Perhaps a neologism to describe the phenomenon.

Madvertising?

[max cooper]

I've found the easiest solution. I haven't had a TV for over ten years.

I'm not a demographic, dammit! I'm a human bean!

[picksail]

All part of the TiVo revolution.

[Makinithappen]

....and it seems like they're getting bigger. The little NBC logo that's constantly in the corner isn;t that bad but these things keep growing. I swear I saw one the other day that had to've been more than 1/8th of the screen space. Who the hell sees those little things and thinks

"Wow! Look at that new show. I gotta watch that"

[taturana]

yep... those things are really annoying...

but there's something even more annoying... Big brother...

the other day i was seeing a great ben harper show on cable and in the middle of a song they cut into big brother, and all of a sudden i had a bunch of people around a pool talking stupid stuff, and the show didn't even come back..

it seems the TV execs are gettimg worse everyday... so nowadays if i want to see something good on tv i'll pop in a DVD, or surf the net.. MTV for example has become a game show channel here cable TV is 60% ads and repeated programming...

thank good for the remote control... i can always zap between channels... and youtube rules...

[max cooper]

Although I don't watch TV, I still read the entertainment section since I used to work in TV.

The thing that's appalling about the TiVo revolution seems to be:

Ratings show that people more often TiVo scripted shows but prefer to watch reality shows when they air (probably something about the communal, around the watercooler discussion, and not wanting to be the guy who isn't caught up)

This means people are more likely to watch commercials when reality shows are on.

This means advertisers are much more likely to buy commercial time during reality shows.

This means the network likes reality shows a lot more than it likes scripted shows.

This puts scripted shows in danger of the axe.

[GilWave]

To all those who work for free and/or have no living expenses - please skip this post.

To the rest of us - hey, this is a BUSINESS. People have to get PAID. TV Studios and Stations cost a fortune to run.

Tivo all you want, but by skipping commercials the value of commercial time a station can charge goes down. Advertisers are forced to cow-tow to the lowest common denominator.

If you want commercial-free television, there's Cable and Pay-per-view. and You Tube.

-gil, pissed that I can't have *my* cake and eat it too, either

[max cooper]

Originally Posted by GilWave

Tivo all you want, but by skipping commercials the value of commercial time a station can charge goes down. Advertisers are forced to cow-tow to the lowest common denominator.

This is kinda what I'm saying. You vote by watching the commercials that run during the shows you like.

[joeq]

Originally Posted by GilWave

If you want commercial-free television, there's Cable and Pay-per-view. and You Tube.

I am old enough to remember when the promise of "pay TV" is that is would be commercial-free. I am paying for these cable stations and they have as many commercials as any broadcast channel.

Now we are subjected to ads even when we pay our $ and go the MOVIES! So far they haven't stopped the movie in the middle, but give them time.

I would have no problem paying for the channels that carry the shows I like. It is the stations themselves who would have a problem with this model as most of their viewership derives from snagging someone who is flipping past, surfing the channels.

The nature of these 'pop-ups' (the correct term I have learned) proves this. They are not selling time to paying advertisers. The pop-up is not for Coca-Cola, its for "Monk" or "The Closer" - another show they are airing on another night, that they hope to get you to sample.

But by trying to get you to watch more of their programming they are killing your enjoyment of the program you ARE watching. How long before people tune out?

In the 1960's a TV show was 51 minutes long. Today a "hour" show is 42 minutes long. If they wanted to rerun an episode of "Bonanza" for example, they would have to edit out nine minutes of it!

People are TIVOing and zapping because they can.

I for one don't weep for the poor purveyors of televised crap. They are the ones killing the golden goose with their greed and desperation. Filling up their shows with SO MANY interruptions that they are no longer worth watching in real time.

My guess is that by boiling the frog slow enough, they could get shows down to 31 minutes per hour. After that the conscious awareness that you are watching HALF commercials would get to you.


Still- running promos on the screen, during the show is beyond the pale. It crosses some kind of line for me and makes me say maybe I should turn off the TV and do something else.

Let's see how that fits in with their economic model.

[GilWave]

You may know, I used to work for Eventide. They sold a device (back in the analog TV and Audio days) that allowed a local TV station to time compress a syndicated TV show like Three's Company.

A simple 3-4% increase of the speed of the VTR, and you could sell another minute of advertising, which helped off-set the cost of the syndication fee.

As for cable, the stations I am paying for do not run commercials. The ones that do are thrown in as part of the package and are not what I am paying for. It's a "value add" proposition to fill up the cable offering with 100's of channels, when in reality I am only paying for 6 or 7 that I care about and can't get for free OTA.

I agree that the pop ups promoting the next show are annoying as hell and obnoxious - but if it didn't work, they wouldn't do it. So I too have stopped watching Monk on TV, also Firefly and Battlestar Gallactica (yeah, I know - I'm a geek) - I get them on iTunes now and watch them on my Mac Book Pro when I travel. Once I get the new AppleTV box, I can watch that content commercial free on my HDTV at 720p.

Sure it costs me $1.99 an episode, but I get back 18 minutes per hour and time is money.

gil

[joeq]

Originally Posted by GilWave

Sure it costs me $1.99 an episode, but I get back 18 minutes per hour and time is money.l

True. It adds up. I am always a bit surprised to see how quickly 'an hour' of television really goes by.