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Interesting back-and-forth in the "Moto Down 46%?" thread. MtGrizzly says,
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At some point, the cable TV operators and TV content creators are going to realize that it's the commercials that are largely causing people to cut the cord. Channel bloat is a big piece as well but it's the commercials that really irritate people. I cut the cord a while ago but I'm staying in temporary "corporate" housing in San Diego and it comes with Cable TV. It's kind of maddening to watch programming with commercials once you've seen it without.
The commercial interruption strategy that I'm least fond of: They cut away from the program for the commercial block, come back, have some stupid 30 second cut away that doesn't advance the story at all and then right back to the commercial block. I mean, come on...
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I honestly don't relate to this conversation ... because I take pains to eliminate the problem. LOL. Cindy and I consistently tape ...er, VCR ... er, DVR every Mariner game and wait at least an hour to start it. Somewhere along the way I completely lost the need to "connect" with other fans by watching events at the same moment they did. And boy, howdy, have I ever gotten good at stopping the x3 fast forward just as the pitcher starts his windup in the next inning ...
Last year we started live-blogging the games in the Shout Box. This might have forced me to see commercials, except that I was so busy typing and reading between innings. Am trying to remember the last show that I *did* watch with commercials... months ago. Well, occasionally there is an On-Demand show that doesn't allow fast forwarding. I'm reading a mobile device during commercials.
Said all that to say this:
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(1) SSI has a Fortune 500 corner, namely this one. I'm curious. What do programmers do about customers rifling forward through ads? Genuinely would like to know.
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(2) Since I don't know anything ABOUT commercials, what is it that bugs you guys so much? Well, come to think of it, I *have* seen that T-Mobile commercial that represents Verizon fees as insects. That one is disgusting and, you could say, a little aggravating. Also I could relate to some conservative folks getting bothered by scantily-clad bimbos selling GoDaddy software (?!?) -- but it is quite obvious that moral objections have influenced the advertisers not one whit.
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(3) Ten degrees off subject: Bill James spoke a while ago about the old TV series Bewitched ... that one day he noticed there was alcohol in almost EVERY scene in the show. Sam will tell Larry, Oh Hi! Fix yourself a drink! In a restaurant, trays of martinis sailing past every ten seconds. Bill muses, in a neutral spirit, "It makes you wonder what they are up to, once you notice it..."
It DOES make you wonder. TV execs have agendas, of course, but how would omnipresence of martinis, in Bewitched, FORWARD anybody's agenda?
Oh well,
Dr D