TV Commercials
ROOTing for shorter baseball games, Dept.

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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

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Comments

1

On the subject of why commercials are annoying, I have three answers:

1) They interrupt the dramatic tension and throw you out of the story/game/etc.
2) They are always...ALWAYS 10 decibels louder than the friggin' show you're watching
3) They go to great lengths to sell me things, most of which I have no desire to buy. :)

I am a capitalist...I think advertising is great when done well...I love the Mariners' commercials for example.  I am also a writer and know that any hope I have of selling a book depends on my ability to advertise it. :D

That said, I think the tactics they're using these days to trick you into watching the commercials instead of ignoring them are what frustrate folks...well...that and a 30-minute program used to be 26 minutes of TV...then it was 24, then 22, and now 21.  We're getting less and less story and more and more commercials.

But my wife hates commercials for a different reason.  She watched a LOT of PBS as a kid - no commercials during the shows.  She is accustomed to taking in stories intact and uninterrupted. So, when the commercials air on other channels, she gets impatient and starts flipping the channels (VERY annoying to me!) and then winds up missing part of the plot before she gets back to the channel with the show she was watching.  It gets so that I have to take the remote away from her and hide it so I can see the entire show I want to watch (and she does...LOL)

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Your three points nail it.

1) They interrupt the dramatic tension and throw you out of the story/game/etc


The constant interruption that kills the story. I'm a Walking Dead fan(atic) and I won't watch it on regular TV. When a new episode breaks on Sunday night, I stay off social medai to avoid spoilers, wait until Monday night and then watch it via iTunes, commercial free. It's remarkable how much better the story flows when it isn't getting constantly interrupted. 

2) They are always...ALWAYS 10 decibels louder than the friggin' show you're watching

I did some work in TV programming distribution at my last job and small cable operators would constantly ask us if we could turn down the volume of the ads. Turns out that while we technically could do it, the cable operators were contractually obligated to have commercials markedly louder than the programming itself. 


3) They go to great lengths to sell me things, most of which I have no desire to buy

Advertisers pay, essentially, for eyeballs on the screen. I'm always amazed at how much waste there is in TV advertising. I mean, nobody is making money showing me commercials for feminine hygene products or all the weird "the world is crazy so buy gold" commercials. It's largely why ad dollars are moving on line. Online ads are their own kind of irritation but they are much more targeted.  

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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?

I don't think that was agenda - more a reflection of the times. They smoke cigarettes in every scene too. Greatest Generation drank and smoked a lot more than we do today. 

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The only TV programming that airs in real time ve in my house is live sports--and then not always.  Like Doc, I frequently delay watching the start of the M's live in order to skip through the commericals later on.

A couple related points:

  • The reason Super Bowl ads are so expensive is not just that so many people are watching--but that so many people are actually watching the commercials.  The rate this year is $4m+ for 30 seconds.  But Fox is also requiring advertisers to spend the same amount again for advertising elsewhere on their program schedule.  
  • To me, there is nothing more aggravating than this sequence in the NFL: Touchdown/extra point...two minutes of commercials...kickoff through the end zone...two more minutes of commercials.  And as annoying as it is at home, it's even worse in the stadium.  Sheer boredom.  Plus it also affects the nature of the game.  After one team scores, this gives the team that just gave up the score 4+ minutes of free timeouts to plan their next drive. On the other side, if I'm a defender and my guys just scored, I want to get out there and double my effort to punish the other offense.  But after 4 minutes, do I still have that same edge?
  • A little off topic, and probably less-than-civil, but TV ads now feature an incredible number of 'punchable faces'.  Top candidates in my book: the Chevy guy; the True Car guy; the Sprint guy (formerly 'can you hear me now?'), and the Trivago guy--and I'm not even entirely clear what he's selling.
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Forget, that before alcohol commercials were outlawed on TV (sometime in the '70s) and then amended to only outlaw consuming adult beverages on TV, almost all of the shows included alcohol.  Anyone remember Dean Martin drinking and smoking on his weekly television program?   I enjoy TCM on cable where its movies are commercial-free btw.  TCM broadcasts movies produced from 1920-something through 1990-something.   I'm amazed at the amount of smoking and drinking displayed in the 1940-80 flicks.  What's confounding and sort of confusing to me is that for more than 20 years of my life, drinking and smoking was openly shown on TV and movies and for the 40 years since, not so much.  The times change and societies move on, whether I'm paying attention or not.

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