How Television Is Fighting Off the Internet 194
HughPickens.com writes: Michael Wolff writes in the NY Times that online-media revolutionaries once figured they could eat TV's lunch by stealing TV's business model with free content supported by advertising. But online media is now drowning in free, and internet traffic has glutted the ad market, forcing down rates. Digital publishers, from The Guardian to BuzzFeed, can stay ahead only by chasing more traffic — not loyal readers, but millions of passing eyeballs, so fleeting that advertisers naturally pay less and less for them. Meanwhile, the television industry has been steadily weaning itself off advertising — like an addict in recovery, starting a new life built on fees from cable providers and all those monthly credit-card debits from consumers. Today, half of broadcast and cable's income is non-advertising based. And since adult household members pay the cable bills, TV content has to be grown-up content: "The Sopranos," "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad," "The Wire," "The Good Wife."
So how did this tired, postwar technology seize back the crown? Television, not digital media, is mastering the model of the future: Make 'em pay. And the corollary: Make a product that they'll pay for. BuzzFeed has only its traffic to sell — and can only sell it once. Television shows can be sold again and again, with streaming now a third leg to broadcast and cable, offering a vast new market for licensing and syndication. Television is colonizing the Internet and people still spend more time watching television than they do on the Internet and more time on the Internet watching television. "The fundamental recipe for media success, in other words, is the same as it used to be," concludes Wolff, "a premium product that people pay attention to and pay money for. Credit cards, not eyeballs."
So how did this tired, postwar technology seize back the crown? Television, not digital media, is mastering the model of the future: Make 'em pay. And the corollary: Make a product that they'll pay for. BuzzFeed has only its traffic to sell — and can only sell it once. Television shows can be sold again and again, with streaming now a third leg to broadcast and cable, offering a vast new market for licensing and syndication. Television is colonizing the Internet and people still spend more time watching television than they do on the Internet and more time on the Internet watching television. "The fundamental recipe for media success, in other words, is the same as it used to be," concludes Wolff, "a premium product that people pay attention to and pay money for. Credit cards, not eyeballs."
Youtube spam. (Score:2)
if I search for any movie I will see 20 links to what are supposedly pirate websites, although I suspect half of them are set up by the media companies as honeypots to identify people who want to pirate stuff.
if I search for a review of any product, from computer to a car, probably 10 video show up that are not reviews at all but are instead a few words of product information in slideshow format with really annoying music.
what is annoying is th
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I'll tell you how- they're turning the internet (Score:5, Interesting)
into television. I cut the cord years ago because I couldn't stand all the commercials. Now my hulu+ is getting loaded with commercials- it's almost as bad as watching broadcast TV.
I think I'll go back to getting discs from Netflix..
Re:I'll tell you how- they're turning the internet (Score:5, Insightful)
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Would you prefer $20 or $30 per month for ad-free Hulu Plus?
Re:I'll tell you how- they're turning the internet (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. Sounds like a bargain to me.
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Would you prefer $20 or $30 per month for ad-free Hulu Plus?
Sold.
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Why so much? Netflix manages it for $8 per month. Nevertheless, people are willing to pay a fair price for a good product. I wouldn't watch Hulu for free, when it was free, because of the commercials. More recently, my roommate decided to pay for Hulu Premium, (or whatever they call it), but after trying it a couple of times, neither of us would watch it, and he eventually cancelled.
Here's the deal: Commercials are suppose to equal free TV. But these people want to have their cake, and eat it, too. Unfortun
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Why so much? Netflix manages it for $8 per month. Nevertheless, people are willing to pay a fair price for a good product. I wouldn't watch Hulu for free, when it was free, because of the commercials. More recently, my roommate decided to pay for Hulu Premium, (or whatever they call it), but after trying it a couple of times, neither of us would watch it, and he eventually cancelled. Here's the deal: Commercials are suppose to equal free TV. But these people want to have their cake, and eat it, too. Unfortunately for them, people now have other choices.
Well your complaints were all about the commercials, which I agree are annoying, and the same reason I cancelled my Hulu + subscription. I probably would pay more for it without the ads, though. I watch Netflix frequently, it has lots of good content, but the selling point for Hulu is you keep current with shows. It had enough current content it could have actually replaced 95% of my TV watching (only exception off the top of my head being the local morning news).
The ads on Hulu were actually MORE anno
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I was going to subscribe also to Hulu+. But it did not have the shows I wanted and were delaying them just as long as Netflix would. Maybe it's current for broadcast TV instead of cable, but there's not much there worth watching anymore.
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This is just a matter of changing your expectations. Netflix users with DVD service have several years of experience learning to wait a year for the current season of shows. It works the same with streaming. Most people are switching not because they want tons of television, but because they're learning to wean themselvers off of television's teat. Doesn't always work though, especially when streaming has so much content that you'll never be caught up on it all.
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Would you prefer $20 or $30 per month for ad-free Hulu Plus?
No, because the ads on Free Hulu were so bad that I can't even think about Hulu without barfing. OTOH, I'd have no problem paying that for Netflix.
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Good luck getting things like the film Song of the South, the film Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, and the TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea on any service. None of these has ever been released even on DVD or BD in North America.
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No ads on Netflix and chaper than Hulu+. Yes, they very rarely have a pre-post blurb for their own programming, which is still less than how HBO and Showtime do things.
But if there were a choice of $70 for my old satellite with all its ads or better programming for $20 with no ads, I'll take it.
Re:I'll tell you how- they're turning the internet (Score:5, Informative)
Another big problem is now more shows (especially reality shows, but even news and infotainment type shows) seem to want to show you 15-30s of what is coming up after each commercial, and then when they return from commercial they want to repeat the last 30-60s of what you already saw as if you had no attention span. This becomes very apparent when you have a DVR and skip the commercials, you end up seeing the same segment around the commercial 2-3 times total. Not only is this annoying, but it drastically cuts into the actual running length of the show. So while technically, the show might be 22mins of content, if you removed the repeated content out of the show (that is due to the commercial breaks), then you really only end up with 15-18 mins of actual content for a 30min show/slot.
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This statistic by itself hasn't changed much in 20 years or so
it's been much longer than that. The standard broadcast tape for a half hour TV show is 22 minutes long, going back many decades to betacam and reel-to-reel.
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Advertisers are like any other corporation; they greatly and illogically overinflate the worth of their own product. If the advertisements really are worth as much as they think, then they should be paying me to watch them.
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Well you know they're not going to give up the ad revenue for free and how many people already complain it's too expensive? I don't exactly feel the market vibe would be positive. That said, online services aren't stuck with one service tier. They could offer some form of "first class" service, bump the price out of the "premium" class and offer simultaneous or near-cinema exclusives - preferably less insane than Prima Cinema ($35000 + $500/rental), like upper middle class not 1%ers. Of course cinemas would
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He doesn't, he just said he pays for netflix and hulu+.
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Re:I'll tell you how- they're turning the internet (Score:4, Interesting)
How about the young people in this country? They are struggling now. With every recession they are being laid off and than they have to start all over again. That means they get the lowest pay, least amount of vacation and other benefits. But hell lets throw another bill at them. Democracy will not suffer when we demand that people pay to be informed. When I was a child I could look at the nightly news at 6. Rabbit ears would get me at least 4 channels. Now I would have to spend at least a thousand dollars to have a tower build for an antenna to receive those channels. The nearest broadcasting station is around 70 miles away. I believe that digital tv is uhf and that does not travel as far. I guess the young can rely on billboards to even know who running for president let alone what their policies are.
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Free? Netflix and Hulu+ require subscriptions. Apple TV requires paying for shows. Amazon whatever-its-called requires a subscription. Yes, smaller than the ridiculous $50-150 cable/satellite fees that come with poor service, but still not free. That's the point - hulu basic has ads, but if you subscribe for hulu+ you *still* get the stupid ads.
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And that's by no means any better than "normal" commercials.
Let's look at it and see if it looks, walks, swims and flies like a duck...
Does it interrupt the program I'm watching? Yes.
Is it something that does not interest me? Yes.
Is it repeated so often that you can speak along? Hell yes.
The fact that it's for a movie instead of some female hygiene product doesn't matter.
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Even a service, program or product I'm interesting in becomes quickly boring and soon after annoying when I get to see the same ad or trailer over and over and over and over.
Take your favorite show. Pick the 30 most interesting seconds of it. Now try to imagine another show you like being interrupted again and again to show you those same 30 seconds.
And then tell me that this isn't going to be annoying after no later than the fifth time.
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That's because of business model.
Netflix gathers a TON of statistics about who their subscribers are. Right now, they're mostly upper middle to middle class people who generally have professional style jobs and university degrees and all that.
Why is that important? Because Netflix's revenue source is subscribers. So they have to produce and obtain content that appeal to their subscribers. You're not going to see the latest exploitive TV
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This all sounds good, but, if it's true, WHERE IS MY FREAKING FIREFLY!!!
That one show, resurrected on Netflix, would buy them more long-term lasting subscribers than any of the garbage they put out now.
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Hulu Plus is a paid service.
Even Netflix streaming is starting to show ads now, granted they are only for Netflix produced shows.
So far I'm not bothered by Netflix's ads. As long as they don't interrupt or delay the show I want to watch, I don't care. As for Hulu, I've never had Plus, but free Hulu isn't worth it for free. The ads, last time I saw it, were as bad or worse than network TV despite their relative shortness.
Examples? (Score:2)
Uhh... of course I am not going to read the original artice, this is Slashdot after all. But the summary mentions 5 shows, 3 of which are on channels with commercials. How does this support the original tenet? I would think you are far better naming only commercial free quality shows. I agree on the point about streaming later becoming a money maker though and that driving a way of thinking in the age of new media.
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On top of that if you do pay CBS to get streaming access to any episode instead of only the most recent few, you get exactly the same adverts anyway with exactly the same abrupt volume changes at ad boundaries.
Fuck Pay TV (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not paying. No cable TV for me. You turn the volume up on commercials and make them 5 minutes long for every 5/10 minutes of TV. My new TV has automatic volume control which kicks ass! I'll switch to HD antennae if I have to.
No thanks I'll wait for the seasons to come out on Netflix just like I do now. If that changes I'll just quit watching altogether. You lose. Ha ha..
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The problem with cable is that they escalate the number of commercials in a given time frame. This means that even new prime time shows end up being butchered as soon as they go into syndication. Older stuff (like classic Trek) can get mutilated to the point of being unrecognizable.
It's not just about how insulting or stupid or manipulative the commercials are. Content is altered.
And yet, here we are on the Internet... (Score:2)
...reading your op-ed (as opposed to, oh, I don't know, an actual report containing actual facts).
One of the unique characteristics of the Internet is that it provides a way to monetize tiny minority tastes. That way, bozos can produce books or videos on "Down is Up", "Beanie Babies: The New Future-Proof Investment", or "The Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age", and find enough paying customers to make it worth their while.
I don't think it's working. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yesterday, I found myself saying, "if you know someone who still has cable..."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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seersucker clad golfbag toting used car salesman marketing drone
I'm stealing this.
This was before my time, but I'm pretty sure that television nose-dived when pay-per-view came along. The television market was devised as radio + pictures, a one-way ticket as far as content. Computer networks were devised as tiers of peers, and once it's on my box, it's not yours. Pay-per-view functions, but it's fundamentally illogical. The content providers have to go through DRM acrobatics to sustain it at all. Premium channels overall make little sense. But online content is starv
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In my book it's simple: You say "I don't have to explain myself to you, I simply do not want your service anymore, and if you refuse to cancel it I will refuse to continue paying you. I will return your equipment to your nearest office tomorrow, and get a receipt showing I returned it, and furthermore I will rip the wire out of the wall. Now please do your job and stop annoying me".
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take it as a personal act of blasphemy if you try to cancel.
What if you don't pay the bill? I would think they'd simply disconnect or do they send goons to garnish your wages?
Overall in the big picture it seems less people are watching television as many viewers spend time in front of the computer or on their phones. But yet broadcasters seem to still be raking in the big bucks, my perception is they replace all their video equipment every three years (and some of that stuff is ***expensive*** but where does the old stuff go? I'd love to get one of those HD camera
Or just get rid of it (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever since cutting the cord two years ago its amazing how much extra time I have per day and now more alive you feel not watching tv. Now I haven't gotten rid of it all yet, still have Netflix and we watch a few Star Trek episodes at night but the medium no longer controls out lives. Now internet had eaten up quite a bit of my life but that is one more thing I'm slowly removing also.
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I find that if I watch stuff, it winds up being YouTube videos, and unless I use an add-on, even there, ads are creeping up, becoming more common, and the "skip at five seconds" button has started disappearing.
It would be nice if YT offered a no ads subscription service... heard talk about it, but nothing seems to have manifested.
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You know what? Who cares? Will I look back at the end of my life and think it was
Nobody will get this, but WTF (Score:2)
*POTY*
The meat of the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Want to win the war on internet Tv? (Score:2)
How Is Television Fighting Off the Internet? (Score:2)
Lawyers. Lots and lots of lawyers.
You know, it's funny... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You know, it's funny... (Score:4, Informative)
Yep, paying for TV, and finding ads to the show are almost a 1:1 ratio.
Only way to win is not to play.
Re:You know, it's funny... (Score:5, Informative)
Oh yes... I think these were the same people who said, "we will put catalytic converters on cars. it will cost more, but they will convert the noxious fumes into harmless water and carbon dioxide."
Yes. They add a couple of hundred dollars to the price of the average car and they make the world a better place; unburned hydrocarbons are the most foul emission which automobiles make. You might also be interested in knowing that we averted the ozone depletion crisis by banning CFCs. Meanwhile, the O2 sensor that came along with those catalysts actually lets you make more power while burning less fuel.
So TV is fighting off the internet (Score:2)
... but the number of TV subscribers keeps going down. If they're claiming victory, I'd say it's a Phyrric one - but really, I'm not seeing it.
Look on the bright side (Score:2)
At least we get turned back to being the customer after having been the product far too long.
Dream on (Score:4, Insightful)
The subscriber base is ratcheting down.
The only thing keeping the cable model going at this point is sports.
That's it. And the instant the sports leagues think they can make as much money on line... cable is done.
Would you pay a 100 dollars a year for access to every NFL game streamed to your machine of choice? A lot of people would.
Total up the sports leagues people care about... football, basketball, soccer if you swing that way... Its a finite number of leagues that people care about and you could charge 10 bucks a month for access, discounting for a yearly subscription, and maybe throw in minor leagues of the same sport. So the NFL package gets you all the college games etc.
Its entirely viable. And if that means no blackouts and the ability to watch the games on your smartphone or tablet... Sure, there is sling boxes and some cable services let you stream anything to your devices. But the underlying problem with cable is that it isn't fully a la carte. And until it is... there's going to be a problem.
The vast majority of what people pay for with their cable package is something they have zero interest in watching. None.
We're spending a lot of money on other things besides our cable now as well. We've got all these new streaming services. And on top of that the cable bills have gone up.
Something has to give there. The reality is that people tend to prefer netflix for general entertainment programming... the only edge cable has is the dubious value of cable news stations and sports.
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I lot of people pay more than $240-$300+ for the NFL from DirectTV:
http://www.directv.com/sports/... [directv.com]
Seems insane at first, but cheaper than going to a couple of games.
Duh (Score:2)
Go figure. Make meaningful content that people want to watch and they'll be willing to pay a few bucks for it. Netflix might be beating them to the punch with it's array of coming materials. The things Netflix has produced that I've seen have all be thoughtful and - maybe too strong of a word - innovative.
What's that TV thing you are talking about? (Score:2)
I guess I should check the wikipedia article ...
"Television" (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing people are avoiding isn't "television" (video dramas, comedies, etc). The thing people are starting to avoid is "television" (getting those shows via cable companies). I don't think any predicted the death of video as a form of entertainment.
The ideal situation is for all the content creators, to still make their content, but sell it to the public over the internet, bypassing the cable companies. It is the cable companies that need to die (or just be relegated to being ISPs). They just aren't up to the task of delivering media in the 21st century. They have stopped being a distribution channel and more of a gatekeeper for old people who can't use the internet.
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The thing people are avoiding isn't "television" (video dramas, comedies, etc). The thing people are starting to avoid is "television" (getting those shows via cable companies). I don't think any predicted the death of video as a form of entertainment.
Absolutely. I watch plenty of TV, much of it from the networks. But I'm watching more and more on Netflix, and now that they're creating content themselves, the old networks will only get smaller.
HBO, anyone? (Score:3)
HBO is the best value on my cable bill, right after the 100mbit internet.
Really!? you might ask. $15/month for that? Well, yes. I like the programming (this is the network that brought us "The Sopranos", "The Wire", "Game of Thrones", "True Detective", and I could go on and on ("Last Week Tonight", anyone?). All this with no commercials, because I paid for superior programming without commercials.
I get the HBO GO service for that same money, and I can time shift what I want to watch with a ChromeCast, and I can watch just about all of HBO's original programming with the HBO GO service -- not just the current stuff. Sure, I'd like it better if it was $10/month.
With HBO NOW, HBO has figured out how to cut the need to actually buy cable TV out of the picture. You can just subscribe and buy their content over the internet directly.
What I'm waiting for is true a-la-carte television, with real options. Pay $15 a month for HBO, or $3/episode for "Game of Thrones", or don't pay, but answer surveys or watch advertising to watch for free. People who don't want ads could pay, people who have the time but not the money could fill out survey or watch ads to watch for free.
You keep using that word... (Score:2)
How Television Is Fighting Off the Internet
You keep saying "fighting off", but this...
Television shows can be sold again and again, with streaming now a third leg to broadcast and cable, offering a vast new market for licensing and syndication. Television is colonizing the Internet [...]
...this sounds more like "embracing" to me. Maybe we should clear up what we're talking about here.
TV, the medium, is dying a slow death. It has been slow to adapt to the changing reality and hasn't reacted at all to changes in the market. But the content distributed on the TV medium? The shows themselves? They have a bright future. That said, it's just a matter of time before we stop referring to them as "TV shows" and start referring to them by some other name su
It didn't (Score:2)
This article just recounts the collective fantasy of some tv executives.
disengenuous comparison (Score:2)
On what planet is Buzzfeed comparable to something like a television series?
This is like putting a farm chicken in a UFC tournament and then acting surprised that the prize fighter won.
Maybe compare television viewership, subscriptions, and ad sales broadcast via traditional means (i.e. cable) to television shows that are exclusively streamed via the internet (ala House of Cards, Community).
This is a non-story designed to make chump television advertisers feel like they aren't being conned.
I'd say Hollywood is helping revive TV .... (Score:2)
Thinking back to the late 1980s through late 1990s, I spent a lot of time in a movie theater with my friends. There was always something getting released that we really wanted to see.
In the last decade, not so much.... Hollywood spends way too much time doing remakes of movies done before, and IMO, the entire comedy genre has been pretty much decimated. Everything's reduced to fart/poop humor or trying to squeeze more laughs out of awkward sexual situations. Occasionally they manage to pull off something a
Everything TIRED is WIRED again. (Score:2)
Remember WIRED Magazine? They used to run a sidebar that I loved to hate, which was the Tired/Wired list. And; as I predicted long ago, everything that *was* in their "Wired" column has ended up as "Tired" and Vice-Versa.
The re-emergence of TV versus online media, the re-emergence of New York City versus Prague, the re-emergence of going to work versus tele-commuting.
Wired magazine has been wrong about nearly everything, and this article merely cements the fact that the writers and editors never knew what t
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Cord Cutters (Score:2)
Why pay for that? (Score:2)
And... wait for it...
There are no ads.
Grown-up content indeed (Score:2)
Never in my life have I read such nonsense.
For one thing, of the shows cited, not a single one is from the last five years. (Yes, some ended within the last five years, but the most recent of the bunch in terms of start date is already six years old. Two (The Sopranos and The Wire) are more than a decade old, and predate
Online-media revolutionaries could eat TV’s (Score:2)
I disagree, some people in television thought they could recreate the television broadcast modem online - as in videos interrupted by adverts. They were wrong on two counts, people didn't like their videos being interrupted and the Internet couldn't scale to the numbers that a conventional broadcast could. If you take a look at the television demography - the audience is growing older. If
TV Committed Suicide (Score:2)
worth paying for (Score:2)
> "The fundamental recipe for media success, in other words, is the same as it used to be," concludes Wolff, "a premium product that people pay attention to and pay money for."
True as far as it goes, but not long ago when television was the only game in town, "premium" only referred to cost, not content. I think what we're seeing is the television industry re-discovering something they had forgotten since the early days when TV first had to fight for new eyeballs. That you can't just put any stupid for
Re:TV seized back the crown? Not likely. (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not really using his terms very well. He seems to be defining Netflix and Hulu as primarily television companies as opposed to internet companies. He says so at this point:
Netflix bills itself as a disrupter of television - except that it is television, paying Hollywood and the TV industry almost $2 billion a year in licensing and programming fees.
You can certainly make an argument for that. They are certainly a blend of the two. His argument is really much more about subscription services versus ad-supported services.
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Talking about ads - the other day I was watching some news show live. They switched to a commercial break, so I hit pause and did something else for 10 minutes. I got back and FFd past 5 minutes, they talked for maybe 3 minutes, and started another commercial break! Reducing ads my asss!
Re:Get rid of the fucking adverts completely (Score:5, Interesting)
Like you were supposed to when you started charging for cable. Who knows, you could make more money by offering a better product.
I don't think that they could make more money by dropping ads because many many people just aren't bothered by ads, and that drives me almost as crazy as having to sit through ads. And everything in the U.S. has more ads now. As an example, I've been watching football (the real football, not American hand-egg) for about five years, in particular English football. For about three seasons, I paid a subscription fee of $150/year so that I could watch every Premier League game online commercial-free for up to one week after the game aired. This also included many FA Cup matches and some matches from other leagues and even sports like rugby. I would have gladly paid double for this kind of service. So when the EPL was rebid and NBC won the American rights, I was devastated because I knew what was coming, and I wasn't wrong. Now I can watch all matches online (for free if I have NBCSN on cable), but online there is a banner that sits above the viewing area for the game that is constant. And whether or not I watch online, there are ads every 4-5 minutes in the form of a video that plays in the upper left where the score is, and then the static logo of that advertiser displays until the next ad runs. And of course there are always things like "The Ben and Jerry's Stoppage Time." In addition, NBC only has the rights to the Premier League, so I can't watch any other competition on that channel. International football is now spread across at least five networks (NBC, Fox, ESPN, GolTV, BeIn), three of which are not included in basic cable, and all of them maximize ads (but not up to the standards of MLS on Fox, who actually shrinks the game area by about 40% every few minutes to show an ad along the entire right-side and lower-section of the screen - so I just never watch an MLS game on that network). I truly don't get why people pay for this crap. (I don't pay for cable.) I actually have a couple of modified pieces of black felt that I use to cover the top score/ad area and the bottom ticker, both of which are equally annoying. I would gladly pay around $100/month or probably even more if I could watch most matches around the world commercial free online, but I don't see that happening, ever. It seems like we're going towards more ads in the U.S., not fewer.
Re: Get rid of the fucking adverts completely (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would you be willing to pay that much to watch a bunch of sweaty men running around hitting a rubber sphere with their feet? How can that be so entertaining you'd pay $100/month? I understand how sports can be fun for the players, I just don't get people paying money to watch others play them.
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Why would you be willing to pay that much to watch a bunch of sweaty men running around hitting a rubber sphere with their feet? How can that be so entertaining you'd pay $100/month? I understand how sports can be fun for the players, I just don't get people paying money to watch others play them.
Why would you be willing to pay that much to watch a bunch of people/animals/real housewives running around talking to/mating with/assaulting each other? How can that be so entertaining you'd pay $100/month? I understand how TV dramas/wildlife programs/"reality" shows can be fun for the actors/animals/just awful human beings, I just don't get people paying money to watch others act in/be oblivious to/shamelessly mug for the camera in them.
To each his own?
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Why would you be willing to pay that much to watch a bunch of people/animals/real housewives running around talking to/mating with/assaulting each other? How can that be so entertaining you'd pay $100/month? I understand how TV dramas/wildlife programs/"reality" shows can be fun for the actors/animals/just awful human beings, I just don't get people paying money to watch others act in/be oblivious to/shamelessly mug for the camera in them.
To each his own?
I don't see anybody offering to spend $100 per month to watch the Kardashians, or Survivor, or Real Housewives of ($cityname) for a commercial free feed. That is the difference. Sports fan(atic)s are willing to go to absurd lengths for their personal fix. That is one of the biggest drivers of ballooning cable TV and sporting ticket costs, and the reason for public funding of private sports arenas.
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I don't see anybody offering to spend $100 per month to watch the Kardashians, or Survivor, or Real Housewives of ($cityname) for a commercial free feed.
Millions of people pay more than $100 per month to watch all of that crap with commercials .
Sports fan(atic)s are willing to go to absurd lengths for their personal fix.
Fan(atic)s are willing to go to absurd lengths for their personal fix.
That is one of the biggest drivers of ballooning cable TV costs
Bundling is the cause of cable TV prices increasing. End bundling and pay what you want.
... and sporting ticket costs, and the reason for public funding of private sports arenas
I'm all for ending subsidies to billionaires for arenas, and I will continue to vote against any politician who votes for them.
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At the risk of giving them ideas, how much does it cost to not watch it at all?
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Agreed, $100/mo would be really steep. GP said he pays $150/yr.
I'll throw in another fact. American sports like (hand egg) football, baseball, and basketball are all structured in a way that supports TV advertising. There are TV time outs and delays between innings or football plays. so even if you watch sports with no ads, you're going to be twiddling your thumbs a lot because there is always downtime to accomodate ads.
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Agreed, $100/mo would be really steep. GP said he pays $150/yr.
I'll throw in another fact. American sports like (hand egg) football, baseball, and basketball are all structured in a way that supports TV advertising. There are TV time outs and delays between innings or football plays. so even if you watch sports with no ads, you're going to be twiddling your thumbs a lot because there is always downtime to accomodate ads.
I actually said that I used to pay that, and would be willing to pay double for that specific service, but that service no longer exists. Take that, throw in the other major European leagues and all of the international competitions and friendlies commercial free, and that would be worth around $100/month to me. I just don't watch anything else "live". And frequently not even football, so I can just skip halftime. Football is set up beautifully for a commercial-free broadcast, but the American sports certai
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in a recent nail-biter of a basketball game, it took 18 mins of real time to play the last minute of game time!
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I swear I've never seen any of those.
is it possible that they coincide with beer replenishment intervals?
Re: Get rid of the fucking adverts completely (Score:4, Informative)
they call them "TV time outs" [wikipedia.org]
American football (NFL): The National Football League requires twenty commercial breaks per game, with ten in each half. (Exceptions to this are overtime periods, which have none.) These breaks run either a minute, or two minutes in length. Of the ten commercial breaks per half, two are mandatory: at the end of each quarter, and at the two-minute warning for the end of the half. The remaining eight breaks are optional.[1] The timeouts can be applied after field goal tries, conversion attempts for both one and two points following touchdowns, changes in possession either by punts or turnovers, and kickoffs (except for the ones that start each half, or are within the last five minutes). The breaks are also called during stoppages due to injury, instant replay challenges, when either of the participating teams uses one of its set of timeouts, and if the network needs to catch up on its commercial advertisement schedule. The arrangement for college football contests is the same, except for the absence of the two-minute warning.
NBA: "Mandatory timeouts" are called at the first dead ball after 6:00 and 3:00 in each quarter and after 9:00 in the second and fourth quarters. First mandatory timeout is charged to the home team and second TV timeout is charged to the away team (or whichever team has not been charged previously in that quarter), assuming no other full 1:40 timeouts have been called, which replace the mandatory TV timeouts. In addition, a timeout after 3:00 in the second and fourth quarters is called but not charged to either team, if neither team has called one prior to that point. If they do, then the "official's timeout" (as it is called) is given at the first minute mark in which it is not taken early by either team.[5]
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Even donning your favorite player's jersey is no different than cosplaying at an anime or comic convention
really? So if I put on my Tom Brady shirt and spend the afternoon scrubbing the bathtub, this is the same as going to a convention?
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Today, half of broadcast and cable's income is non-advertising based.
Right. I don't know what he's talking about here, unless he means only the handful of "premium" channels, like HBO. Last time I peeked at the tube, it was commercials galore. If they're only getting half their money from the bazillions of commercials they show, maybe there is another way?
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That's absurd, that people "aren't bothered by ads". They take bathroom breaks, they get food or drinks, but... the top poster of this thread is absolutely correct. As someone older than you, let me tell you that in the sixties and seventies, the FCC-mandated limit was, I believe, 6 minutes an hour, and that *included* station breaks.
Then came cable, and the biggest thing they promised you - ALL of them - was "no more commercials, ever".
When we started taping in the nineties, it was about 18 min of commerci
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So tv is weaning itself from commercials?
Who claimed that? They are increasing, as I pointed out, above. Additional commercials during the content is hardly "weaning itself from commercials".
That's absurd, that people "aren't bothered by ads"
I know plenty of people who claim that ads don't bother them, and the increase in ads on TV seems to indicate that many more aren't bothered by them. I have disposable income and my time is valuable, so I would gladly pay to skip ads. Maybe if you're broke and/or don't care at all about your time, ads aren't so bad.
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Not only THIS, but even on Netflix, binge watching a series, the constant dramatic-crisis-leading-to-a-black-cut-and-back-to-the-scene-not-quite-as-it-was every 4-5 minutes showing where the commercial was "supposed" to be is highly annoying. It interrupts the story and wastes valuable story telling time. Agents of Shield and Once Upon A Time are recent series I have noted with this issue.
Something else I've noticed is that many of the recent shows, when streamed on Netflix, seem oddly filmed with all of
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cable
People are moving away from cable and satellite and towards the Internet (Hulu, Netflix, etc) and over-the-air broadcast television. Me? I am opposed to paying for Internet entertainment solutions, because I've got to pay for it, yet there are still commercials you have to sit through. At least with a DVR I can skip forward past the commercials, and OTA costs me nothing beyond the one-time expense of the antenna. At any given time I have more to watch on my DVR than I have free time to sit and watch it all,
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What other streaming services are there that will still show ads to paying subscribers? Because the only other ones that I am aware of (Crunchyroll, Funimation's streaming service, and as far as I am aware, Amazon) all stream ad-free to their paying subscribers.
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Re:Get rid of the fucking adverts completely (Score:5, Funny)
Like you were supposed to when you started charging for cable. Who knows, you could make more money by offering a better product.
Yea, I miss the good old days. MTV actually played music (and no advertising). USA actually had programming all night (and it was weird stuff). TBS had black-and-white movies.
Now, get off my lawn
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Like you were supposed to when you started charging for cable. Who knows, you could make more money by offering a better product.
Yea, I miss the good old days. MTV actually played music (and no advertising). USA actually had programming all night (and it was weird stuff). TBS had black-and-white movies.
Now, get off my lawn
Ahh... I miss Rhonda Shear on USA.... Up... All night.
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The Old always beats the new in the end
I think there are some dinosaurs out there that would disagree with you if they weren't extinct
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The quality of programs is steadily declining with ever more emphasis on reality programs.
I'm assuming you've never actually watched television if you are making the assertion that there has ever been any "quality" at all.
Re:The programs listed are mostly old (Score:4, Informative)
I just spent a week recovering from surgery. I had a big screen TV and a high end Time Warner Cable package available.
Absolute Fucking Crap
500 channels my ass...250 regular and 250 dups with High Def
One movie channel ran the same 4 fucking movies all weekend....except after midnight and before ten, which were all fucking sham-wow commercials.
Books. No commercials and better resolution.
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Thank you for being a friend Traveled down the road and back again Your heart is true, you're a pal and a cosmonaut.
And if you threw a party Invited everyone you knew You would see the biggest gift would be from me And the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend.
This troll is finally not totally off-topic :-)