The trifecta is complete.
I’m watching Judging Amy on TNT, which is already a shining example of how to annoy viewers — the show is cut in the middle of scenes for commercials, while the built-in fade to black for ads just passes by without a commercial. It’s jarring and annoying.
But worse than that is this afternoon’s new annoyance: we’ve seen the bug, that station logo that lives in the corner of the picture at all times. We’ve seen the huge, animated, and noisy promos that flash across the picture as you’re trying to watch a show. Now, we have the combination of both: a promo message that stays on the screen during the entire program.
I think that my new policy is to use the “zoom” function on my TV, in order to crop off the top and bottom of the picture. All this clutter on the television, on web pages, ads everywhere… how much is this contributing to the short attention spans we all seem to have now?
