I’m watching last night’s broadcast of “The Incredibles” on NBC, and just as I am drawn into this witty and beautifully animated film… a stick figure pushing a shopping cart with a Target logo runs across the bottom of the screen.
We’re now watching commercials WHILE the show is playing — not just promos, logos, and the like, but actual ADS moving around the screen.
And yet I wonder, when will I simply turn it off, disconnect the satellite, and stop watching?
Meanwhile, yesterday I found some old videotapes of “St. Elsewhere” that I’d taped in the 1980s. I popped them in and watched with nostalgia as the show aired without a network logo (except for “IN STEREO where available” at the beginning), with no promos every few minutes, with no rating every time it came back from commercial. I was more nostalgic to see bumpers when going to commercial, a quaint network custom that clearly delineated where the show ended and the ads began. What’s more, the end of the show had real credits, not cut down or squished to make room for more ads. And most shocking of all, the show ran an astounding 48 minutes, leaving only 12 minutes of ads. Guess what? Hour-long shows today are 42 minutes which leaves a whopping 18 minutes of ads — and this doesn’t include the ads that are shown DURING the program.
I’m no economist but… I’ll just bet that with sooo many more stations to choose from then in the 80’s, the market for ad space is so spread out that that the major networks are ‘forced’ to do sell as many ‘ads’ as possible to keep up the same profit margins. Back then there weren’t as many networks to compete with, but now that the average DirectTV subscriber can be watching one of 100 or so channels at any given moment- well, the networks just don’t have the power to demand the commercial dollar they used to.
It is pretty fucking annoying however.
Sigh, ads during the program. It almost makes you long for the days of blatant upfront sponsorship, like, say, the Geritol, Westinghouse, and Texaco hours of old… umm, not that I was around then.
Oh and it seems like now (well, for several years now), credits not only get squished to the side for final mini-scenes or other promos, they’re shrewdly pushed to the very end of the timeslot so they can segue immediately into the next show (with you and your eyeballs following). “An all-new episode of XYZ starts… NOW!”
You hint at the solution, Gene: don’t watch! Like the computer says late in the movie WAR GAMES:
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[after playing out all possible outcomes for Global Thermonuclear War]
Joshua: Greetings, Professor Falken.
Stephen Falken: Hello, Joshua.
Joshua: A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
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Best, ^z = Mark = http://zhurnaly.com
First- HOLY COW, Gene the proponent of free speech just censored me. Oh well, I deserved it. Just As I Thought is no place to drop F bombs. Now if the powers that be at the FX network can take that hint we’d have a much better world. Sorrrrrry, ranting again.
Anyhoo-
Now to Jeff. You long for the days with blatant product placement? Humm, watch “Extreme Makeover- Home Edition” or any of the 400 showings per day of ESPN’s “SportsCenter.”
I’m a HUGE sports fan and I can’t even begin to stomach that show anymore. How many Bud Light quips can one take? Ty Pennington on the other hand is the most annoying person on the planet. How dare the good people at Sears send him a paycheck? Seriously, how is that guy famous? There are way other good looking carpenters that don’t make an a$$ (my own censorship) of themselves in front of a national audience.
Kirk – I didn’t even realize your comment was censored; turns out that the system does it automagically. I thought you put the XXXXXXXs in there yourself…
but yeah, this is no place for F bombs, otherwise I’d have left huge craters all over the place myself.