# ABC Family Channel, you gotta be shitting me. (perhaps lame, but fuck 'em anyway!) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 13, 2008, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991 "2008-12-13T05:27:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/41 "2015-06-25T20:49:05Z")
> [@andros](#): > > People still watch Netflix? Pffft. People still watch things? Losers. I have all my entertainment beamed directly into my head via orbital pink lasers. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/42 "2015-06-25T21:01:15Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > People still watch things? Losers. I have all my entertainment beamed directly into my head via orbital pink lasers. You piker! I get m…oh, I don’t have time for this, Gilmore Girls is starting. ---
**Author:** ![bistritapcv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@bistritapcv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bistritapcv)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/43 "2015-06-25T21:01:26Z")
Netflix ain’t bad but there is really not much selection. Here is an example I did a search for “History of the World Part I” on Netflix and it gave me the option to explore titles related to it. Same with a lot of other movies. I don’t want to explorre related items. I want to see the one that I searched for. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/44 "2015-06-25T21:53:37Z")
> [@Kimballkid](#): > > Just as an FYI, this thread is 6 and a half years old. > > It’s a zombie first grader! The problem is still with us. I only noticed when I got to the post where someone said “I should have just gone to Blockbuster and rented it”. And I went “WTF?!” and checked the posting date. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/45 "2015-06-25T21:55:02Z")
> [@Asympotically\_fat](#): > > Correction “I am the only human being alive who still uses a VCR…” To be fair, it was not uncommon 6.5 years ago when he posted this… ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/46 "2015-06-25T21:59:11Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Yes, yes, we all know TV is just commercials with small breaks for “content”. It has always been so. “Television is an advertising medium that occasionally shows less overtly commercial content.” - wanted to get my preferred version into the stream. Glad to see yours, though. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/47 "2015-06-25T22:08:50Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > Our Comcast program summary shows the actual length of the movie; subtract that from the length of the program time and you can tell in advance how much time is taken up by commercials. 90-minute movie in a 2-hour slot, not too bad. 2-hour movie in a 3-hour slot, not for me. IFC is one of the biggest offenders. I swear I’ve seen them set aside four hours for movies I know run only a little over two hours. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/48 "2015-06-25T22:11:51Z")
> [@NDP](#): > > IFC is one of the biggest offenders. I swear I’ve seen them set aside four hours for movies I know run only a little over two hours. Everything free is worth what you pay for it. Unless it costs more than it’s worth… but you often don’t find that out until later. (Paraphrasing Heinlein, there.) ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/49 "2015-06-25T22:12:09Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > … > > Exactly 8.5 minutes of movie followed by exactly 6.5 minutes of commercials. I fucking felt like I was being tortured! Every commercial break and run of the movie was identical. I timed them. > > …! That’s pretty common for many stations now. There is a bright side, if you time it right you can actually switch between 2 channels and watch nearly 2 shows while missing the commercials. But yeah, I’m behind this pitting. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/50 "2015-06-25T22:15:45Z")
Didn’t they used to actually break at scene breaks, which are different for each movie? The description here makes it sound like they’d cut off in the middle of a line if it had been 8.5 minutes. ---
**Author:** ![HeXen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@HeXen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeXen)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/51 "2015-06-25T22:21:01Z")
> [@bistritapcv](#): > > Netflix ain’t bad but there is really not much selection. Here is an example > > I did a search for “History of the World Part I” on Netflix and it gave me the option to explore titles related to it. Same with a lot of other movies. I don’t want to explorre related items. I want to see the one that I searched for. I don’t watch much TV at all but there are tons of streaming services out there. I found history of the world on solarmovie btw. I nor my wife never had trouble finding what we wanted to watch. But then again my HTPC has a lot more streaming services than those walmart boxes come with and I just search 1 time and it searches through all of them so long as I’m signed in… I even did a search a few days ago for an old, what I thought to be a more obscure movie called time bandits and found it on hntv, though it wasn’t as enjoyable to watch as I remembered and stopped 15 minutes into it. There’s so many streaming services I don’t know what you can’t find these days. I have one app, i’m pretty sure it can’t be too legal but has Jurassic World and a lot of newly released films. Too bad I’m not a movie buff, I mostly just watch documentaries ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/52 "2015-06-25T22:35:06Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > “Television is an advertising medium that occasionally shows less overtly commercial content.” - wanted to get my preferred version into the stream. Glad to see yours, though. Ha! Much more accurate than mine, in this time of product placement run amuck. I watched a made for TV movie a while back, and it had something I’m glad never caught on. Every so often in the movie, the camera would be situated such that a logo was centered in the view. A tracking shot in a hallway would stop on a poster on a wall that was clearly branded, a car at a gas station would be photographed so the advertising bumper sticker was shown, etc. And at the next commercial break, the first commercial was for that product “featured” in the previous act. It was almost comical. It was both subtle, yet once you noticed it, far more egregious than, say, one of the characters eating a Subway sandwich or drinking a Coke. It was almost an infomercial with a plot. The movie actually wasn’t so bad, but the product placement should put it in the advertising hall of fame (shame?). Wonder if it is available on DVD, and whether the product placement survived? or, once the movie fulfilled its function, it was scrapped. Did anyone else see it when it was new? I can’t remember the title. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/53 "2015-06-25T23:01:05Z")
That sounds fairly extreme, but every single TV show that has an automotive sponsor - not even necessarily an ad sponsor, just a funding sponsor - has the shot of the maker badge zooming into the camera as the hero parks. But yeah, there are whole agencies whose clients are products, and producers looking for extra revenue are happy to call them up and see who’s available for a negative-scale role. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/54 "2015-06-25T23:21:07Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > You piker! I get m…oh, I don’t have time for this, Gilmore Girls is starting. Feh. You don’t have Brain Lasered On Demand? Loser. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/55 "2015-06-25T23:29:27Z")
I was watching _Idiocracy_ on commercial TV … I swear I couldn’t tell when the movie stopped and the commercials began. Fucking spooky … ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/56 "2015-06-25T23:36:45Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > People still watch things? Losers. I have all my entertainment beamed directly into my head via orbital pink lasers. You’re still on pink? Pfft. ---
**Author:** ![kferr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71e660/32.png) [@kferr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kferr)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2015, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/57 "2015-06-26T11:15:24Z")
There’s a saying I’ve heard referring to online services like Google or Facebook but also applies to commercial television: “If you’re getting something for free you are not the customer, you are the product”. They survive by selling your eyeballs to advertisers. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2015, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/58 "2015-06-26T13:49:41Z")
> [@kferr](#): > > There’s a saying I’ve heard referring to online services like Google or Facebook but also applies to commercial television: > > “If you’re getting something for free you are not the customer, you are the product”. > > They survive by selling your eyeballs to advertisers. Absolutely. Anyone who fails to understand this may as well walk around carnivals with twenties hanging out of their pockets. The entire purpose of television is to present ads. Everything else is at least secondary and done only to further that prime purpose. (If you disagree, spend five coherent minutes thinking about why ratings drive the entire process.) It is essential, though, to distinguish between content and commodity, here. One of the usual arguments is something about HBO or _Sopranos_ or premium movie channels. Here’s the divider: if you are paying for the material, it’s a _commodity_ and (largely but not entirely) outside the advertising-first model. If you are viewing the material “for free” because it’s intermixed with any form of ads or marketing, it’s _content_. “Television is an advertising medium that occasionally shows less overtly commercial content.” ETA: And to forestall the other leg of arguments, “television” is all mass forms of someone else’s video delivered to your eyes for entertainment purposes. ---
**Author:** ![ollie73082](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/97f17d/32.png) [@ollie73082](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ollie73082)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2015, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/59 "2015-06-26T15:55:09Z")
> [@NDP](#): > > IFC is one of the biggest offenders. I swear I’ve seen them set aside four hours for movies I know run only a little over two hours. Yeah, but IFC doesn’t edit the time/content of their movies, so I’ll cut 'em some slack. ---
**Author:** ![OffByOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/45deac/32.png) [@OffByOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OffByOne)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2015, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991/60 "2015-06-26T18:32:34Z")
Same thing happened to me when I tried to watch the pilot episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation. It felt like 45 seconds of Star Trek and 45 minutes of commercials! That alone kept me from ever intentionally watching ST:TNG again. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-family-channel-you-gotta-be-shitting-me-perhaps-lame-but-fuck-em-anyway/476991.md?page=4)