If it makes you feel better, I was surprised at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. The reason was they allow no ads in the stadium or arena. All they had was country flags and the Olympic flags.
Of course downtown Atlanta was turned into a giant mall, but that’s another issue.
So, the prevailing attitude seems to be that it’s stupid to complain. After all, ABC is just after making extra money, and that’s what they are supposed to do. ABC has the right to make money any way they want too, evidently.
Ahem. Let me try and bring some rationality into this discussion: While you may think people shouldn’t complain at ABC acting in it’s own interest, complaints of this nature happen to all companies all the time. All companies to some extent are influenced by the public since no company wants bad PR. Saying that people should quit bitching about things they don’t like is a jaw-droppingly bad idea. Bitching helps people, and ultimately it helps the company as well.
Well, on behalf of all Disney stockholders out there: UP YOURS: it Makes us Money, if you don’t like it, write up a formal complaint and send it to ABC
Be careful there, Avumede, I don’t think rationality is allowed in these parts. 
Anyway - agreed - for the OP, go bitch to ABC about the fake billboards, maybe they will listen. Or, perhaps since you continued to tune in to game - and perhaps ended up buying some products from their advertisers - they will continue to add more advertising to the point that they wrap all actors in cellophane advertisements during sitcoms.
ABC is a corporation - they are in business to make money - they do this by selling the audience to advertisers. Now, if you are so mortally wounded by the fake billboard, quit watching ABC - perhaps a lot of people will do the same, being as how fake billboards are known to be a major source of irritation to people around the world - suddenly, ABC will find themselves with no audience to sell, and ta-da, no more fake billboards.
I really don’t see the issue, but then again, it could be that it’s blocked by the fake billboard ABC just put in front of me. 
Since the PR value of bitching has been noted all I can add here is that manhattan is right. The networks have been losing money on NFL football since the four year contracts they signed in 1990* ( $3.6 billion total ). Those deals were made before FOX jumped into the game and drove the price way up. I don’t know the numbers behind college ball, not being a fan due to the fact that there is no “deep-rooted integrity that is NCAA Div. I college football”. ( LOL Phil )
As for JoePa’s alleged integrity, let me get this straight. It’s OK to put the swoosh on the uniform but not a player’s name so I could tell who the fuck was making that tackle?
*- My source is the 1991 edition of The Sporting News Pro Football Guide.
It’s this simple: if you don’t like the product, don’t buy it. There are plenty of alternatives for entertainment.
The last I checked the constitution, there were no entitlement guarantees regarding college football.
And therein lies the answer to the many anti-advertising rants in this thread.
You may be sick of seeing the FedEx Orange Bowl and the Toyota Halftime Report and “this time out brought to you by the Big Ass Giant Corporation,” but those sponsors are even more sick of paying a fortune to advertise their products on TV only to have the audience they are paying for clicking their remotes the instant a commercial comes on. Hell, I can’t even think of the last time I watched a commercial during a game. I always click away at the first break in the action to see what else is on.
The sponsors know that a lot of viewers are avoiding their commercials, so they do everything they can to put their names on the stuff that the viewers will see. I don’t see what the big deal is. Tagging a sponsor’s name to a feauture, a billboard, or a box score during a game doesn’t take away from any of the action on the field. It makes good business sense, and network broadcasts of games are a business.
Let’s not forget why they are called sponsors. They are paying big bucks so that you and I can watch football for free.
I’m sorry. You guys are right.
They should just superimpose a giant 100-yard cgi-created KMART logo over the field and have the players play football upon that.
Then, whenever there is a slight lull in the action, there should be a fourth man in the booth… a Commercial man in addition to Play Caller, Color, & Commentary. He or she could fill in any gaps in the game calling with various and sundry plugs for doo-dads and gee-gaws.
In addition, I don’t think it would be asking us viewers too much (after all, we are so privileged to be getting the game for free) to endure a constant scroll of text… say 1" high on the bottom of the screen telling us about the oh-so-wonderfull-and-benevolent sponsors.
I also don’t think commercial breaks are long enough. Why, it’s getting durned tough to get a 5-minute nap in these days. Plus, I think commercial breaks should not only be taken during change of possession or time-outs, but also in between downs and during huddles. After all, nothing’s happening during these wasted seconds and we really wouldn’t be missing any of the actual game.
God, what sheeple you are.
Um, dietrologia, you may have just advanced ABC several years in ad development … you might want to keep those ideas quiet! 
I’m surpised no one’s mentioned the cgi products placed in some sitcom repeats (like a box of cereal sitting on a kitchen counter that wasn’t in the original show), and the fake billboard one network put over another network’s REAL billboard in Times Square for the 2000 New Year’s celebration. Wasn’t that ABC also? I know the network caught some flack for that …
Arjuna34
Uh, oh. Who wants to fill in the dietromaster in on how Europe and South America do their football games?
Warning, dietrologia. You are not going to like it, not even a little bit.
Well said, Manhattan. When I was in England more than one person asked me who the shirt sponsors of NFL teams were. And if you buy a soccer shirt from almost any team in Europe, the name of the sponsor will be in giant letters and the name of the actual team will be in the tiniest of script.
I was irked by the constant commercialism of the bowl games myself, but the US has a long way to go before reaching total saturation. Why, even in my own sport of cricket, the sponsors’ names are painted right on the field, and appear on the shirts of even the national teams. Something just doesn’t seem right there.
Hey, if that’s what they want to do and it’s in the contract - I don’t see where it’s our business to tell them what to do. Again, I don’t see what is so difficult about this issue - if you don’t like it, don’t watch it - if you’re pissed off, don’t buy the products.
I’m sorry - when did folks get this perception that television is a right? Hey, it’s not!
God, what a whiner you are. Turn the damn channel, for god’s sake.
Hey, how about some real rants on ABC:
About how they cancelled Sports Night, the best show about a TV studio since Murphy Brown and replaced it with a certainly overworked Regis Philbin (don’t get me wrong, I like him, but he is on air with new material more per week than anybody else on TV–9 hours!!)
How they retain shows like Two guys and a Girl….
Hmmm. Well I guess I stand corrected - on virtually everything I’ve said in this thread. Thanks for the numbers, 2sense.
I’m not exactly happy about the over-commercialization, but if they have to do it, they have to do it. I just wonder why they let the bidding for the broadcasting rights get so high. I guess they figure everyone will think that the networks that have the games are the shiggity shiznit and will be more likely to tune into the network’s other shows. Now I can’t speak for every viewer, but it sure as hell doesn’t work on me. Oh well…
As for JoePa and the swoosh: you’re right, 2sense. I can’t believe that little nugget of commercialism had slipped my mind when I posted. I hadn’t seen too many of their games this year, but I had noticed it in the ones that I did.
I totally agree with the spirit of the OP. The way TV networks insert things into programs (and some of them do it in newscasts as well) can have serious long term consequences. There is now talk of doing fake “product placement” in regular TV shows, which is already common overseas.
I think this is bad because people are already pretty out of touch with reality as it is. A lot of 13-year-olds already think MTV’s “The Real World” really is the real world, and not hand-picked quasi-actors in a totally artificial setting. Now things that don’t exist are being put into the programs themselves, so we can’t even know if what we’re seeing is literally real or not. Where will it end? Some cartoons are already just half-hour commercials for some lame-ass toy line. How long until everything on TV is just one long product pitch? I know I don’t watch TV for the ads, and if it reachs the point where I can’t escape them by hitting the mute button I’m going to seriously scale back my TV watching.
I wish I could convince other people of how truly unnecessary television is to lead a full life but alas, I’m usually preaching to the unreachable.
Of course, if enough people decided cable wasn’t worth it you’d see those rates drop real fast!
My personal beef with TV is that much of it is designed to manipulate your thinking. It’s no coincidence that nobody unnattractive ever shows up on MTV, or that female newscasters are always attractive women. Television is intended from start to finish to appeal to the prurient interest and other base desires in order to keep your attention long enough to sell you a product. Changing the channel won’t work, because it’s done the same way at every network.
I don’t mind advertising. But I DO mind when it is subtly inflicted upon me. If I had to choose between that kind of TV and no TV I’ll take none, thanks. Too bad more people dont see it my way. Hitting that “off” button would be the only thing that would make the networks pull their noses out of the money trough and pay attention to how their pursuit of the bottom line affects real people…
Apparently you’ve never watched CNN Headline News.
First of all, you are making a wrong assumption. That is, if enough people stop watching, ABC will figure out why. You give too much credit to ABC. Probably, if enough people stop watching, the ad rates will drop, and they will have to put more ads in. So not watching will probably only make the situation worse. This is why direct complaints are a good idea.
I find the posters here are pretty naive when it comes to capitalism. I can imagine their reactions to problems of the past:
(response to food cleanliness complaints in “The Jungle”): “Quit whining! If you don’t like any old crap going into your meat products, then don’t buy them!”
(response to the stock market crash of 29 and the run on the banks): “Hey, no one forced you to buy stocks or put your money in banks! If you don’t like the uncertainty of banks or the stock market, quit putting your money there!”
(response to the quiz show scandal): “What the networks do on their shows is their own business! Quiz shows are not a right! Simply stop watching the program!”
(response to Ponzi schemes): “Who are you to tell people how they can make money? No one is forcing you to put any money in these things. So if you don’t like it, ignore it!”
(response to corporate pollution): “What do you mean you want to pass laws so that corporations restrict pollution? These companies have to expel waste to function! If you don’t like it, don’t buy their products!”
Yes, the world would be a lot better if SDMB posters ruled it…
I guess what really irks me is that Sports used to be the last great drama on tv–It was the only event in which the participants and viewers had no idea as to the outcome. Sport even embodied some pretty good values at one time–the notion of friendly competetion on an even playing field. Now it’s apparent that even this is being fucked with–and the rampant commercialism is Chief Offender on my list.
What strikes me in this thread are what doormats people have become. The “Ah, wattaya gonna do? That’s the way it is.” attitude. I point out that “Hey, something’s not right here” (abeit in a very crude way) and I’m called a whiner. Excuse me for thinking that the increasingly sneaky commercialization of our society blows on ice. Tolerance is one thing, but blind acceptance is another.
And the “You should see how bad it is in South America” argument doesn’t do much for me. I’m sorry, the levels to which commericalization here in the US has risen to still sucks. This isn’t South America. The comparison doesn’t make the situtation here right.
I guess I’m just of the mindset that television should provide programming and a few commercials are necessary… not the other way around.
Perhaps I’m just extremely naive.
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*Originally posted by Avumede *
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In an earlier post, I recommended just that thing - if you don’t like something, complain - it’s your right. However, this thread had more taken the turn of almost sounding like television was a right people had.
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A bit of an absurd comparison. First, food quality deals with human safety - commercials plugging soda do not. Second, the average person is not equipped with the resources to test their food for safety without doing it “the hard way” (eating it). Not so for deciding you don’t like an ad and turning the channel.
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Well, I actually almost agree there - I am invested in banks, stocks, bonds, funds, etc. I also fully accept the potential that I could lose every cent I keep there - it’s called risk vs reward. Now, if a bank wants to guarantee the safety of my funds, that’s just a selling point in their favor isn’t it?
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If people enter a contest, signing legal agreements in the process, in which they are lead to believe that the playing field is even - then it should be. You’ll have to provide me more details on the scandal as I’ve not read the story nor seen the movie.
Anyway, rather than write a 1400 page post… you probably get the idea.