Gee, I never thought of that. I just thought everything should be free!
The point that you’re missing is that the increasing greed of the broadcasters has made the quantity of commercials on TV pretty much intolerable to many of us. It drives me nuts and has pretty much driven me off commercial television.
P.S.- Local news stations don’t pay for “Doppler radar”. They mostly get their information from government weather bureaus which provide their information free of charge. A few may pay for private weather forecast agencies. Typical TV station “meteorologists” know less about actual weather than my dog.
As a dog lover and intense hater of television commercials, I will nevertheless say I have no quarrel with your occupation or with your feline children. It’s the way commercials have come to dominate the normal broadcast channels that drives me nuts. I pretty much just don’t watch normal broadcast TV any more.
Whenever an interesting program is suddenly interrupted with an announcement that begins with “introducing …” and is about some floor wax applier or ear wax remover or some other product in which have less than zero interest, it’s about all I can do to not throw a heavy object at the TV screen. Herewith a message to all commercial television broadcasters: “Introducing … the concept that I no longer watch your programs. Introducing … the idea that whatever the hell you’re advertising, I’m not gonna buy it, because I’m no longer your audience”.
I didn’t say anything about “free” entertainment, unless you missed the sarcasm, which you apparently did.
I said that I pretty much avoid commercial broadcast television now. I propose to get my entertainment exactly the way I’m getting it now – not free, but not expensive, either, and completely free of mind-numbing commercials.
If you had started a few years ago you’d have a nice library of books, and DVDs. Heck you can still find VCR tapes that might play for about a quarter at goodwill. Maybe even a player that works.
Since you haven’t I guess you’re stuck with doodling, writing or this thing called zen tangles.
Hey, origami is fun, cheap and rewarding. You get an ornament to display.
I’ve absolutely hated advertising as long as I can remember. Even as a child when I read magazines I’d fold over or cut out advertisements, making sure not to look straight at them. I used to cut and rip the labels off clothing because I considered them advertising. As for TV, I haven’t watched any for over a decade but back when I did I either recorded and fast forwarded past the commercials, or muted the commercials while averting my eyes from the screen. And nowadays I use adblockers on the net.
As an aside one thing I did notice over years of cutting the commercials out of shows was how over time the shows kept getting shorter and the commercials got more and more playtime instead. And repeats of old shows were missing bits and pieces I recall seeing originally, presumably to make room for the expanded commercials.
Stick your fingers in your eyes and not look at the screen; which yes I used to do before VCRs and mute buttons. Because staring into space was less irritating than the commercials.
I don’t watch tv, but I stream movies and series on services, like FreeVee that have ads. I use the breaks to do things, like have short discussions with my gf or let the dogs out to pee.
Since I cut the cord, my tolerance for commercials is zero. I always select and pay for the ad-free option. When I bought my last TV, I discovered that Samsung has hundreds of ad-supported channels that really interest me (like a Riff Trax channel) but in the five years I’ve owned it, I’ve never watched one of those channels for more than 20 minutes before switching over to streaming.
Same here! I also record and watch it another day. Just last night we were watching America’s Got Talent. I’m kind of tired of it right now, but since I’ve invested months and months into it, I have to finish it up. One more week! We were watching Tuesday’s episode last night. As I FF through the commercials I said to my husband - there would be no way I could watch this show if I had to sit through the commercials.
I usually give an hour show 20 minutes before I start watching and a 1/2 hour show 10 minutes.
On the ad-supported channels I watch they have a countdown timer in the corner of the screen. I can’t avoid the commercials entirely but at least I have a cue to when to hit the mute/unmute button.
My habit is to exercise while the show is on, and take a break during the commercials — which means I now enjoy the commercials, and sure wouldn’t mind them being a little longer.
I honestly can’t tell if that means I’m doing psychology right or wrong.
Every time I watch TV I’m usually reading something as well, so when a commercial comes on I just hit the Mute button on the remote and get a few pages of undistracted reading in before the show resumes. If there is a baseball game on, I just listen anyway. The rewind button makes sure I see anything important that makes the announcers swoon.
Honestly commercials don’t bother me at all. I hardly ever see them but when I do, mostly on Hulu, they’re just…there. a time to pee or get a snack or whatever. Or just wait for them to be done. I just don’t get the fury they seem to inspire. Frankly it seems pretentious.
When I was a little kid, I had an unholy love of commercials. If the family was eating dinner with the TV on in the next room, I’d leave the dinner table to watch the commercials and return when they were over.
These days, I have more discerning tastes, but I’ll still sit through a lot of commercials if I don’t have something else I want to do. The worst are the drug commercials these days. They repeat them all the time during the news broadcast. I often start re-writing the lyrics to their dumb song or add more grotesque common side effects.
And well, I normally avoid any product that is being advertised heavily that I don’t already use. I assume it’s crap, and that’s why it has a heavy media blitz going on. But I still watch some commercials willfully. A well-made commercial can still be a lot of fun.
Come to think of it, I remember watching a show called “TV’s Funniest Commercials” or something along those lines back in probably the early 1990s. It was basically a compilation of funny commercials from around the world. There may have been a host introducing the ads in the style of “America’s Funniest Home Videos”.
The only way to get away from the Trifecta of Horror – either being inundated with commercials, or obnoxious fundraising campaigns, or having to pay for commercial-free services – is adequate government funding of public broadcasting.
In Canada, CBC is a public broadcaster but the television network isn’t funded well enough to be commercial-free, so they run commercials like everyone else. But CBC Radio is a breath of fresh air – intelligent programming that is completely commercial-free and available everywhere at no cost. In the US, NPR seems similar, though I know they do fundraising, but I don’t know how intrusive it is in their programming.
Introducing … Aura-Shine™! Giving you the cleanest ears and shiniest floors ever! Aura-Shine™ is recommended by both the American Medical Association and the National Association of Realtors!
3-4 times a year they have a week long drive. It interrupts usual programming for about 15 minutes per hour, not all at once, but interspersed like ads are on network. The biggest problem is it is just the local people saying the phone number over and over.
