Infomercials must go!

The BBQ Pit
1

Out of the 200 channels on my digital cable, right now (sunday morning, 3a.m.) 40 of them have infomercials on. Jesus Fuck! That’s 20%! Why am I paying cable fees for 20% commercials? I consider infomercials the same as telemarketing…those who are in the business are going to burn in hell forever and ever!:mad:

When they first came on the scene about 10-15 years ago, infomercials were cute. But 20% of all the channels broadcasting? Fuck this. I’m a night owl on weekends. I want to be entertained, not sold a special iron that will smooth the wrinkles on my nut sack (or any of the other horseshit items they’re selling).

Infomercials must go! Who’s with me?

2

I like them. When they come on I know it’s time to go to bed. :slight_smile:

3

Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab once commented that we waste 99% of the tv programming we receive, because we can’t watch every channel at once, all the time. To adapt his example, you’re getting 200 channels, you’re receiving approximately 4800 hours of programming a day, and only watching maybe 2 to 6 hours of that.

Solution: Buy a TiVo.

4

Not to run this off into a debate, but that’s a pretty stupid observation. I mean, downright idiotic. That we don’t watch it means the signal is automatically wasted? Someone, somewhere may be watching it.
But if he’s only counting what I do with my tv watching, I guess I’m wasting 99% of my house because at this precise moment I’m sitting at my chair typing rather than in the kitchen making a sandwich or in bed sleeping.

5

Just set it, and forget it.

Studi

6

Well, I’m wasting 99% of the electricity I’m receiving, because I don’t have anything plugged into most of the electrical outlets in my house.

[sub]and all that electricity is just leaking out… good thing I’m wearing my tinfoil hat…[/sub]

7

The difference being, you can walk into another room anytime you want, you don’t have to wait for the room to appear at 8PM Thursday.
Negroponte was specifically addressing complaints like the OP, and the futility of developing video-on-demand transmission systems. At any given time in a day, there may not be a program you like, but out of those 4800 hours a day, there was probably something you want to watch at 4AM. Thus, TiVo was born. TiVo almost precisely follows Negroponte’s design suggestion.

8

You guys watch TV???

I’m never home when the cable guy shows up.

9

Wait, you have 160 channels not showing infomercials. Obviously there is nothing on those 160 channels - apparently showing normal shows - that you want to watch. Why are you bitching about the other 40 channels?

Just a note from a person that doesn’t have TV: When there isn’t anything on TV you want to watch, you are allowed to turn it off and do something else. If you don’t feel that the cable company is giving you sufficient value for your dollar, you are allowed to cancel your subscription.

10

I don’t know what TiVo is, so maybe it’s exactly what I’m about to describe, but I’d love to be able to pick what cable channels I get. The local cable company keeps adding new channels as an excuse to raise their rates. It’s ludicrous. I’m paying for literally dozens of channels that I never, ever watch. But the few channels I do watch are mostly cable ones, so I am hesitant to cancel my cable subscription altogether.

11

200 chanels? I think I must be slipping behind the times. On a clear reception day, I get one. Otherwise, the TV is nice to have to play back videos.

How can you have so much time to keep track of what is on 200 chanels, let alone watch many of them? Doesn’t it take away time from so much else in life?

12

Around here anyway, the big selling point of Cable TV when we only had broadcast available was no commercials - You’re paying for a premium service, so no annoying commercials.

That didn’t last very long.

13

The other 160 channels are all showing I Love Lucy reruns, or something similar. Even if I LIKED ILL the first few times around, I’d be sick of it by now.

However, when that happens, usually I just wander over to my game consoles, or my computer, or possibly I take a nap.

14

Read my OP! It was 3a.m.! What the fuck else am I supposed to do at 3am on a weekend? The bars are closed, my wife is asleep, and I’m not tired!

Also, understand something here:

The infomercials are on the channels I usually like to watch, like Comedy Central, etc. If they were just on channels I don’t watch, like “Home & Garden”:rolleyes:
I wouldn’t be bitching here.

15

Dude, you stole my line. I opened this thread just so I could post that line. Curse your oily hide! :slight_smile:

16

Nothing to do at 3:00 a.m.?

Try reading. There have been some pretty good books written over the last couple of thousand years or so.

Try surfing the web. It that’s too intensive, try listening to radio plays on the web or plug a movie into your vcr.

Try writing or working on a hobby.

Go for a walk, a paddle, a rock climb, or a ski. All are wonderful in the middle of the night.

If bars and Comedy Central are your thing, fair enough, but I think that there is a lot else out there, even at 3:00 a.m.

17

I think I better make a retraction.

I see from your profile that you are in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

I have to admit that if I were awake at 3:00 a.m. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, facing a few hundred chanels of infomercials, I’d probably kill myself and my sleeping wife.

All I can suggest is that you move away from there before it is too late.

18

TiVo, the magical box on top of the tv…

It’s a computer (actually a linux box) with a hard drive (or two, in our case) that has room to store X hours of programming. In our case, 90. It hooks into a phone line and calls in to TiVo HQ and gets the linup for the next 2 weeks or so for your cable system. You can then pick through this for what you want (search by genre, by time, by name, by actor, etc… it rocks) and tell it to record it for you. For example, we had it record the E! True Hollywood Story about the Monkees recently. One time thing, didn’t want to have to remember when to watch it, so anytime after it was on, it showed up in my “What’s Playing” list of recorded shows.

I also like the X Files which is on about 3 different channels about a dozen times a week. I told it I wanted it to record X Files whenever it could, and so whenever it is on, on any channel, it records it for me (unless something else I want that has higher priority is on).

So at any given time, I have my choice of ANY of the shows I watch. I just look and see: a week’s worth of Simpsons, a couple episodes of Battlebots, many episodes of Voyager, DSN, X Files… two episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Malcolm in the Middle, a special on great white sharks that was on over the weekend, Farscape, First Wave, Lexx, A few days’ worth of The Daily Show… etc. So when we sit down for dinner we can decide what we want to watch. We just about never watch anything “live” anymore…

…but if we did, as soon as we turn the channel, it starts recording a buffer for it. So we can pause, or even rewind to the point at which we came to that channel. Always nice to get a live show on, pause it, go potty and get a sandwich, and by that time it’s gotten enough ahead that you can skip over all the commercials for the rest of the show :slight_smile:

Anyway, TiVo rocks. Don’t watch TV without it.

19

I’m not actually going to do a residency after I graduate from med school–I’m just going to go on infomercials and tout products.

“Let’s say hello to Dr. Piercy. He’s an M.D. from the University of Kentucky, and he’s here to tell us all about the miraculous benefits of Chitosol.”

Dr. J

20

TiVo still won’t help you that much with the wasted TV time. There are only 24 hours in a day, and 4800 hours of TV (assuming 200 channels). you’d be missing out on 99.5% of programming even if you watched TV 24 hours a day.

Solution: Buy 200 TVs and have each one set to a different channel. :smiley: