As long as people accept what they’re getting, stations will keep pushing the envelope. I hate, hate, hate, those station ID tags in the lower right hand corner of every single non-premium channel in existence. I remember when they first came out, people complained, but now they’re just the standard way of doing things, so advertisers and shows look for a new way to go a little further. You can bet you’ll start seeing popups on broadcast stations before long.
If you watch gameshows, you’ll have seen the same thing happen. In the good old 70’s, sponsors were identified by spoken name at the beginning or end. In the 80’s, you’d get a static picture of the sponsor’s product while the host read the product’s tag line. Now, you get a five to ten second fully produced ad. But do these thirty seconds of ads count as commercials? Nope, they’re just a new style of sponsor identification, and are thus claimed as “credits”.
If I were king of communications, I would make it a rule that if anything other than the program being broadcast is on the screen, it doesn’t count as program time. Right now, it works just the opposite; if a program is running, that is program time, regardless of what else is being displayed at what size or what sound is being played.
And don’t get me started on the use of the words “next” and “now”.
I found the e-mail I got from Sci Fi Channel. I was in error when I said that they effectively said that they don’t read e-mails. They said they could not respond to individual e-mails. Still, I doubt a station will change their ways unless they gett a massive amount of mail complaining about their credits/logos/etc. Even then, I suspect it’s likely that they would just shrug it off. I’m guessing it would take media attention (not likely, since the story would have to be nationwide and the station bringing the heat would also likely be shrinking credits and using logos), or there would have to be pressure by the government (which brings in First Ammendment issues, and the government has other things to worry about anyway). Either that, or a lot of pissed-off viewers would have to contact each individual sponsor to tell them that they will not buy their products because of the annoying logos and mini-credits.
Same thing with Sky in the UK. Adverts and relentless self-promotion before, during and after programmes can run into 7 bloody minutes. Even in-programme breaks often run to 4 minutes. A couple of minutes, fine, I’ll sit through that but once it reaches these lengths it makes it worth hopping to another programme for the duration, or permanently.
so in the past I saw a couple of minutes of ads - now I see none. Less is more, people.
Johnny: I don’t know what any individual could do. The FCC has regulations regarding how much ad time can be used during programming, so they could do something without raising any First Amendment issues simply by redefining program time and commercial time as I suggest. However, the telecommunications industry is huge, and I see little chance of that happening.
I suspect that at some point they’ll develop a method of advertising that is so obnoxious that it’ll create a massive backlash and they’ll pull back, but it would be difficult to predict what that will be. Perhaps popups on broadcast channels will do it.
Two other points of annoyance about the micro-folded-credit-crawl:
• If the production has included some clever little gag at the end of the credits, you will not get to see it. I cite the end of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off* as but one example that sprang to mind immediately. There’s hundreds of other movies that feature cute little things in or after the credits. This cannot be solved with IMDB.
• I watch the credits, often, for the soundtrack list at the end. I’ll hear a song in the background of a movie and think, or say out loud, “Was that L7?” (e.g. Serial Mom) Thanks to the micro-folded-credit-crawl, the credits are generally cut off before they get anywhere near the soundtrack, which is generally last. Back to IMDB, or else I’ll never know for sure.
If you live in a sock or a cave, or are just not into this sort of movie: At the end of the credits in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Matthew Broderick appears on the screen a final time and speaks directly to the audience, “You’re still here? Go home.” Very cute. Directors toss little tidbits in like that for those of us who do sit through the entire list of credits.