Okay, I understand that commercials are a necessary evil of television. I realize that the price of getting to watch Stargate SG-1 or CSI is that I have to deal with 3 or 4 minutes of companies throwing their products into my face and screaming that I should ‘buy now, this offer won’t last forever, going-out-of-business-on-tuesday’ every 10 mins or so.
But what is up lately with cable stations running commercials for themselves WHILE THE FREAKIN SHOW IS ON???
A lot of the specialized cable television channels seem to do this now. You’re watching a show and the all of the sudden (this usually occurs right at the good part where we discover the doctor is really the murderer’s cousin or something) a pop up appears over the show advertising some other new inane show that I have no intention of watching, sometimes covering the whole bottom of the scene, blotting out important action and sometimes covering up the hot super- model-turned-actress while she is doing something hot and supermodel-like! NOOOOOOooooo!!!
(I understand that was a run-on sentance. I am ranting. Lets keep on point here shall we?)
And the point is, I AM EXPOSED TO ENOUGH DUMB COMMERCIALS AS IT IS!! I made it through my 4 minutes of stupid kids eating Coco Pebbles and the new Ford Gigantico driving on the same dang twisty road that every freakin car commercial uses. I did my time!! So stop assulting me whilst I am enjoying the fruits of my labors!!! I Suffered through that interminable tampon commercial, now give me my Fear Factor and leave me the <bleep> alone!!
ARGHHHH!!!
There. I am done now.
Back to your regularly scheduled postings, already in progress.
What it needs is a laser gun that you can shoot at the screen so that the cable company’s ad exec feels a shock for each person who’s offened, upset, or just ornery about the latest commericial spawned idiocy. (Nodnodnodnodnodnodnodnod)
Yes, agreed. And it should be attached directly to their testicles. They also should give me the option to turn up the voltage based on how much I hate the commercial.
It would be great market feedback! I can see it now:
“Wow… it appears there is really some bad feedback on that latest Coke commercial. Bill’s testicles are on fire…”
During baseball season on TBS they had one where a baseball crashed into the glass on the tv and the crowd roared.
I say they crowd roared because the damn thing had sound, which covered up the dialogue of the show I was watching!
Next-ons, push-ups, fly-ins, whatever you want to call them, if they annoy you, contact the network. If enough viewers complain about the intrusiveness, then maybe they can modify them a bit.
But since everyone gets up to pee during the commercial breaks, how else are the networks going to tell you what Hot New Show is Coming Up Next?
The proliferation of channels on cable and satellite TV, combined with the ubiquity of the remote control and the increasing popularity of technology like Tivo, means that we really have the ability to skip commercials altogether, by fast-forwarding, by channel-surfing, or by cutting them out when recording the program.
Faced with this consumer revolt, advertisers and TV stations have to find another way to get their products (whether it’s a type of cola or a new TV show) in front of us at a time and a place where we can’t avoid them. That’s why these annoying pop-up ads, and also the reason that TV shows and movies are becoming so inundated with commercial tie-ins and product placements that TV is starting to look like one big advertisement.
You can barely turn on a TV show now without having some product shoved in your face. American Idol contestants sit on a Coke-colored couch in the Coke backstage room and drink Coke while on camera. All the other reality shows have tie-ins with various consumer products. TV dramas like CSI: Miami and “24” have agreements with car companies and sunglass manufacturers. Christ, even the nightly news has various segments “brought to you by” some useless piece of crap or other.
The two most recent issues of Bitch Magazine (Winter 2004 and Spring 2004) had an excellent 2-part article on this commercial takeover. Sure, it’s not completely new, but it’s growing with a vengeance as consumers do everything they can to avoid the advertising onslaught, and advertisers fight back with ever-more-insidious tactics in order to claim what they see as their “rights” to our attention.
The worst is when the ad comes up from the bottom and compresses the picture into a fun house mirror. Then, hold - until our society’s slowest readers get their chance to absorb.
What’s also offensive is when an ad hides subtitles. It shows that they’re not even trying to be even a little considerate.
Between this sort of crap and the proliferation of so-called “reality” shows, I’ve just about given up on TV. The money that would go to the cable company gets spent on dvds instead.
The harder the comanies try to ram their products down my throat, the less likely I am to buy any.
I’m not naive enough to believe that companies think of me as a person, or care whether I live or die. I don’t expect that, nor do I think of them as collections of individual people. But why, why must there be such calculated efforts to figure out the exact amount of irritation I’ll tolerate? Must every drip of tolerance I have be drained away for these companies’ use?
Well, mine has been totally drained away. Two or three minutes I was prepared to tolerate. now that in the UK it can be up to seven minutes of show sponsor, relentless self promotion, adverts, more relentless self-promotion, sponsor of next show then its enough time to turn to the advert free BBC and sometimes not come back.
And with Sky Plus its even easier to miss them. With some self damn restraint they’d expose me to 3 minutes of ads. Now in their greed they expose me to zero minutes.
