Commercials on tv have gotten ridiculous

[I_UndergroundPanther]

When it was the 70's you saw maybe 2 or 3 commercials during a show.

I was watching Nightline
to see the chop in Seattle and there was 10 commercials in one break.

At some point we will need to reign in advertisers. Because they'll interfere with things that need to be reported.
And the people pushing advertising have no self control.

The airwaves were built by tax dollars.They are not property of corporations even though they claim they built it and own it.

TV was once about the programs aired. Now ad revenue controls too much of the content and ads dominate the time slot allowed shows,even news.

Time to tell advertisers enough is enough. TV broadcasters must limit the amount of ads they air during programs because as shows get shorter and shorter less reporting is aired. Ads blanket the country and invade our homes. It's too invasive.
Fuck the greed. Time for capitalism to STFU.

Shows like The Veiw ,Good Morning America, and the Doctors are now putting ads as part of the regular content of programs. I don't know how many shows are doing this. These are the ones I know of that do this. As if tons of commercials in " breaks" are not enough ads.

It's gotten out of control.
It's been out of control.

[cayugafalls]

1. It's why I cut the cord.

If there is a show I really want to watch, I can find a way to get it...or just wait until a clip shows up on YouTube.

I do not miss commercials at all.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

2. I have cut the cord

Can't afford the web. I have antenna tv. The web I have is on my cellphone.

Maybe the ad bullshit is another way the poor who can't afford the net get screwed yet again.

I hate capitalism.

[PTWB]

5. If you're watching network TV over the air...

You’re not paying anything. The advertisements pay for you.

[roamer65]

9. Not for long.

The new digital TV format, ATSC 3.0, has a conditional access system built into it. The days of free OTA TV will soon be ending.

Conditional access = pay TV.

[cayugafalls]

6. Your right. You get screwed by having to put up with the ads.

There is no good solution.

It used to make me want to scream inside. So I feel your frustration.

[Azathoth]

3. Yup. Non-premium tv is almost unwatchable

And the bottom half hour of any cable news show is the end of all hope.

Tv has become AM radio.

[DenverJared]

4. The cost of commercials has plummeted due to cable, streaming and social media

So they need to run more commercials to pay for the show.

It is simply market economy at work.

Most people just record the shows on a DVR and then fast-forward through the ads.

[Archae]

7. I seldom watch any shows live.

I DVR just about everything.

TBS network is the worst I can think of.

But websites are getting worse too.

Without Adblock, my viewing the Internet would be nearly impossible.

When a POLITICAL website (Crooks and Liars) says on my Adblock that 110+ ads are being blocked, this is not paying for a site.
It's greed.

[Nature Man]

16. I had to turn off my Adblock

to view content.

The site became unusable. Across multiple browsers.

[Totally Tunsie]

8. Another aspect to consider is the production cost of the show itself,

which is what generates the need for those advertising dollars.

For example:
Shows such as Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! send hosts/co-hosts, production crew, security, and various minions jetting off to Bora Bora, Scandanavia, et al, to film five questions for the game board. At one time, Vanna said they travel with a crew of 100. WHY? It adds nothing to the show other than backdrop, costs a small fortune, and produces slow-moving clues that drag the game. How do they pay for that? Selling more ads.

On the flip side, Meredith Vieira is hosting a daytime game show called "25 Words or Less". Top prize for each day's show is $10K. Second Place Finisher goes home with <wait for it>..."THIS bea-uuuuu-tiiii-fulllllll coffeemaker!!!" YAY! YAY! Another day might send them off with a microwave or the like. Very humble, indeed. Now I'll have to make note of their commercial schedule.

[Marie Marie]

10. I remember reading somewhere that when they air old shows as reruns,

they speed up the playback to make room for all the commercials that currently run as opposed to the number of commercials that used to be included when the show originally aired. You are right, it is out of control. I constantly have a second channel on standby and constantly switch back and forth to try to avoid the ads. But then, I usually hit ads on my second choice also.

[ProfessorGAC]

25. I Have Not Detected That

Speeding up would cause obvious changes in speaking parts.
If they used tech to pitch shift back down, it would be less pronounced, but nearly anyone would find something odd, and the speaking cadence would be noticeably choppy.
But, what I have seen is editing out of small pieces. A 2 second aside by one character, a reaction shot from a third person, etc.
Take a dozen 2 to 5 second bits out, and they have time for 3 15 second ads.
Oh, I forgot: I've noticed this on the old Andy Griffith Show that runs on TVLand, or MeTV.

[RainCaster]

11. I thought you were going to grouse about the volume

Those bastids crank up the volume fur the commercials, an it pisses me off. I thought they passed a law about that years ago. WTF?

[HAB911]

24. You need some of those anti-hearing pills

Aspirin, in large doses (8 to 12 pills a day) will do the trick, LOL

[DanieRains]

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Yeah, I get it.

[Ilsa]

20. I really dislike the drug ads.

Who do they help? Someone with a chronic or serious health issue is probably doing everything they can to stay caught up with new available drug treatments, not to mention their doctors.

[quickesst]

13. I rarely watch live TV....

.... because it's so simple to DVR the shows I watch. All of my favorite shows automatically record, and fast-forwarding through the commercials is a minor inconvenience. It's really not as big a deal as some make it out to be.

Then again, if all commercials were as entertaining as this one, I probably wouldn't do much fast forwarding.
https://m.

[Tipperary]

14. I think you mean "rein" in. At any rate, how do you propose "we" rein them in?

Whi is “we?” We the Democrats? How is that going to work? I do not watch much tv, but when I do, I mute the commercial or use the time to do something else. Commercials are not going anywhere soon. With everything happening in the world, commercials really are not taking up a lot of space in my head. Turn off the box.

[hunter]

21. The airwaves belong to the people. Maybe we should shut down commercial broadcast television.

It's obsolete.

We could incorporate this freed up bandwidth into a system of universal internet access. Television bands might be useful for internet access in rural areas.

My wife's parents live in a rural mountain valley and cannot receive any broadcast television. They have a satellite dish for television. For internet service they rely on a cell phone tower on a mountain top several miles away.

Satellite television and cell phone data plans are not a negligible expense for retired people living on a fixed incomes like my wife's parents. They are an impossible expense for many others with very limited incomes.

I don't think the U.S.A. would go broke subsidizing a universal internet service capable of delivering 480p video to everyone.

Personally, my wife and I quit traditional television more than a decade ago -- there's no cable, no satellite, no broadcast television in our home. We don't see any commercials. We have DSL internet and an $8.99 Netflix subscription. We rent movies from our neighborhood Redbox. So far we haven't run out of stuff to watch.

Many years ago the U.S.A. managed to bring electric and phone service to rural areas throughout the nation. Many roads and highways were built. Providing universal internet service would be a much less challenging task.

[melm00se]

15. FCC and advertising

Other than children's programming, the FCC has no rules dictating the amount of advertising over the air TV can present per hour.

The advent of DVRs accelerated the launch of on demand programming (some (most?) of which block the ability to fast forward thru commercials) and streaming services (which generate revenue via subscriptions vs paid advertising).

All programming have costs associated to produce and distribute them and stations/networks have to pay for their people, equipment, electricity and the like.

While it is true that the airwaves are in the public domain, the content presented is NOT the property of the public. It is owned by the people who produce it and they have a right to be paid for their work product.

[katmondoo]

17. Some commercials are so bad I start to scream at them. Progressive Insurance are the worse

I really hate them with a passion.

[cwydro]

18. Some are kind of funny, but I rarely pay attention.

If you're screaming at your TV, it might be time to turn it off for a bit. Just sayin'.

[Ilsa]

19. Tiny piece of good news:

TRMS's A block usually goes for 20-25 minutes before a single ad is run. Morning Joe: same. As a matter of fact, Morning Joe ran about 45 minutes in their A block this morning before an ad. I think Nicole Wallace's show has a long A block as well.

The subsequent blocks are usually much shorter, but if you dvr the show, then start watching the recording at about 15 minutes after it starts, you can fast forward through most of the ads without missing anything as your viewing catches up with the broadcast.

[NurseJackie]

22. There were 10 commercials in one break...

There were 10 commercials in one break... yeah, that's annoying. I enjoy PBS's News Hour and BBC World News on my local PBS station.

Also, when watching SkyNews on our Roku, the streaming version replaces the broadcast commercials with weather (global temperatures, etc.)

Have you considered reading more of your news. Not long ago, I finally broke down and decided that it WAS INDEED worthwhile to go ahead and get a digital subscription to the Washington Post. Every morning I'll check my email for their recent stories, then peruse the headlines from there.

Also, a LOT of links on DU go directly to the Washington Post site... and I'm no longer blocked by their "pay wall".

[crickets]

23. K&R for the post and the discussion.