Is it just me or are TV commercials getting out of hand? (Page 4): I download every program I watch just so I can skip through the overly excessive commercial breaks. It wasn't bad...

2Dragons Loc: The Back of Beyond

I download every program I watch just so I can skip through the overly excessive commercial breaks. It wasn't bad years ago when you had a 2 minute commercial every 15 minutes or so. These stations don't seem to realize that they are shooting themselves in the foot. People are fleeing cable in ever more increasing numbers because they've had it with not only paying ridiculous monthly rates, but having to suffer through a ton of commercial garbage from Madison Ave. I've been known to pay close attention to clever, entertaining commercials, but the majority do nothing more than irritate and insult our intelligence. OK, that's my rant for the day.

Powder Hound

Youtube is running ads as well. There is no escape except for recording and FFing the ads.

Cheers,

PH

bw79st Loc: New York City

Bison Bud wrote:

First off, let me state that I was a Television Broadcast engineer..."

Same as you, Bud. I worked in videotape at a network so I think you are conditioned by the standards set by the three major nets back then. Commercial slugs were generally two minutes long and there were two 2 minute availabilities for the local stations, one at the half hour and one at the hour. Things are different now and the FCC has relaxed all rules and enforcements. Cable channels have less restrictions and can pretty much do what they want.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

I don't see any ads on youtube. Filter them out. Same on here.
--Bob

Powder Hound wrote:

Youtube is running ads as well. There is no escape except for recording and FFing the ads.

Cheers,

PH

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Solved that problem when I got the Dish Hopper. Record a show and you can fast forward through the commercials. Works for me.

Verryl

I agree, too many commercials. OTOH, it allows me ample time to read a book.

Book: a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages bound together and protected by a cover.

Verryl

StanMac Loc: Tennessee

I live out of range of the digital over the air broadcast stations except for my local PBS station. I dropped cable TV service (content and cost), got a Roku and subscribed to Hulu. Still not a lot of interesting programming. Friends who went to streaming services are now experiencing onerous fee increases. It has gotten to the point that I watch less than maybe 10 hours of TV a week, if that much. For entertainment, I watch a lot of content on YouTube in subjects and themes that interest me. I’m aging out of the popular entertainment interest I guess.

Stan

odujim Loc: New Jersey

The DVR (Xfinity/Comcast) is heavily used in my house. We will not tolerate even a few seconds of any commercials so every program we watch is pre-recorded, including the nightly news. That allows us to quickly skip past the ads.

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

I appreciate your post. My "fix" is to not watch any live TV. I record everything and zip through commercials or watch via apps on my Smart TV.
Mark

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

odujim wrote:

The DVR (Xfinity/Comcast) is heavily used in my house. We will not tolerate even a few seconds of any commercials so every program we watch is pre-recorded, including the nightly news. That allows us to quickly skip past the ads.

Exactly my modus operandi, too! I guess we NJ dudes are aligned.
Mark

odujim Loc: New Jersey

markngolf wrote:

Exactly my modus operandi, too! I guess we NJ dudes are aligned.
Mark

LOL - we are known to have very little patience! Wish you all the best in 2021.

budjordan1 Loc: Pittsburgh, Florida

Bison Bud wrote:

First off, let me state that I was a Television Broadcast engineer for 20 years starting back in the late 70's. I've been out of it for quite awhile, but man how things have changed. Anyway, back then a LONG commercial break was 2 minutes and there was generally at start-break, a mid-break, and an end-break (which was shared with the start break for the following program). A special note here, in that most of these were network breaks and our station only made direct income on the local breaks we ran and still turned a reasonable profit. We actually had to pay the network to carry their programming including all their breaks and ads!

Anyway, to get to the point, today's breaks are far more frequent and much, much longer. So much so that I think it's getting absurd! Last night, my wife and I watched an approx. 2 hour movie that took 3-1/2 hours to air and I counted and average of 8 commercials, two promos, and/or PSA's in each break. Some had even more (especially promos), but not one break was less than 5 minutes and a couple were a full 8 minutes long! I wish I had also counted the actual number of breaks, but I was having trouble keeping up with the movie already. Top that off by the fact that most of us pay to have this programming brought into our homes with cable, satellite, and/or streaming fees and subscriptions and I simply have to wonder how many jillions of dollars these channels are making on all these ads and double dipping on their subscriptions and/or fees as well.

While I realize that money is the driving factor here and we will never get around the corporate greed for more and more income, I think it's high time we began to rebel against this situation or at least put the powers that be on notice that we are fed up with this situation. I'm not sure what we can effectively do about this, but I'm certainly open to your suggestions and I will be writing my cable company and local stations about this, as well as posting this topic in multiple venues to see if there is any real response from the public in general. I am also considering going back to "Off Air" TV only. While they still run too many ads, at least they don't double dip by also charging me for their overall programming. Anyway, I'd love to start a reasonable discussion on this subject and would appreciate your input. I'd really like to start some grass roots support and give them as much negative feedback as possible. Thanks for reading this far and please "Enjoy the Season and Celebrate the Reason!"

First off, let me state that I was a Television Br... (show quote)

I got disgusted with all the commercials and garbage Cable TV wanted me to watch that i cancelled my cable and got an antenna. I get all the local channels and PBS stations i need. Plus there are other channels that are interesting to watch, all this for free. Now i can watch tv knowing i am not paying cable for their commercial or watching all the garbage they wanted to sell me. I get 120 channels all for free.

foathog Loc: Greensboro, NC

Longshadow wrote:

I've developed a really good "ignore them" ability.
Can't tell you how many commercials or what they were selling,
except the "Gold" clad "collector coins" that have a whopping $1 worth of gold plating on them.
(Had to figure how much gold was on them. Still, I don't remember the company...)

How about that insurance promo that has a half man half motorcycle? The guy is deformed yet he has this arrogant attitude. Someone should puncture his tires. Not to mention "Liberty, Liberty, Liberty" ENOUGH ALREADY!!!

FL Streetrodder

I have become quite adept at mentally ignoring and screening out the never ending stream of commercials. I am totally amazed and disgusted over the absolute stupidity portrayed by most of them, in particular those aired by Insurance companies. The majority of all commercials really tell you nothing or very little about the product or service and are seemingly produced to "entertain" the viewer. The advertising firms who are paid exorbitant fees to produce these commercials have completely mislead their clients about the effect on potential customers! Thank goodness for DVR's and the ability to buzz through these endless annoyances! My rant for the day!

tropics68 Loc: Georgia

Bison Bud wrote:

First off, let me state that I was a Television Broadcast engineer for 20 years starting back in the late 70's. I've been out of it for quite awhile, but man how things have changed. Anyway, back then a LONG commercial break was 2 minutes and there was generally at start-break, a mid-break, and an end-break (which was shared with the start break for the following program). A special note here, in that most of these were network breaks and our station only made direct income on the local breaks we ran and still turned a reasonable profit. We actually had to pay the network to carry their programming including all their breaks and ads!

Anyway, to get to the point, today's breaks are far more frequent and much, much longer. So much so that I think it's getting absurd! Last night, my wife and I watched an approx. 2 hour movie that took 3-1/2 hours to air and I counted and average of 8 commercials, two promos, and/or PSA's in each break. Some had even more (especially promos), but not one break was less than 5 minutes and a couple were a full 8 minutes long! I wish I had also counted the actual number of breaks, but I was having trouble keeping up with the movie already. Top that off by the fact that most of us pay to have this programming brought into our homes with cable, satellite, and/or streaming fees and subscriptions and I simply have to wonder how many jillions of dollars these channels are making on all these ads and double dipping on their subscriptions and/or fees as well.

While I realize that money is the driving factor here and we will never get around the corporate greed for more and more income, I think it's high time we began to rebel against this situation or at least put the powers that be on notice that we are fed up with this situation. I'm not sure what we can effectively do about this, but I'm certainly open to your suggestions and I will be writing my cable company and local stations about this, as well as posting this topic in multiple venues to see if there is any real response from the public in general. I am also considering going back to "Off Air" TV only. While they still run too many ads, at least they don't double dip by also charging me for their overall programming. Anyway, I'd love to start a reasonable discussion on this subject and would appreciate your input. I'd really like to start some grass roots support and give them as much negative feedback as possible. Thanks for reading this far and please "Enjoy the Season and Celebrate the Reason!"

First off, let me state that I was a Television Br... (show quote)

The wife and I record any shows we want to watch (and there ain't many) then we zip past all the commercials. I have found that by doing this a one hour show takes about 35 - 40 minutes to watch. To retaliate there are several networks on Direct TV that are cutting the end of some shows off , all reruns, in order to squeeze more commercials into the 60 minute allotted for the show. I guess $150+/- per month is not enough.

I have a neighbor that canned all his pay TV and has some kind of antenna that enables him to get approximately 35 channels 100% free. We have not got to that point yet mainly because a number of the shows we enjoy are not available free. That number is dwindling fast because many of the shows we enjoy have not been on pay TV either since the Plague ground everything to a halt.