Advertising isn’t the problem. And before I get my balls cut off, I’ll back away slowly while explaining myself…
We’ve always paid for ads. Back in the old days you paid for a cable subscription and got to watch ads every 15 minutes. That’s not a new phenomenon. Hell, television was designed around the advertising break. The entire one hour series 5 part script model was created with the “cut to ad break” in mind. You think about your CSI:Miami “sunglasses of justice” stinger, or your fourth ad-break plot-twist as the Romulan war bird uncloaks and the music dun-dun-duns into a commercial for cheese-its…
That’s not a problem in and of itself. In fact I kind of miss it when shows were written that way. Heck, Tubi and Pluto TV do it and no one complains about that. And if Netflix wants to add those back into their free tier, more power to 'em.
But advertising is not about getting served a few commercials every fifteen minutes anymore. It’s literally in front of the content, within the content, etc… It’s not about “hey look, it’s an ad break, let’s go refill our 7-up and take a piss”, it’s inlaid with the content, as well as taking up as much, if not MORE time than the actual content itself. and THAT’S part one of the problem.
Part two is the fact that if you’re going to make more money by making me pay for your service AND watch advertisements, you better damn well be giving at least some of that new money to other creatives that are MAKING those advertisements. Make a commercial with actors and actresses; pay them. Hire a writer to create ad-copy, just like we used to do. But if you’re going to charge me AND make me watch lazy shit you made with A.I. slop, than THAT is where I’ll happily take my ship and head onto the high seas.
I’d be perfectly happy to sit through two or three traditional advertisements every fifteen minutes just like we did in the old days. But what I WON’T stand for is watching five minutes of lazy A.I. ads after every five minutes of actual content and be expected to PAY for the service on top of that.
Just because something always used to be some way doesn’t mean it’s automatically acceptable.
TV might have been designed for the ad break but what if it wasn’t? You give Star Trek as an example, and here in the UK growing up I watched TNG episodes on BBC2, which is a tax-funded station without adverts. Did the lack of adverts make my childhood TNG experience worse? Personally I’d say it made it better.
Even in the cable TV age, to have adverts in something you are paying for is still horrible, and to me it’s unacceptable.
I will do everything in my power to not expose my brain to a barrage of advertising, and that includes not using any service where I have to subject myself to it.
Totally agree.
Broadcast TV shows where designed with advertising in mind because it was the only way to monetize it at the time (except for tax-funded of course).
When cable TV started, one of their selling points was that it didn’t have ads, at least on the “cable-native” channels.
But after a while, they started putting ads everywhere, and that of course lead to the shitty experience that made a lot of people “cut the wire” when streaming services started.
I’m wondering what’s the next thing that will replace streaming, and eventually repeat the cycle.
Every major shift in how media is consumed has always come because of evolutions in the technology used to deliver it - going from just a few broadcast channels, to cable, to “on demand” cable and satellite, and finally to Internet delivery.
And it’s just really hard to imagine what delivery technology could provide any new capability beyond the always-on, bidirectional, high capacity data stream in your pocket that is the Internet we now have.
With streaming we’ve already achieved what should in theory be the best way to watch - and with the studios all having their own streaming platform now, there’s not even any middleman to undercut anymore, like there was when the cable companies were cut out by Netflix at the dawn of streaming. This is endgame.
The only thing left now is enshittification.
The one thing that could save us from this fate is if new programs and content are produced that are competitive in quality with what the current giants are putting out, giving people other places to go and forcing competition.
This is what we’ve already seen with indie studios and single developers disrupting the games industry, and perhaps with ever more achievable 3D animation, AI and other accessible production techniques we’ll start seeing this disrupt the film and TV industry too.
Also, I don’t know how it was in other countries, but I remember that pay-tv services in Italy didn’t have ads during programs and films, but only between the programs. It was a way better experience.
This person seems to think that CSI Miami pioneered the format. So of course it easy to find examples of them being wrong. CSI Miami wasn’t even the first CSI. So I am sure they can’t remember that premium cable channels that don’t have commercials exist. Let alone that public broadcasting doesn’t have commercials.
Back in the old days you paid for a cable subscription and got to watch ads every 15 minutes
Oh, hell no. We had HBO my entire teen years, and that was the huge difference between cable and broadcast - there were no commercials on HBO.
I never had cable as an adult; I didn’t like being beholden to someone else’s tastes and show times, so we just rented videos: Blockbuster, or more often the locally owned rental place - they had weirder stuff.
When Cable became “infinite channels,” they did start showing ads, but that wasn’t paying for content: that was paying for delivery. It was supersized broadcast TV. To emphasize this, packages cost extra, and those special, extra channels (HBO, etc) didn’t have commercials. The basic package was just extra broadcast TV.
Netflix is more analogous to HBO than cable. Supporting this is their original operating model: a subscription fee that got you DVDs mailed to your house. Just like a subscription fee to Blockbuster that got you a certain number of rentals per month.
Don’t try to normalize it by claiming “it’s always been this way,” because it hasn’t.
television was designed around the advertising break
Television was free. Netflix was originally movies. Movies don’t have ads (not specific, non-story related ones, anyway; they’ve always had product placement). It’s been only relatively recently that Netflix has gotten into the episodic game, which is even less justification for ad breaks, because episodes are shorter than movies. Which have no ads.
You’re entitled to pay for what you like and be happy with it, buy fuck if I’m going to pay someone to watch their ads. If I was a TV watcher, I’d pay for choice - a thousand channels, with ad-ridden content. I draw the line at going to a movie theater, paying for a ticket, and then having the movie interrupted with ads, which is what this is equivalent to. You can always skip the ones up front with timing, and fuck those ads too.
I think your argument is so contrary to the ad-free reality I experience every day, I don’t think there’s any point of counter argue you as we will probably never find a common ground to debate our differing viewpoints on.
What old age are you talking about? Television was not invented in the 2000’s.
And if you don’t like ads, then that is the problem.
Regardless, Netflix has historically been delivered without ads which many seem to like. You do you, take a break and watch some ads every 20 minutes, but I won’t, and will especially not pay to do it.
This point doesnt really make sense when you consider that there are TV channels that don’t have ads like any of the BBC channels, PBS and even Disney Channel. They are channels that only promote their own other shows but for the most part don’t have ads in between the shows.
Advertising isn’t the problem. And before I get my balls cut off, I’ll back away slowly while explaining myself…
We’ve always paid for ads. Back in the old days you paid for a cable subscription and got to watch ads every 15 minutes. That’s not a new phenomenon. Hell, television was designed around the advertising break. The entire one hour series 5 part script model was created with the “cut to ad break” in mind. You think about your CSI:Miami “sunglasses of justice” stinger, or your fourth ad-break plot-twist as the Romulan war bird uncloaks and the music dun-dun-duns into a commercial for cheese-its…
That’s not a problem in and of itself. In fact I kind of miss it when shows were written that way. Heck, Tubi and Pluto TV do it and no one complains about that. And if Netflix wants to add those back into their free tier, more power to 'em.
But advertising is not about getting served a few commercials every fifteen minutes anymore. It’s literally in front of the content, within the content, etc… It’s not about “hey look, it’s an ad break, let’s go refill our 7-up and take a piss”, it’s inlaid with the content, as well as taking up as much, if not MORE time than the actual content itself. and THAT’S part one of the problem.
Part two is the fact that if you’re going to make more money by making me pay for your service AND watch advertisements, you better damn well be giving at least some of that new money to other creatives that are MAKING those advertisements. Make a commercial with actors and actresses; pay them. Hire a writer to create ad-copy, just like we used to do. But if you’re going to charge me AND make me watch lazy shit you made with A.I. slop, than THAT is where I’ll happily take my ship and head onto the high seas.
I’d be perfectly happy to sit through two or three traditional advertisements every fifteen minutes just like we did in the old days. But what I WON’T stand for is watching five minutes of lazy A.I. ads after every five minutes of actual content and be expected to PAY for the service on top of that.
Just because something always used to be some way doesn’t mean it’s automatically acceptable.
TV might have been designed for the ad break but what if it wasn’t? You give Star Trek as an example, and here in the UK growing up I watched TNG episodes on BBC2, which is a tax-funded station without adverts. Did the lack of adverts make my childhood TNG experience worse? Personally I’d say it made it better.
Even in the cable TV age, to have adverts in something you are paying for is still horrible, and to me it’s unacceptable.
I will do everything in my power to not expose my brain to a barrage of advertising, and that includes not using any service where I have to subject myself to it.
Totally agree.
Broadcast TV shows where designed with advertising in mind because it was the only way to monetize it at the time (except for tax-funded of course).
When cable TV started, one of their selling points was that it didn’t have ads, at least on the “cable-native” channels.
But after a while, they started putting ads everywhere, and that of course lead to the shitty experience that made a lot of people “cut the wire” when streaming services started.
I’m wondering what’s the next thing that will replace streaming, and eventually repeat the cycle.
Every major shift in how media is consumed has always come because of evolutions in the technology used to deliver it - going from just a few broadcast channels, to cable, to “on demand” cable and satellite, and finally to Internet delivery.
And it’s just really hard to imagine what delivery technology could provide any new capability beyond the always-on, bidirectional, high capacity data stream in your pocket that is the Internet we now have.
With streaming we’ve already achieved what should in theory be the best way to watch - and with the studios all having their own streaming platform now, there’s not even any middleman to undercut anymore, like there was when the cable companies were cut out by Netflix at the dawn of streaming. This is endgame.
The only thing left now is enshittification.
The one thing that could save us from this fate is if new programs and content are produced that are competitive in quality with what the current giants are putting out, giving people other places to go and forcing competition.
This is what we’ve already seen with indie studios and single developers disrupting the games industry, and perhaps with ever more achievable 3D animation, AI and other accessible production techniques we’ll start seeing this disrupt the film and TV industry too.
Good point about the indie studios. I mostly play indie games, there’s rarely any AAA game that is worth the price.
Seems like the way to go, support services that stream independent media and stop supporting the enshittified ones.
Also, I don’t know how it was in other countries, but I remember that pay-tv services in Italy didn’t have ads during programs and films, but only between the programs. It was a way better experience.
This person seems to think that CSI Miami pioneered the format. So of course it easy to find examples of them being wrong. CSI Miami wasn’t even the first CSI. So I am sure they can’t remember that premium cable channels that don’t have commercials exist. Let alone that public broadcasting doesn’t have commercials.
Oh, hell no. We had HBO my entire teen years, and that was the huge difference between cable and broadcast - there were no commercials on HBO.
I never had cable as an adult; I didn’t like being beholden to someone else’s tastes and show times, so we just rented videos: Blockbuster, or more often the locally owned rental place - they had weirder stuff.
When Cable became “infinite channels,” they did start showing ads, but that wasn’t paying for content: that was paying for delivery. It was supersized broadcast TV. To emphasize this, packages cost extra, and those special, extra channels (HBO, etc) didn’t have commercials. The basic package was just extra broadcast TV.
Netflix is more analogous to HBO than cable. Supporting this is their original operating model: a subscription fee that got you DVDs mailed to your house. Just like a subscription fee to Blockbuster that got you a certain number of rentals per month.
Don’t try to normalize it by claiming “it’s always been this way,” because it hasn’t.
Television was free. Netflix was originally movies. Movies don’t have ads (not specific, non-story related ones, anyway; they’ve always had product placement). It’s been only relatively recently that Netflix has gotten into the episodic game, which is even less justification for ad breaks, because episodes are shorter than movies. Which have no ads.
You’re entitled to pay for what you like and be happy with it, buy fuck if I’m going to pay someone to watch their ads. If I was a TV watcher, I’d pay for choice - a thousand channels, with ad-ridden content. I draw the line at going to a movie theater, paying for a ticket, and then having the movie interrupted with ads, which is what this is equivalent to. You can always skip the ones up front with timing, and fuck those ads too.
There are no ads on the CD I bought from the merch table at a concert last week.
I think your argument is so contrary to the ad-free reality I experience every day, I don’t think there’s any point of counter argue you as we will probably never find a common ground to debate our differing viewpoints on.
What old age are you talking about? Television was not invented in the 2000’s.
And if you don’t like ads, then that is the problem.
Regardless, Netflix has historically been delivered without ads which many seem to like. You do you, take a break and watch some ads every 20 minutes, but I won’t, and will especially not pay to do it.
This point doesnt really make sense when you consider that there are TV channels that don’t have ads like any of the BBC channels, PBS and even Disney Channel. They are channels that only promote their own other shows but for the most part don’t have ads in between the shows.