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U.S. Logo-Free TV Broadcast Organizations?
iluvpr0n asks: "I ran across The UK Campaign for LOGO FREE TV and admired their goals for encouraging television broadcasters to stop taking up valuable screen space with their annoying and brightly-colored logos. It's not enough to be bombarded with 8 minutes of commercials during programs, but they also need to deface a supposedly artistic work (yes, for most of television that's highly debatable) to enhance their 'brand identity' initiatives. Is anyone aware of groups with this goal operating in the US (or other non-UK locations)?" Do we really need these things anymore? I'm sure most television viewers out there can associate shows to networks, these days.
Like that
Just to spite people who capture off the air shows and archive them onto CD. :) At least thats what I'm thinking...
What, me worry?
I thought those things were on there for copyright protection. Sort of like video watermarking.
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
This is silly. All the shows I watch are on the Sony network, but the only way I know is that they slap there logo on it. They've got it rigged now so that it's even there when my TV is off. I think that's going too far!
-- MarkusQ
Sometimes I find subtle, semi-transparent logos helpful when flipping around, since every house I go to seems to have a different cable system with completely different numbering scheme. It's really annoying. Perhaps they could standardize channel numbers....
m00.
When I actually have time to watch TV, I really don't give a damn what particular channel I'm watching. It appears that the various networks really want us to know, though. The Discover channels seem to be the worst. It really pisses me off to be watching a show and to miss part of it due to the logo in the corner. Oh well, I'd rather play games or code anyway.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
Although it *is* annoying, it is a matter of choice to patronize those airwaves. I'm sure there are people who can come up with some sort of "IP" violation for taking up screen space on somoene else's artwork, but for now...live with it. You don't HAVE to watch network TV.
Just ask Microsoft or their partners if its a good idea to voluntarily remove their logo. Their investors depend on it for their lives.
I like those little logos. I've used them countless times when I try to find the station that some show is playing on but don't know the specific channel number.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
For those of us who have rear-projection sets or CRT video projectors, these logos, especially the bright ones like the Weather Channel, NBC, etc., can damage the sets. If you leave it on the same channel too long, you get burn-in.
is get rid of that stupid anouncer on the WB that has to use that annoying serious voice when talking about their soap operas. "Tonight on Seventh heven, blah blah blah"
I hope this guy dies soon.
...on re-runs of Saturday Night Live.
You can tell right away if a commercial on the show is real or not - the (usually) hilarious SNL bogus commercials have the damn Comedy Network logo on 'em.
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Granted, most stations are pretty good about putting it in the lower right of the screen, but every so often it covers a detail that I want to catch. SciFi Channel, USA, TBS, etc., have been doing it for years, and I'd love to see the practice stop.
If anyone finds out about a concerted effort in the States to get rid of the silly things, please say so. Thanks!
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
With new GUI interfaces built into devices such as TiVo, satellite receivers, and digital cable boxes, the logo no longer serves a useful purpose.
In the past, the networks needed to provide a way for the viewer to know what station they were watching. Now the set top box does that for them.
And believe me, every viewer in the world would love to see the logo go away.
Now I know somebody has too much time on their hands.
It's TV for pity's sake. If you want to see cinematic glory, watch it on video or DVD.
I can see individual complaints, but an organization? Your life is way too empty if this is a cause for you.
Doh!
I hate it when I do that!
-- MarkusQ
I'm sure most television viewers out there can associate shows to networks, these days.
I can think of at least 5 shows off the top of my head that appear on at least 2 stations currently, even with my limited (UK Digital Terrestrial) range of channels.
Admittedly they are mostly US syndicated shows, but not all. A lot of BBC shows are ending up on UK Gold, UK Living, Granada+ and so on. The rest are things like Frasier, Friends, The Simpsons, Futurama, Buffy, Seinfeld and similar 'big' shows, where a subscription channel (Sky One, Paramount) usually has a newer season of the same show being shown on a free-to-air station (BBC 2, C4).
I think there is less and less association of shows with networks.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
People who leave those things on their TV's should be gently throttled until they see reason.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I fail to see the huge deal in this argument?
Logos have never really bothered me, and most networks now use an alpha effect of a transparent logo, so it doesn't really take up space...
Now, if they were to get rid of car, feminine product, and lawyer commericals, that'd be a group I could really side with
For the most part I like the logos. Having 150 channels on your TV makes it a nightmare to remember what they all are. The logo tells me what station I have stopped at while surfing. My TV allows me to program Channel captions for this reason, but it only holds 50 of them.
I'm not a huge TV watcher, wish I had a TIVO to just record the stuff I really like (Farscape, History Channel, various classic movies that I probably wouldn't buy but do want to watch in their entirety like 'Office Space', etc), but I don't. Sometimes I find it quite useful while flipping through cable channels to see those little logo's down in the corner. Helps me determine if the channel is worth slowing down for in the mad dash to change channels, as I keep forgetting which channels are which. Perhaps if there was a simple way to just request through the cable providers to turn those little icons on or off before and after hooking up the cable, now that would be something.
I've said it once, I'll say it again... Don't watch television. At all. Ever. Period. When I drive by houses and see that telltale blue glow of a TV, it reduces my opinion of that person. Get off your ass and do something. Television is geared towards the mentality of a moron. Do something productive instead of sitting on your ass.
I wish there would be something like this for the US. It is an absolute disgrace that now TNN has changed its name from Nashville to National and started airing cool reruns of STTNG and I have to watch it though a horrendous bottom bar. Not just a transparent logo in the corner, but a continuous ugly black bar all the way across the bottom. I cant even read the text when they translate for Klingons (the horror).
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
I remember hearing the technical names for these logos are DOG.
Digital
On-Screen
Graphics
Anyway, i can think of two reason for them , 1) To stop people record a movie , and acting like its a gunine copy.
2) To stop other chanells nicking their stuff. Over here in Ireland they often show stuff from Sky Sports on the news (with permission i am sure), but there is no doubth where is from with the Big Sky Sports logo on the screen.
Cruise TT
This is certainly an admirable goal, but with conventional commercials quickly becoming totally ineffective (thanks to personal recorders with skipping features as well as more channels to flip to), I'd expect logos to be the least of our worries. From now on, you'll have to either deal with the morphing logos, advertising bars, virtual (and increasingly brazen) product placement, and other assorted in-show advertising, or actually start paying for your channels, HBO style. I don't really think that's such a bad thing... with increased demand for ad-free/light premium-style channels prices will drop, quality will go up, and you won't have to wade through crap. But, it'll cost you.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Most of the logo's are translucent. Like the scores/info of a football game, if its semi-translucent, you can still see the action when it happens where the score is.
Honestly, you don't pay for local stations, the advertisers do. So its not really your choice.
And another thing, when I post a message, do I really need to see that slashdot logo? Its taking up my valuable website art.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
... are tv shows on channels that are re-broadcasting it from another channel - you'll have a logo in two corners of the tv, and occasionally three. Ugly when watching, even worse if you're taping something.
But I doubt it's going to change. The people that care about it aren't near the majority of the people that just watch tv.
those encoders (or whatever they are) that put that logo down in the corner are actually quite expensive. but at least you'll never find youself saying "what channel is this"
JediLuke
-Do or Do Not, There is no Try
The logos don't really bother me much cause theyre good for identifying the channel, really.
what DOES bug me however is how they REMOVE the logos when theyre running commercials. More respect for the commercials than for the "supposed art".
I'm not sure how it is elsewhere but that's how it is here in Sweden for all channels except MTV, who just simplify the logo for the ads but don't remove it completely (most of the time they have a huge glaring colorful blinking logo cause of some "theme" or other).
The little logo upsets people so much that an organization is formed to fight it? Television owes us nothing. It is a free services (you can get it from the airwaves) or you can pay for a delivery mechanism (cable), but otherwise it is free content. And yes, the broadcasters broadcast for one thing only. $$$. the more money they make, the happier they are. Kind of like why i go to work everyday. to make money.
You do not have to watch broadcast tv. donate to PBS if you like. And if you do not like their little logo, do not donate, and explain to them why.Or, if you want, you can start paying for TV content (micropayments per show) or a monthly fee per station (HBO, Cinemax) and avoid commercials and logos all together.
And it is not "vandalism". Vandalism is when someone defaces someone elses property. The content is the property of the broadcasters, and they can do with it what they want.
Half the time you cannot read the captions on the screen bottom. Anyone try to watch MTV's pop up video lately? The have so many logos that you can't see the goofy "fact" pop ups half the time.
The companion website to the book "No Logo" (which is featured on logofreetv.org.uk is here:
http://www.nologo.org/
Interestingly it runs slashcode.
All the mainstream channels don't include any tags and wouldn't dare to do so, however since the launch of DigitalTV around three years ago and the numerous stations that came with it... they started to put logo's on channels to differentiate themselves (so you can tell crap from crap).
But it seems it caught on and even the new BBC channels include it like BBC Choice, Knowledge and News24, they all include a subtle alpha channelled logo in the top left, for MTV/Music and News it's not really that bad but if you want to sit down and watch a programme then they become annoying.
But at least we don't have to contend with any adverts on some channels, I sometimes watch ABC evening news here, there is a break every 4-5 minutes, then the news is filled with sentimental dross in-between, you watch it and feel as informed as watching a brick wall, they call this news ?!? Fox News isn't even worth mentioning, do people serious watch that?
At least CNN has something going for it.
AFAIK, over here anyway, most of the networks put their logos in some way transparent, so it has this cool embossed-into-the-show effect. You don't even really notice it unless you look for it.
:)
If they were opaque, however, I could see the problem - but I wonder if the advertisers have something to do with this as well. Perhaps they ask that the networks show that it's THEM they got the advertising from.. don't have a clue why this would be an issue, but we've seen dumber
I recently started to collect the current series of Junkyard Wars episodes to watch with my father who does not have that channel. After the first, I checked on the web I found that there were only seven shows for the season. I decided to try and fit the last six on the five hours remianing on the VHS tape by capturing with a Tivo and then moving to VHS sans commercials. I found that the actual program was only about 45 mins of the hour. I have since found that this is typical.
I also highly recommend the Panasonic VCRs with the Commercial advance feature. It works pretty well, well enough for me to not be aware that the commercial percentage was so high.
I think that the small logo in the corner is a little annoying but I have seen it get worse. There have been times when I have seen the network, then the US flag and then other logos, all adding up to about 3 to 5 logos on the screen. On a 20 inch TV this makes for small viewing. :-(
What is worse is AT&T's digital cable service now has advertisements in its on line TV guide. It used to be that you could see 12 channels at a time when you press the guide button, but now it is about 8 channels and 4 ad's. This makes it slower to browse the digital TV guide. I called and apparantly noone likes this but they don't care cause what can I do? Get satelite like my brother and then possibly not get the local stations (he doesn't)?
While logos are bad I think that being bombarded with advertisements is worse. Look at yahoo and their new popup window ads.
Only 'flamers' flame!
On the other hand, with a zillion cable channels that I, at least, don't remember most of, it's useful to have a small logo. Anyway, it's not at all clear to me how this group expects to have any effect. A petition? "Demonstrate and calculate the cost of ignoring the problem logos."?
I'm skpetical about the claim that the logos are there to discourage piracy. Is anyone really trafficking bootleg C-Span or Weather Channel broadcasts or Dharma and Greg episodes? And if so, are they going to be deterred by a network logo?
...because when i'm really fucking stoned i keep forgetting which channel i'm watching...
update comments set karma=-1, reason='offtopic' where sid=26315
The logos annoy me too, away with them, I say.
I've never understood why a movie studio, television network, or record company would go to so much bother to establish a brand. When I buy a movie ticket, CD, or choose a TV station, I do it because I'm interested in the content - the story or the music - not because I'm a fan of the production company. I couldn't even tell you what studios produced my all-time favorite movies or what labels produce my all-time favorite records, and I suspect I'm not alone.
I don't watch much TV, but I would have a hard time believing that anyone would turn to a particluar TV station to watch a show they dislike just because it's on their favorite network. And the logos don't serve any other purpose.
Is the reason they put those logos there for "brand recognition," that is, so you know what channel you're watching? Or is it so when someone tapes a show there's a watermark of sorts saying "this show belongs to this network." To distinguish from, say, episodes sold on tape. Or, so if a video shows up on the net, they can tell what area it came from (if your local network uses a localized logo eg. with call letters).
I'm just curious. I don't like the annoying logos either (they tend to sit right on top of something I want to see, like a sports ticker). Just wondering what the reason is for using them (besides "because we can").
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
-
I accomplished the task by isolation the logo (scanned which pixels were relatively stationary, giving priority to the corners.
- I then tracked the edges of the logos, and picked up the color values just beyond the borders of these pixels.
- In repainting a pixel, I'd average out the pixels on the left, right, up, and down, and weight each one based on how close to that particular edge the replacement pixel was being drawn.
You'd be surprised how well it works.Transparent logos are a bit more difficult to detect, but they're less obtrusive. In addition, if this were implemented as a full-blown product, it could easily build a library of company logos and associate those logos with the channel that is being watched, so the logo detection wouldn't be necessary.
What does annoy me is the increasing amount of 'informative' bars at the bottom of the screen, occupying as much as 1/3rd of the entire screen. CNN has been a prime example, with two, three, four and more layers of scrolling info banner mania, using mattes all over the places just so that the wavey background can hold a 'mercan flag blowing in the wind. Or waterfall of unintelligible colors, pictures etc.
(Funny enough, CNN International is considerably less fatty compared with the domestic CNN feed).
With this amount of clutter & redundancy, I might just as well listen to radio as the visual content disappears in peautiful visual spam.
Whatever happened to the classy screen designs? On screen "art" should support the information and not become a self-purpose.
If distracting from the actual information was the goal, mission accomplished, going boldly where local news has gone before.
Poof.
This would be wonderful.
I've noticed this more and more. Yes, it's kind of annoying but it wasn't that big a deal. But here in the last couple of weeks I've been watching a show and missed something in the corner that was obscured by the logo. I'll admit that not much happens in the corners but when it does, it's usually important, and I want to see it.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
It allows me to know the instant I have flipped to the WB that what ever I am watching is going to suck!!!
I freely admit to being a wrestling fan (ducks), as a result WWF Smackdown is one of the only things I bother with on a regular basis (outside of news, the Red Sox, and an occasional This Old House episode). And when I get my weekly fix, I get not just one logo (UPN's) in the lower _right_ corner of the screen, I get the horrifyingly ugly (and not even translucent) WWF logo in the lower left corner! It wastes a significant amount of screen real estate, and just looks dumb.
Now there is a reason they do it - WWF actually owns the time that Smackdown runs on (as they do with all their shows), and so they brand their content as does the network (which brands _everything_). But it's still silly.
I'm sure there's other programs with similar double-branding, but I haven't seen them.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Everybody's got a brand to plug...
Eric
Be who you are...and be it in style!
I don't think these things are going away any time soon. After they were brought to the attention of the USA's general public with CNN's coverage of the Persian Gulf War, practically every major network latched on to the practice and haven't let go.
They've been in place for 10 years now. Flipping through normal cable TV, I don't think I can see anyone who doesn't do it, aside from the premium movie channels (thank goodness.)
Ian
The problem from the TV station's perspective is that you really do need to be reminded that you're watching their network. With many cable and satellite systems having over a hundred channels, they're afraid of getting lost in the mix. If you watch and enjoy one show that they air, they want you to think of them the next time you channel surf to find something else to watch.
Personally, I think that it's all a bunch of bunk. They may get a few more viewers here and there, but nothing that would be statistically relevant in the ratings.
Now what would be really cool is to get my ReplayTV to detect the "bugs" and digitally remove them. (If you think they're annoyed with the current round of lawsuits...) Of course, there are technical problems in that the bugs actually remove information--you could mostly compensate on the transluctent ones, but even then not entirely.
Oh, nevermind.
Poof.
DJ's used to always speak over the start and end of songs. This was to ensure anyone recording radio got a poorer quality version then they would if they bought the record.
I thought these logos were there to server a similar purpose; to contaminate recordings.
No?
Actually, they do it so that you always know who's PROPERTY the broadcast is. They could care less about brand identification ... they do it so that when PVR'd copies of programs show up online, it's easier for them to claim ownership.
Now, when will we see software to EXTRACT these logo's?
You know, I actually like them. I just moved to a new area and my cable channel numbers are completely different. It's hard to get used to the new numbers (I can't even remember the number for the TV Guide channel so I can look up other channel numbers!) so the little icons come in handy when I'm looking for a particular channel.
Further, it means that if their shows are copied -- whether taped on a VCR, or stills shown on entertainment news or whatever -- that there's a little ``hey, this is the work of CBS/NBC/ABC/...'' sign in the bottom, which doesn't seem all that unreasonable.
Let me see if I get this straight. Vocal slashdotters want PVRs that can skip the commercials that pay for the production of the programs. Vocal slashdotters also want the networks to air programming without product placements that pay for the production of the programs. And vocal slashdotters feel it is their right to dictate what programmers can put on the screen at any given time.
My recomendation would be that vocal slashdotters stop watching TV as it is obviously not what you want. Listen to Geeks in Space re-runs for entertainment. OR, if you do enjoy The Simpsons, or god-forbid, The West Wing, you can pay for it out of your pocket or put up with the aforementioned "intrusions".
I like The Sopranos so I pay for HBO. I don't know when quality TV programming became a natural right. I don't pay for The Simpsons out of my pocket, so I'm willing to put up with whatever the fine folks at Fox can dish out. And when I don't like it anymore, I'LL STOP WATCHING.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
My girlfriend's mom watches MSNBC so much, the logo is burned into her television. Now it's hard to tell if you're NOT watching it. :)
Let the audience decide what they will and will not tolerate on TV.
A good reason they are there is the fact that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the difference between what's a show, for example the news, and a commercial. Advertisers use very deceiving commercials sometimes to try and make you think its actually coming from the network, eg; an infomercial, sometimes they are made to look like talk shows, using the logo is a good way to see that its not anything other then a commercial.
As a loyal television viewer, I feel that it is my right to enjoy television the way I see fit. Seeing a small logo superimposed over my favorite television shows deprives me of my right. With all of the talk being made on web-sites like The Slashing Dot about content control, I wonder: when do we, the viewers, get to control the content ourselves?
I consider myself to be probably the smartest user on the American Internet today. For example, are you aware that many web pages use "banner advertising" or "popped up advertisements"? It's true, whether or not you realize it. However, I have downloaded a piece of soft-ware known as the Junking Buster which defeats those advertisements. Now I can surf the web seeing only content which is relevant, such as these comments. Now, what about television (or "TV")? I have purchased a device which allows me to watch T-V shows not at the times set by the closed-minded networks, but at my own leisure. It cost me over $400, but I consider it to be far superior to watching T-V with advertisements.
Watching T-V programs with the help of my Delayed Recording Device (or "DRD") has helped greatly, and is a means of content control. However, although my DRD has over seventy features on its remote-control (hereinafter "remocon") I do not see any option to remove the logos. Because I am releasing the soft-ware for my DRD and T-V into the public domain, I expect that one of you "hackers" (hereinafter "crackers") will enable me to remove the logo from my programs.
I look forward to hearing from you.
For more information, click here.
Not to mention the fact that Fox changed the panel behind home plate to advertise Fox shows during the world series.
Is this really any different from the other mangling of the shows that networks have been doing? They've been talking over the credits for years, often totally destroying the tone set by a dramatic ending. More recently, they've squished the credits to the side, making them impossible to read, so they can show ads for upcoming shows. Personally, I would just as soon they not bother showing the credits; I suspect the only reasons they do are that one, they are required by contract to do so, and two they then don't have to count the time as advertising.
This mangling the programming attitude has been taken much further by CNN and copied by its clones. First, they put financial tickers on. Then sports tickers. Now news tickers, even during live coverage of a major Presidential speach. Headline News is virtually unwatchable--it's like watching RealPlayer in the corner of a web page--ick.
What is needed is a broad-based opposition to program mangling, be it logos, tickers, credits, or whatnot.
its about new viewers.
who do you think all commercials and ads a postioned to?
ages 10-20. as a general rule, once someone has started by something regularl, like the same deoderant) it is very hard to get them to change brands once there over 20.
so a product must be pounded into our brains so its there when we make that criticle decesion on a product will use for a very long time.
thats why they put there logos there, so new viewers will get brand identification.
personally I think this issue is someone else did it, so we must do it just to maintain the same brand exposure.
I hate the things, I didn't buy a big tc just to have 5-10%of the picture ruined by that amn logo.
I do see a day when everything is broadcast in a 'letter box' format, and the black space is filled with ads.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm sorry, but I can't argue against the watermarks. For one thing, in the US it's an easy way to mark the exact moment that all this jingoistic fever wears off: just watch for the network logos to stop being star-spangled ;)
What's wrong is that they need to be used more effectively. Cartoon Network is pretty good example for this...their logo appears and disappears, so it's not a constant presence but you NOTICE it when it's there (which is the point).
What's more, for the Adult Swim block the logo becomes "ADULT SWIM". When Adult Swim started there was an ad at the beginning saying "all kids under 18, outta the pool!" Apparently the lazy parents are complaining about risque TV again, because now there's a warning before *every single show*. I think the Adult Swim watermark is plenty warning for concerned citizens, and that the ******** soccer moms should shut their collective trap and use the tools that CN gives them.
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
I always thought those logos were sort of a poor-man's copy protection. Just in case you recorded the show (or captured it, or tivo'd it...) the logo would show up and let the viewer know that whatever they were watching orgininally aired on the network
There is no choice: all TV stations do it, "network" or not. Teletoon and YTV have the most hideous animated ones that pop up in the middle of the shows. What, like we suddenly forgot to look at the bottom corner transparent logo?!
It's bad enough that they do the "squeeze and tease" on every show.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Interesting that on every /. page the top of the page has an ad, and the top left has the slashdot logo. Little transparent logos don't bother me on TV, its the damn full color moving ones that flop around all the time and are distracting. The thing that is more annoying is what TLC and Discovery do a lot. Putting a ticker line at the bottom of the screen telling you whats on the third Wednesday of next June. It seems like every time it comes on the screen, it covers up something important.
If it ain't a Model M, it's a piece of crap.
yup, it's true!
The full discussion is here -- page down to the entry from "97/07/18" (that's 07/18/1997 for us 'mercans).
-Scott
-Scott Hutton
When quickly channel-surfing, the logos remind you what channel you're watching. This is a plus in my book!
sulli
RTFJ.
Ok - A lesson in TV Production... I was watching the local PBS channel this weekend. They have an all-white logo in the lower right-hand corner of the screen.
They were playing a documentary about life in another country, which was heavily subtitled...in white text. So, you would get statements like, "Why did you put the plates in the TV30"
Apparently, ignorance is color-blind...
It could happen if there were some sort of customization between digital TV signals and your TV set. But it won't happen. That's because TV producers are all about "interactive TV" ever since the Internet starting siphoning away their viewership.
If anything, logos are just the beginning of this trend. Check out MSNBC, CNN, or Foxnews to see where we're headed.
I personally can say that I never pay attention to what station I am watching. With a 100 stations to get through on any given night, I set my remote control on "high" and start clicking. If I find something interesting, I stay. Not until I find something worth sharing that I pay any attention to the little logos in the bottom of the screen. "Dude, you wont believe what they are showing on XYZ station!" Not that I like the logos, but I agree that they have gotten out of control. A couple of times I have even seen them putting logos on top of logos. Talk about getting confusing, and irritating.
Logos are pitiful and need to be eliminated. That would be the jurisdiction of the FCC. What is really annoying are the commercials that come on LOUDER than the program material. Whether it be by volume or modulation, that crap needs to stop also. Forever.
Isn't this fairly hypocritical? Everyone here wants free speech, but aren't going to let the busineses have a say? Think before you post a double standard.
GeneralKael -- Slacker Extraordinaire
I seriously doubt anyone "enjoyed" Crusade. If taping B5 is all we needed to do to keep Crusade from airing, I would have done it twice!!
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
These logos are becoming larger, more colorful, and now animated. I find that it distracts me from concentrating on what's going on in the show - its hard to "lose myself" in a good movie when a logo pops up, dances around, and thus interrupts my light trance!
Another thing that's bothersome is this trend of commercials, esp. drug commercials, being less discreet in revealing the intimimate details about what it is their product does. There was a time when "do you have that not-so-fresh feeling?" was as indiscreet as advertising got. Now, we have toilet paper commercials that zoom in on peoples asses (and show cartoon bears grinning with satisfaction as they experience that "I'm taking a big shit" feeling), as well as drug companies that explicitly discuss the details about herpes, genital warts, and vaginal dryness.
I'm not talking about censorship - just about self-review in the name of good taste. If I had kids, I would NOT want to be cornered into explaining to the young ones what genital warts or herpes are all about, because of whats on in the early afternoon or prime time. I find it, not offensive persay, but lacking in good taste and good judgement.
Besides, if you have herpes or genital warts, I would imagine that you will indeed be able to locate a product that suits your needs without the assistance of explicitly detailed television advertising. Am I wrong?
Within three years, given this trend, we will be subject to gigantic dancing logos, scrolling advertising banners and jingles, cartoon bear turds, and graphic representations or photos of these herpes and warts being shrunken by proper medication. Television is turning into garbage. Perhaps that's why I watch so much less of it than I used to.
Occasionally I hear talk about creating a Linux-based/GPL/Open Source/whatever TIVO equivilent. For all you programmers who are working on this, I've got an idea for you:
Another poster brought up the notion of archiving TV shows to CD. Personally, I see this as time-shifting for my children, so that when they're old enough to understand decent TV (I'm thinking Samurai Jack and West Wing), it will be available. I'm also not counting on the quality of our shows getting better from a writing and aesthetic viewpoint just because HDTV is around the corner, or that the shows I like will be released on DVD.
Anyway. For those of us who like to burn our own VCDs, publicly-available authoring tools like VCDImagerGUI and TMPGEnc have downloadable filters that can blot out those pesky station ID logos from captured footage, or replace them with interpolated video data that doesn't totally suck to look at. Check out VCDHelp.com for lots of useful information on capturing, converting, and authoring VCDs, and where to get the tools to do it.
Tatsujin
Hear, hear.. AT&T's digital box and guide are simply the WORST interfaces to TV viewing I've seen. I'm guessing you have the general instruments DCT box like me.. it's a slow and outdated platform. Changing channels (even analog) takes at least 3 seconds, and it's covered with ads (don't we pay for this service?). I called too, there is no other box available. I asked what type of digital system it was, so I could purchase a replacement box.. the rep told me that was illegal. I told her it wasn't, I had a right to own my equipment, but she wouldn't tell me anything more.
From the way I see it, the little logo in the corner serves as a reminder as to which station or network you are tuned into. Channel surfers who are flipping through the programs often like to know which network or station they are tuned into should they find a program that they like.
There is A much older anti-logo site at http://www.msen.com/~mwg/anti-logo-links.html
Over time, the logos grew larger, more opaque, staying on-screen 100% of the time, and lately I've been seeing more and more animated logos. They're getting to be as obnoxious as banner ads.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What's worse, though, is the National Weather Service alarm and voice! The other day I was watching Enterprise and suddenly the alert tone sounded and I was listening to a weather report. The problem is, they didn't even attempt to layer it in -- they obliterated the audio completely! And the worst part is I was watching a recording, so it didn't even apply. (That and they didn't even bother to put text across the bottom.)
So I say I'll trade the logo for the weather thing any day.
(file also available in low, medium, and download versions from airfarce.com)
but it reminded me that the premiere of The Tick is on this week.
:)
It could be worse. It could've been an ainmated gif or a shock the monkey for $20 or a Java/Flash animation. If this happens, the first person to make Junkbuster for TV will be rich
I think there are two issues here.
One is trying to stuff extra information onto the screen, including branding info. When CNN is being the Anthrax channel, it's nice to read the real news in the little box at the bottom of the screen.
The other issue is copyright enforcement. Having the network ID "bug" burned into the title-safe area of the screen makes it easier for them to go after competitors (big or small, but usually small) who rebroadcast their video. And someday (maybe sooner than you think) it will make it easier to go after all you time shifting, commercial skipping, tape swapping anarchists out there!
We should all demand our money back from the networks. These logo bugs are outrageous!
What? The networks provide entertainment for FREE? Never mind...
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
The logos are on the screen so that any recorded copies that pop up will have a logo on them. It's probably some kind of legal trick so that the networks can scream about copyright infringment, theft of service, or their "campaign du jour" to outlaw fair use.
One possible problem in search of this solution would be low-budget independent stations taping re-runs from other channels and replaying them. Then again, I wonder if there are any independents left.
Frankly, I like having the bugs on cable networks, as long as they're translucent, and limited to one (1).
With most cable systems now carrying upwards of 50 channels, I think they're pretty handy when I'm looking for a channel on a unknown system.
On the flipside, I don't think networks need them at all. Most cable systems (to my knowledge) follow the convention that the local networks are on the lower-numbered channels (except for maybe UPN or WB), and even then most of us have associated the big shows with the networks, if we even bother to pay attention. Aside from evening shows or soaps, why would I look for someone's NBC anyway? They all schedule the off-hours independently.
Of course, I should kick in here that associating shows with networks is pretty dumb for viewers anyway. As if Simpsons made the rest of FOX's shows good...
It seems like the only channels that can really benefit from branding are theme-targetted cable channels. You want some interesting non-fiction? You might need a bug to tell you quickly if you're learning about guns (Discovery) or a specific war (History). Looking for an abused woman triumphing over adversity? You might need a bug to tell if you're watching a drama (Lifetime) or an opening to a bad sci-fi movie (Sci-fi).
As long as bugs are translucent and don't distort/cover text, I don't mind them. But does Friends need it? Not really. I doubt the Friends viewer cares.
-Grant/JimTheta
My stupid web site
What really pisses me off about network branding is this "CNN has learned that baked beans make you fart" crap! I wouldn't mind if it really was a network specific journalistic scoop, but invariably it's some days old news that has just filtered up to the level of the networks attention. If you want cutting edge news then netowrk TV is not the place to go.
Actually CNN is one of the best - at least they don't have garbage stories such as ABC news declaring Bentonite *CLAY* a "potent" and "troubling" Anthrax additive.
There is not a thing in the world stopping any of you that have x, y, and/or z complaint about entertainment to go out and make your own.
Pool your money, buy/lease a channel, make a studio and broadcast away with no commercials and no icons. Buy/lease a transponder and offer it to satellite and cable viewers.
Knock yourselves out guys! Can't wait to see it!
Of course, I will have to find it by accident, since you will not make any intrusions on billboards, newspapers, radio, etc. Right?
Afterwards, when you are broke you can whine about how "the man" kept you down, create a fund and live like Greenpeace/Pacifica/Neil from "The Young Ones" hippies.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
The animated ones are damned annoying, but the relatively small, static ones dont bother me at all. (Like the small, translucent one FOX uses.) These are rather useful when flipping through the channels.
Liberty in your lifetime
Also a lot of news services attach logos to released footage of course. If the news organization is obscure in the U.S., for example Al-Jazeera, it is fair, in my opinion, to include a logo. Those people, (here I'm thinking of footage in Kabul) invested money and put their bums on the line to get that footage, and if their credit is a little too blaring, well, go get your own damn footage.
These days video gets passed around a lot more freely than it used to. If the people who got it for you want you to be reminded in a relatively unobtrusive fashion, that's their perogative.
Some people here complain that it's damaging the artistry. I have done some video and I know that TV video, as a format, is relatively not "solid", compared with, say, text or paintings... Every TV has different distortion properties, the corners may be cut off if it's not a Trinitron, the colors, of course, are unreliable. My point is that purity of experience in TV video is not going to happen, because of the nature of the system. These people aren't being very reasonable.
--hongpong.com
It is not uncommon for a station to re-use news footage or network feeds from another station, with or without permission.
When the translucent small 'bugs' first appeared, the 'pirating' stations would sometimes cover up the original station's info by using a larger, more opaque 'bug'
And so began the logo wars...
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
A blessing in disguise? How about a PVR that looks for the absence of 'bugs' to skip recording commercials?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
What I hate worse then TV ads and logos are the ones on Radio. I quit listening to local radio ever since all they carried was country, rap, and britney spears and boy band stuff. It all sounds the same (makes my ears bleed). When I do listen to local radio (in gf's car) what I hate is between EVERY song they play that little "your listing to Y101, Z106, 95 The Beat, etc" between every song. As if I'd forget between every song that I'm listening to your crappy radio station anyway. I think I can associate 95.5 with 95 the beat without having to hear it every 5 minutes, etc...
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
but since you asked Kill the Bug
Those little logos don't bother me on things like live sports, but they are totally distracting when watching a movie or good drama. Especially those that show up really bright when the full frame is dark.
But the most annoying trend on television is the MSNBC-style banners. I noticed this especially during the September 11 coverage. I swear, the huge banner on the bottom of the screen took up almost 1/3 of the height of the screen, and had basically NO information on it. WTF is up with that? These people need to get some designers in there that know how to put the most information in the least amount of space.
I don't need a huge banner to tell me the name of someone who's face I can't see because it's half covered up by said banner!
"And like that
Do they really think that we're *that* stupid that we don't know what channel we're watching, and have to totally interrupt the show just to tell us?
I'd say these qualify in the same area as pop-ups
AC comments get piped to
Well, it seems that consumers are starting to feel overwhelmed at the flood of advertising of recent marketing campaigns.. AND ITS ABOUT TIME.
First off I would like to point out that a logo on a channel has little to no effect, I'm sure I am not the only one to use the display button to see what channel im watching(even if there is a logo). Also that I do not need to be reminded what channel I'm watching. If different channels had different programming maybe the networks wouldn't feel obliged to let us know. (wait a minute.. encouraging different types of programming and increasing the level of quality of programs would be bad because the networks would have to spend more money, thus decreasing their profits and rendering unable to keep their crappy webpages)
Whats worse is that if you count the program itself (without the logo), television is really a non-stop ad. (and you thought the pop-up ad spam on the net was annoying.. i hate what ad companies used flash for this). And I will not mention the fact that most commercials really suck. Theres no intelligent way of putting it. Whats worse is that companies pay advertising companies for this crap.
Too bad the post wasn't about program selection on television channels. The number of law-and-order clones keeps increasing and primetime tv is oriented for little school girls with half a brain. Thank god baseball is done this season and hockey has started.
I seem to remember one UK broadcaster (Sky, perhaps) who, after the ads were shown, displayed the logo in the corner of the screen for the next minute or so, and then it went. This was fair enough. Now all Irish broadcasters and some of the UK broadcasters show their logo during every program, but not during ads.
Personally I don't mind the logo so long as it's no-obtrusive. The Irish logos are translucent and light in color. You don't really notice them unless the scene is dark. UTV (part of the ITV group) show an ugly Blue and Yellow logo which is really annoying.
If they have to show a logo, they it should be small, un-obtrusive, far into a corner, and translucent - kinda like a small watermark that you won't really notice.
T.
---
http://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml
I don't watch TV often, but a few weeks ago I heard that the Discovery channel would have a show about the Mars Society's efforts on Devon Island this Wednesday. Over the weekend, I tried to figure out whether my dorm gets the Discovery channel. Very few students here watch TV regularly, so they weren't able to tell me whether we get the channel. After a student in another dorm pointed out that the Discovery channel always keeps their logo on the screen, I was quickly able to determine that our cable service does not carry the channel. Once I gave up on cable, I asked around to find a satellite hookup, and found one after about 10 minutes.
(The satellite system would show you the name of each channel as you flipped channels, making the channel logos less important.)
The shareholder is always right.
There are certain network that offend me the most... CNN for reducing their video to about 1/3 of the screen. TLC for occasionaly playing animated 'advertisments' for other shows (example Junk Yard Wars where they will play an animated graphic with the a very annoying sound of a car crash) FOX for advertising other shows during the start of a show TNN for cutting off the bottom section of screen to show TNN and the name of the show and sometimes the event, for example: Star Trek Marathon: A five-day mission) --during the whole show
What they are doing is not an FCC-legal ID. The FCC requires the *broadcast* station to ID with their callsign, not their network name. AFAIK, there is no requirement for a cable station to ID.
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
..and it isn't easy to keep track of them! This is compounded by the fact that I don't watch very often.
Personally, I like the logo.
I know this isn't what the guy was looking for, but oh well.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I do not see anything wrong in the logo.
It should not be too large but I find the
logo useful for checking what is the channel I am
watching right now. I hate commercials but
I can't anything wrong in logos.
CU,
Kubus
It's worse than being annoying.
TVs that are especially susceptible to burn-in, like rear projection TVs can actually be damaged by these logos.
I really don't have a problem with the network logos, since most are transparent and fairly unintrusive. I was watching some channel last night, though, and they did a Southwestern Bell "Bug" right next to their logo for about 30 seconds. Had nothing to do with the show I was watching, or even the channel I was on. It was a stupid ad, pure and simple. That just looked like too much of a banner ad to me, and really put me off.
Any marketer who's followed the internet should know that adding ads to your content doesn't work very often. Most people just tune them out mentally. Why even bother, when the only thing you're going to accomplish is making people change the channel? Logos and even adverts for coming shows are fine, since they do have something to do with the watching experience, but irrelevant ads like for phone companies have no place and should be discouraged with a quick change of the dial.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
for a "C and L chip"? Heck, if the introduction of a "V" chip for violence was a thought, it should follow (via my leap of logic, mind you) that a 'commercial' and 'logo' chip should also be introduced.
/. you can turn off the pretty pictures if you so desire or use lynx or turn off all grfx (gasp, can we *do that*?) in your browser of choice.
At least on
It almost makes me wish that TV's had multiple resolutions...that way if the logo's were superimposed over the video at say "tv's 800x600, then at 1024x768 all we have to do is use a PVR to crop out the 'garbage', yes?"
Some people might think of me as a heretic for suggesting that the web in not really an entertainment medium, that is what TV is for.
But, my argument still holds 'water' with the odd leak even though I've downloaded "Enterprise" episodes I've missed off of Usenet.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Usenet and "the Web" are seperate entities, seperate protocols used over TCP/IP, no?
Is it so far of a stretch to say the same about local stations, versus normal cable versus digital cable?
Or, to be more succinct: The less garbage I see on my screen the better (TV or Web).
And if the networks are so worried about their viewership getting lost in all those channels, how about helping to make the local/national "tv guides" actually be _accurate_ for a change.
I get the feeling that the TV networks think they are losing viewers and don't know why, but the viewers are saying "we hate these logos".
Everyone is talking and no one is listening.
/me shakes head sadly
Then again, in a similar incident with win98, Microsoft actuall *asked* beta testers if they'd like to have I.E. integrated into the OS.
Over 75% said no to I.E. integration...we all know how well that went.
I know I'll wind up sounding like a broken record (a what?), but "history...repeat...history..repeat..."
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
I know they are huddled over their little computer monitor thinking of their next great troll. Beh. What's wrong with those that watch TV? Nothing bad ever came out of a little TV viewing.
The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout
We have a 'major' network, Global. They add "on Global" to shows intro screens. IE - "That 70's Show" becomes "That 70's Show On Global". In the same font, color etc!! They do this for the simpsons, Friends, etc etc. It's REAL bad.
The TV channels in Europe for the most part have big, ugly logos that are always showing (well, during the programs anyway, maybe not commercials.) These things really are annoying and get in the way. Usually on US TV the logos are transparent and so they don't really get in the way. Lately though, with the flag in the logos, they are a bit more intrusive, but I think we can handle that given the situation at hand. I think this is not a big deal over here in the USA, mostly a European issue.
~ now you know
As networks have faced increasing competition from the growing number of channels on cable and satelitte they have been even more pressed to build brand.
I expect that it will get worse not better.
see subject line
-- too cruel for schuel
Okay, so most logos out here are transparent, so it's not really a problem yet.
But I think the problem could easily be solved by migrating to wide screen and using that blank space at the bottom of the screen for logo and captions.
But I know a few people that hate wide screen (small tv's). Or maybe they could start making TV's with a seperate little screen (inch by an inch) for just the logo of the station.
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
helps me alot...
and deleting boring PBS also helped
If memory serves, the network bug (aka logo, aka pickle) was first put into widspread use by CNN during the Gulf War. Other networks started pirating CNN footage for their own newscasts and CNN placed their logo in bright yellow on the footage to make sure that other networks paid CNN for the use of the footage. Other news organizations followed suit.
As cable/satellite systems started to carry more channels the bug became a "branding" device and another way for channels to catch the attention of the channel surfer. Appointment watching (it's 10 o'clock time for Battlebots) is relatively rare so catching viewers as they flip by is important.
The animated bug was pioneered by Comedy Central in late 2000/early 2001 unleashing an onslaught of even more annoying visual distractions on hapless viewers.
It is all art, whether we like it or not... but the question still remains... is it GOOD art? :)
What is that song, anyway? I can't tell.
...once AOL/TW/Microsoft/News Corp gain complete control of American television, it would be the same logo for every channel, so they'll just replace it with the Nabisco Red Corner or a rotating 3D dew-covered can of Coke.
Most logos I have seen are translucent and I don't even notice them anymore. And it really helps when you are out of town at a hotel or flipping chanels at someone's house. For example, it's nice to know which station it is if you are trying to locate the channel for a particular show coming on later.
OTOH, I have seen a couple really obnoxious, in the way, not-so-transparent logos.
Do we really need these things anymore? I'm sure most television viewers out there can associate shows to networks, these days.
Come on. Firstly, viewers these days are FAR less likely to associate shows to network, and any ability to associate such is largely due to the effect of the superimposed logo. Do you know which network runs "The West Wing", the World Series or "Monday Night Football" ? I sure don't. This is NOT the days of old where there were precious few networks/channels, the networks had much larger mindshare, and there actually was such a thing as viewer loyalty.
Secondly, it is supremely hypocritical for an editor to argue that superimposed logos are not needed 'anymore' while his own website runs its own logo prominently. Don't you think most Slashdot readers know where they are ? Isn't this made more obvious by the fact that the location bar already *says* 'Slashdot' ?
At least one other poster has alluded to the powerful ability of VCRs and more recently PVRs to skip through commercials which are one of the major ways the networks both mark their brand and (of course) sell ad space. If this continues, it may be only a matter of time before networks are forced to start running advertisements underneath the programming itself.
The UK, from the UK TV that I watch, isn't nearly as bad with having these logos all over the channels as US channels are. It's not just the "big 4" networks either - cnn, cnbc, msnbc, etc. My inlaws tape many UK programs and send them over here - I probably view more UK TV than US TV - definitely in longer bursts (I can't watch more than about an hour of any US program, but 2-3 hours of eastenders, frost, morse, etc. is no problems!)
What I find annoying is during msnbc (I think) they shrink the screen and put up ads and news around the talking heads. And during commercials they're running news text at the bottom. It's non-stop mixing of info - I'm sure the advertisers aren't happy that the station is broadcasting data OVER the commercial they paid money to put there (maybe they get a reduced rate?)
creation science book
"It's bad enough that you have trees in your forest, but moss is just too much"
Gawd. I mean, screw the logos. Let's get rid of corporate branding in general. It is the reality which shapes young minds today- self image is far too closely tied to what your favorite tv shows are and how high on the nike sneaker price scale you rank. I think if we woke up one day and the tvs were all gone we'd experience a cultural renaissance that we can scarcely imagine today.
harrumph.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
This comment is not shown as "by Roie (Thinkgeek) M on Monday". The ads are, as you said, at the top of the page, and not all over the content (as on some news sites), and definitely not obstructive (some places on Yahoo!, for instance).
For this reason, if set-top boxes had small LCDs (OK, let's assume technology doesn't cost anything for a sec, OK? Work with me here) that had the logos, and the program was unobstructed, that would be just fine, I think. Or, for example, use the top and bottom lines on shows like "Enterprise", which are for some reason recorded in some weird aspect ratio (it looks like 9:16 but I never measured).
Maybe ppl will stop watching so much damn TV and learn how to code and be productive. Well... ;)
There are discussions going on right now between networks and advertisers to change these channel logos into actual advertisements.
So don't believe that the priority was copyright protection or channel identification. It's purely marketing. Soon you'll probably see that CBS logo become a pepsi icon, then something else.
Here in Raleigh NC, another nasty practice has begun. A local channel is using the emergency broadcast system beep and text scroll to advertise upcoming shows on the channel.
On a another note...At least the Fox news logo is on the left and is animated -- less likely to burn-in. I find these VERY distracting and they sometimes cover up important text captions.
Between this nonsense, and DVDs that force you to watch commercials before the film, it's getting impossible to have an advertisement-free life experience.
Do we really need these things anymore?
I'd rather have those than even the shortest full-screen add like they used to have (at least I don't think think they have those anymore.)
And Yes, if the network wants brand identity they need to continually do it. People forget, and new people enter the market.
TV is nearly extinct anyway. Darwin will take care of that. Here's my reasoning:
There are people who watch TV and those who don't. Those who do usually watch an ungodly amount, even up to 4 hours in a given day! Now TVs emit no small amount of electromagnetic radiation, and radiation wreaks havoc on a population's reproductive abilities. The TV watching population will, over the eons, lose its ability to produce viable offspring. Then the non-tv'ers will take over the world, rendering the logo vs. non-logo debate totally irrelavent... and the slashdot crowd will finally get the women.
I guess we just need to start up an Open Source TV station. It can be run/produced strictly by volunteers. Best of all, the programming is available in "source" form, so you can copy/redistribute/modify it without penalty.
In the UK there are only five stations, it is pretty easy to figure out what channel you're watching at any time. In the US the average cable provider has many, many more channels than that. Having a little logo at the bottom of the screen helps to identify which station it is that you're actually watching.
I work for a major Canadian specialty network. We launched without bugs, but they were quickly added to provide customers with "an important service". I'd post the memo if I still had it. Even internally stations like people to believe the bugs are for them, not the broadcasters. Being in the industry, you come to realize how fanatical the quest for "branding" is. They couldn't care about you recording it at home--they want you to as long as you're going to see an advertisement for their station every time you watch it! The service I work for is only available as a premium service (like HBO) that you pay extra for. I have less of a problem with commercial stations putting up bugs--you haven't paid for the programming! But claiming we air movies "uninterupted and commercial free" with bugs plastered on the screen is offensive. Nearly every employee in the building brought these concerns to management, who them passed it on to head office. Result? A memo telling us to tow the party line, and if we received angry calls about the bugs, it is "our duty" to sway the customers into thinking that we're doing them a favour! No joke. TV is dirty business. The bugs are here to stay boys.
And as for the "it tells you what station you're on" argument--our service is only available through digital cable or satellite--both of which tell you not only the channel you're on as soon as you've flipped to it, but also the program currently playing. I wish we had a little more class like HBO. Tough to pass up free branding space I suppose
Yeah or the TNN ticker when watching Star Trek: TNG on TNN. Ths ticker tells you your watching Star Trek: TNG.....WELL DUH! :) Let the freakin surfers come up with their own tools. Don't make them for them. Also, at least one of my TV's let's you program call letters or something like CNN or TNN into the TV itself. I guess having a user program something like a VCR is too much hassle (hence Tivo.....although, the season ticket thing is cool, it's the thumbs up thumbs down thing I like...lets u discover stuff you didn't know was there!). At least if they did that with Enterprise it wouldn't cover anything up (it's letterboxed in my area).
Gorkman
UK terrestrial has had the teletext/cefax signal for more than 20 years, all you have to do is press a button on most tvs and you can see which station it is, as for any digital station, there simply is no excuse, they _definatly_ have the ability to send data to the tv to let the viewer know what there watching with out having to put in a logo, plus, logos look terrible when they are digitally compressed with the cheap stuff most providers get away with.
Is it really worth having a logo on your screen for the rest of your life, just so you can tune the tv in easily a couple of times? no, (shut up, it isn't).
Not only that, but (moving back to evil compression) when i watch stuff i downloaded southpark etc.) i have to put up with the stupid blurry comedy central logo, i mean, the cheek - i get my programs legally of gnutella, yet i still have to put up with the logos. it sucks.
We don't have any logos on terrestrial tv here (uk) (no channel 5 does not count). but the BBC is starting to push it with news-24. One day those capitalist pigs will be shot like the err capitalist pigs they are, and i will personally destroy all tv logos over the world BA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Since I've taken to watching TV almost exclusively recorded on my housemate's ReplayTV, the only way I ever know what channel a show is broadcast on is the little icons. So long as they stay in the corner and don't block anything important, I think they're fine, since I don't really have any other way of identifying the information, and it's occasionally nice to know what channel a show is actually on.
My wife didnt know you cant leave the TV on a channel too long or the logos burn in on your projection tv screens. She was letting the youngest watch disney tv all the time, and it started to burn in.
I didnt notice it, cause I only use the bigscreen for dvds which are letter box, but catch Enterprise, and there it was. At least they could move the logo or have it time out.
So logos are not just annoying, they are destructive.
Way ahead of you...I don't watch TV anymore. All I do is let it run in the background sometimes if I want to hear the news while I do other things, which could easily be done with a radio...
However, thats beside the point. What it boils down to in the end is that TV is an expensive industry. There are a number of reasons for this. For one, equipment overhead is expensive. That I can't deny. I've shelled out hundreds of dollars on computer equipment, which I can use to develop products of my own, and thats just for an environment on which one person can work, not a whole crew like they have.
However, being such big studios, they should have this equipment already, right? maybe. But let's face it. That's not where most of the money goes. When you look at it, film and lights are a really small portion of the money that is put into television shows. Why do so many actors and actresses drive such flashy cars and have such huge homes that they've paid for in full? because actors make too much money. For something they love. And for something that is hardly an arduous task for a sitcom actor/actress, or other such television programming. I can understand why someone who takes a lot of risk in the filming could justify making lots of money, like a lot of Hong Kong film stars who do their own stunts and such. But for a sitcom or soap opera or whatnot, there is no reason to make millions of dollars per season.
Plus, comm sats are expensive too. That I can't deny. But that's also part of the equipment overhead for a television network.
We pay for cable or satellite TV, and most of it sucks and most people hate/don't watch most of it. But what it boils down to is that costs that shouldn't be so high, like that of actors and actresses (fame shouldn't automatically equal money) who are on the shows, and I don't know about the writers and directors and others, but I do know there's a lot of people in the world who hate their jobs and get paid hardly a thing, while actors and actresses get insane amounts for what they love. This seems really screwed up to me as a concept.
But anyway, IMHO, what this boils down to is a misallocation of monetary resource. I'm not saying that commercials have to be eliminated, I'm just saying that the majority of what annoys me about it is how inefficiently the money generated by them is handled, and how many more commercials per show this leads to that wouldn't be needed if the money was being handled responsibly. Though with the inflation of prices in the entertainment industry for so-called "talented" actors/actresses, I don't see it coming down to reasonable levels anytime soon...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I watch TV now a days on an itty bitty screen.. a portable... sorry but when I'm infront of a larg display I'm using a computer...
Basicly from the discription of the UK problem it's a color logo..
The US counterpart is a tiny transparent logo that is the equal of a little bit of distortion... on my itty bitty TV the logo isn't even visable.
TV addicts will know what show belongs to what network... but fewer and fewer TV addicts exist..
Now a days it's like "You can get Internet cable and you get cable TV channels included in the pacage.. good yes yes?"...
I even saw a DSS sat add where they were selling a DSL+DSS pacage.. But the whole add was on how fast DSL is... "Oh yeah you get some TV channels with the deal"... hu?
Oh yeah I know what TV shows belong to what network...
StarTrek is Fox.. or is that TNN... I forget..
[Yes yes I know it's UPN but thats the point... it's easy to make that mistake]
TNN plasters UPN with adds for StarTrek TNG..
Network identity is importent...
Some stations insert an add saying "You are watching the To Stupid to Change the channel network" just so the Nealson people get it right.
Some add that transparent logo at the bottom of the screen.
The station ID graphic is cheaper and dosen't eat up add revenue... It's transparent... and it's not even noticable..
I don't actually exist.
Agreed that transparent logos are harder to detect..but won't they remove more cleanly? Once you identified the level of distortion (just an RGB value) for each pixel within the logo it should be pretty easy to just subtract those values out of the pixel to return it to it's natural state, yes?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Our local ABC affialitate in Abilene, TX (KTXS) has started displaying their logo next to the ABC logo.
Pair up in threes. - Yogi Berra
i do find the brand assocaition very useful, one of my friends lives in seattle, one in New York, florida, ohio, etc. if I want either one to see what i see i can't tell them "channel four" -- i just tell them a network, and they know by that. I can find the network immediately through the brand association. "fox says fox, abc is apeacock....if its not those two then its nbc..."
(offtopic) like with uprising -- my friend IN seattle has MS Ultimate TV and didnt get NBC last night, whatsup with that?
________________________________________________
30 minute shows, with 10 minutes of commericials are just 20 minute shows.
Go DVRs!
<RANT>I *really* hate those damn logos. They always obscure the subtitles in movies and TV. On-screen text is almost *always* shown on the bottom of the screen, and these damn logos obscure them. I don't pay USD $40 per month for basic cable, USD $10 per month for Tivo, and sit through hordes of time-compressed commercials (not to mention the insidious product placements...the Truman show come to life) so that my viewing experience can be ruined by yet more fucking corporate drivel.</RANT>
That said, I think the Tivo model works well: if viewers want an on-screen program guide, they can pay for digital cable or a Tivo-like service. Those things turn themselves off after a few seconds.
Some of theose logos are insidious as hell. If you watch a program for an hour and the logo is constantly on the screen, the logo gets burned into your brain. Pretty soon you'll be seeing it in your sleep...
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
It's bad enough to have logos burning in on your projection TV, but I ran across a show on TLC where their logo kept viewers from reading the last word of each line of translated text at the bottom of the screen. So the old Russian gentleman's speech was peppered liberally with references to TLC, which didn't make any sense at all.
Okay, I'm weird perhaps -- but I actually like the stupid little banners at the bottom of the screen. Sure, it gets annoying when they start overlapping when one station re-broadcasts news feeds from others but I'm still glad they're there. I don't watch much TV, and I when I do I channel flip everytime a commercial hits the screen. I often forget what channel number I was on but I can remember which station it was (TNT, TLC, Discovery, etc) just because that logo was there and I can -find- the station again when I know the commercials are over. Call me weird, but I wish they'd put them there -all- the time. When it's missing I often flip right past the station I was looking for.
Nice to see a website dedicated to this issue. I find that whenever it's raised, all but the most discerning TV viewers (or those who hate the viral nature of branding in general) simply don't care and think you're being petty. Here in Australia our major broadcast TV channels were watermark-free until the Seven network added one a couple of years ago. After much initial complaint (mainly visible in newspaper letter pages and Australian TV newsgroups) people have just learned to live with it, and it hasn't had a negative effect on their ratings at all. Seven's watermark is transparent and not as annoying as most, but the scary thing is the precedent it sets. None of our other broadcast TV channels has one yet, but from Seven's experience it's clear that viewers will take it up the ass, and one suspects they'll use the introduction of digital TV as an excuse to introduce watermarks. Most channels have already begun to add show-specific watermarks during news, sport, breakfast, and music programs. As for the local cable/satellite providers, they've had watermarks from day one (except on the primary movie channels). When I contacted my provider to complain about watermarks, they told me they existed for "copyright reasons", not for branding, though I believe it's a bit of both. The watermarks were one of the main reasons I unsubscribed from the service when my contract was up - I got tired of watching nature documentaries where the elephants had giant "Discovery Channel" logo goiters protruding from their heads. What irks me is why these watermarks are suddenly so necessary when we've done fine without them for the past 50 years. It seems nothing is sacred anymore, and that TV programs are no longer a form of artistic expression, but branded, commercial product. In the end, your average commercial TV viewer who just wants to sit down to some mind numbing entertainment after a hard day's work doesn't give a damn about artistic integrity. Thankfully, there are two government-owned channels, the ABC and SBS, which are a bit of a haven for people who like quality programming, but my fear is if the watermarks proliferate on commercial networks they're likely to show up on these two channels as well.
I found those logo's to be particularly anoying when i was watching Star Trek. When I first saw them I though it was some special effect for a spacial destortion. Then I saw what it really was and wish they could fire a phaser at it.
I've since given up on TV after watching endless hours of comercials and little the little breaks of content between them. If people wanna make money these days do me a favor and go out to your street corner and sell lemon aid and save my sanity. I'd be more likely to get the lemon aid then watch a TV or Web advertisement.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
"Fifty-seven channels and nothing on." Nowadays, thanks to cable and digital satellite TV, it's more like five hundred seventy. Each channel needs to somehow distinguish itself from the others, and with syndication further muddying the waters, it's getting harder and harder.
Hence the corner logos. They're more brightly-colored these days because the networks keep weaving American flags into them post-9/11, but usually they're monochromatic and very subdued. They sit in the corner, out of the way and not interfering in the program, giving everyone a ready reminder of whose network they're watching so that they can find it again in a sea of dozens or hundreds of cable channels.
As for the complaints: is anyone really complaining about them? As I said, they're subtle and subdued, and nearly all channels have acknowledged that they're better off not animating them on a constant basis. The only people who have cause to be annoyed about them, as near as I can tell, are the people who tape shows or movies and archive them for posterity -- something the networks don't like you doing anyways, since if you're using a VCR then you're not watching the commercials those networks rely on.
There's no nationwide American movement to remove these logos because there's no real need to remove them. They provide brand awareness for the networks, they don't interfere with the program, and they're not nearly as obnoxious as, say an X-10 popup ad or the flashing ThinkGeek banners I'm forced to stare at right now.
That's not Cartoon Network. Johnny Neutron is on Nickelodeon, as far as I know. Now Johnny BRAVO is on CN, and is VERY annoying, but he doesn't start replicating all over the screen or anything...
:)
I approve most of the decisions CN has made recently , since most of them involve anime and shows for the over-20-somethings
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
they do it so that when PVR'd copies of programs show up online, it's easier for them to claim ownership.
You may not have noticed, but the corner logos have been there for literally years before PVRs became popular. And are they really that common online? Even a twenty-minute sitcom would take me so long to download via broadband, it's more worth my while to wait for the rerun.
The logos are for brand awareness, pure and simple. When there are 500 channels via cable for people to choose from, NBC needs to do *something* to make theirs stand out.
Don't watch broadcast TV.
Fixed the problem for me.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
TNT, while rebroadcasting episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation , puts a black bar across the bottom of the whole screen without scrunching the screen vertically, thereby covering up some of the show.
It gets better.
Has anyone noticed TNT digitally adding their logo to scenes from the movie in commercials for Rush Hour ?
Did anyone catch Fox Sports using "green screen" technology to place self-promoting ads to the left of the batter, catcher and umpire in World Series Game 7?
When will digital editing of TV shows become so easy that you never know when you're watching original versus edited content?
Better yet, will the barrier to broadcasting television signals ever become low enough for "open source" alternatives?
The scrollers would be useful if there were more than 7 pieces of "news" on them and they weren't all such useful nuggets as "Bush address ends with 'God Bless America.'"
It is so annoying it feels like I've got AOL Instant Messenger open on my TV.
Of course, a station could advertise itself as the station you know so well, they don't need a logo - a bit like postage stamps in the UK not needing the country on them, or USA domain names not having a country code. "If its not got a logo, its us!" sort of thing.
Maybe they could even trademark the non-logo....
One solution to this is to subscribe to digital cable. My digital cable has a channel guide at the bottom with the number/name of the channel, the title of the current show, and more information if you want to press a button to get the description.
Once you stop on a channel, the guide goes away unless you specifically activate it again or change channels. This is helpful information - logos that block the screen for the entire show are not.
or, you can just apply a piece of duct tape to the bottom right corner of your screen. ;)
-- MarkusQ
is when the broadcasters put usefull information like sports scores in the exact location of the logo... you'd think they could figure out that it was going to be overwritten and made completely unreadable?
I hope the person that modded this dies of cancer!
... how the logos disappear when the adverts come on many of the channels too? You'd think that would be the one time it'd be handy to have the watermark there... if you were the sort of moron who couldn't read the 3 inch high, 24 inch wide strip along the bottom of the screen that tells you which channel you're watching (with Sky).
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
when flippin' channels to a rate such as 2 or 3 a second, to know quickly what channel you are going over. Forget about programming you tv or using the caption on the set-top box, this just ain't fast enough for veteran zappers!
There was recently a story here on /. about how people are losing track of what shows are on what networks when they use a Tivo/other digital recording device. As these type of digital recorders become more and more prevalent, you can expect these logos to become more and more intrusive. The networks spend huge amounts of money promoting themselves (in addition to promoting individual shows) and they're not going to let that slip away just because people use DVRs to record shows. I know my favorite network is the Now Showing "network" on my Tivo and I couldn't give a crap less what "real" network The West Wing or any other standard network show is on. The only networks I care about are the specialty cable networks like HGTV, History Channel, etc.
I expect we'll see full "banner ads" on the bottom of the screen within a couple of years because they know people skip past commercials.
Without station logos, I would have to look at my TIVO recorded stats to figure out what station my show came on...
Of course I don't care, but I see the station's economic need to brand me.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Agreed on the pay TV channels; if they start doing it, it's time to hurl bricks at Viacom. :)
I meant it's not simply ABC, NBC, etc., it's all the cable channels. The worst still has to be TNN's black bar.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The way I see it, it is only a matter of time before products are displayed instead of station identifiers. The networks are already complaining about losing advertising dollars due to the proliferation of Tivo and Replay, which let you skip commericals. I believe they will force you to watch thier advertisers by sticking them in the shows where you can't skip them. Just my two cents. I h
ope I am wrong.
I have AT&T Digital Cable in the Boston, MA area and the ads and screen navigation are awful, but I wanted the extra channels on Digital (BBC America rocks!).
So I went and bought a Tivo which has its own navigation and onscreen displays that are not affected by the AT&T silliness.
Many networks are forced to place logos on the screen simply to hide the logos of their upstream suppliers. I have seen some cases where even the third-tier cable company got involved, placing their logo over another logo that was *obviously* (ie: barely) covering a third....
I actually don't mind the ones that simply "watermark" the display in one corner, as they usually don't obscure much. There's nothing worse than watching a sports event on TV and having the scores blotted out by the network logo.
I hate these logos, but generally I can tune them out. More and more we have to do that to live in this world. However, I was watching a program on TLC the other day, in which they were interviewing some Tungooskan (sp?) people, about the explosion over siberia. They had a translation. They also had their little logo in the corner of the screen. This caused me to miss the last few words of everything translated. That's not the only time I've seen that happen.
this space intentionally left blank
From the site:
"this is about cold raw commercialism and capitalism"
Oh! Heaven forbid we should have capitalism!
Another fine example of petty socialism.
Have a day.
Mk.
MTV is the absolute worst at this.
They have those stupid huge annimated icons that are always moving around and dancing in the bottom right corner.
Casual Games/Downloads
a logo of NATALIE PROTMAN gazing back at me then id watch tv all day hehehe :) :) :)
While most shows on television do seem to be crap, some are actually quite good, even artistic. I liken this blazen defacement to a museum that stamps their logo in the bottom right hand corner of every piece of artwork they display. If people would never go for that, why do they allow it on their televisions?
The future isn't what it used to be.
Curiously the channels that I've noticed always having a logo on them are the ones on pay-TV (cable, satellite, etc). I guess logo's must be good, since you only get em when you pay.
Have you noticed that the logos always dissappear during commercials. I guess the sponsors don't want any part of their message obstructed.
The broadcasters must consider the commercial messages more important than the program material.
I was watching a Jackie Chan movie once, the ones that show the words at the bottem of the screen when they are not speaking in English. I was reading what the woman was trying to say, when all of a sudden one of those things came up at the bottem of the screen and stayed there for like 2 minutes during the whole conversation between the 2. I missed the entire thing!
I agree that stopping this type of activity is a good thing. I can't watch a forign film, and understand it anymore, and thats just plain sad.
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Is this a sig?
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The logos aren't there as reminders
or to annoy PVR users. They are to
prevent unpaid re-broadcast by other
broadcasters.
TV channels did not have watermarks until the middle nineties. Apparently, they did just well before them by doing what radio stations do: announce themselves once every hour. Since US companies don't want people taping their series without attribution, the watermarks AND the station announcents are present at all times.
TV in Dominican Republic is very widespread and, um, advanced for a thirdworld country, with some 15 LOCAL stations in the city VHF, UHF. When I checked 3 years ago, most channels had adopted watermarks, unlike 6 years ago. In spite of the amount of channels, they have less need for logos because nobody tapes shows on a regular basis and you can't BUY the original tapes anyway.
Anyway, outside large cities in the US you need cable anyway. Doesn't your cable box already tell you what channel you are on?
"Wireless : LAN
I do pay. Its called a DirecTV bill. :)
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Is this a sig?
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Since I've gotten digital cable with the onscreen guide this isn't such an issue anymore, but before, I kind of liked the little logos. The ones that were transparent at least. The logos were nice because they enabled you to know what cable channel you are watching.
Ever looked through the tv guide and then wondered, "What channel is network X on?" It's happened to me, and it was nice to be able to find it with those logos.
I must say, though, with the advent of digital cable and onscreen guides, those logos really aren't necessary anymore, at least not for me!
Well I don't know about the UK, but I spent a few weeks in Holland, Belgium and Germany in early 1991 and had a number of opportunities to channel surf from hotel rooms, and I was amazed by the ubiquitousness of the "bug" on the European channels. These were big, bright, opaque and on-all-the-time logos. In 1991 the bugs were still a novelty in the US (with the exception of TBS). I surmised that in Europe, the fact that there were so many channels in so many languages in countries so close together was part of the justification for it, and I hoped that it wouldn't catch on in the USA.
As bad as they are, most are nowhere near as annoying as those European ones were. But, give them a few more years to refine them and they'll make them even worse.
Those funny germans....
Ditto.
I've not minded the icons that much. Obviously they don't want you to make a copy that cannot be distinguised for the non-free product.
What I do mind is the very annoying trend I've seen mainly on the USA Network, TBS Superstation, and perhaps others. Not only do they leave a transparent logo, but they also have very active ads for other movies, specials, etc. This is during parts of movies that I'm trying to WATCH mind you. In fact, USA has a bad habbit of actually including audio with these ads during slow parts of movies.
I must say, the first time I saw this, I removed both those channels. If other people do the same when they see crap that they don't like, stations WILL stop doing it.
The same thing applies to anything you don't like... If you just complain about it, nothing gets done. If you cost them a few bucks, then they'll rethink their activities. The entire capitalist system is based on the idea that people will choose some other competing product when they don't like the company's features, price, or practices.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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------------------------ Optimists learn English; pessimists learn Chinese; realists learn Kalashnikov
Isn't a broadcaster required by the FCC to broadcast an identification of the station? And isn't it easier to do this with a non-intrusive symbol than by announcing "This is NBC" every ten minutes?
Fox News isn't even worth mentioning, do people serious watch that?
At least CNN has something going for it.
Yes people watch Fox News. This is because stories that can't be spun into a left-wing slant won't be aired on any other television medium in the US (except for a few that might air on the official outlets of certain religious organizations).
When it comes to constructing a propaganda machine the suppression of coverage of opposing points of view and news items giving them supporting evidence is a far more important piece than the promulgation of a Big Lie. This was known and used well by the Nazis, the Communists (European, Asian, and Central/South American), and every petty dictator with a population too poor to afford short wave radios. It's no less true in the meida-conglomerated "free world" today, despite the Newspeak-style renaming of "propaganda" as "spin".
Fox News makes a point of living its "fair and balanced" slogan - which it does by giving the top two political slants equal time, rather than one of them getting all the time and the other none. This still leaves number three downward with no outlet (though Fox News does give them a couple minutes from time to time).
So the Conservative position gets half a channel with Fox and none with anybody else (including CNN). The result is that heartland viewers watch it in drives (despite the laughably tiny headline segments). I hear Fox News has passed CNN in US viewership despite having far lower cable system penetration.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The answer is pay per view video on demand, which should be common once broadband and smart card readers are in most homes. With that, we'll be buying the right to have uninterupted content.
When I was living in Australia, we had only 5 free to air stations, and one of them decided to put on a logo. Mind you, this was only a couple years ago - a chance for you American readers to back in time :)
There was a huge outcry and I must admit after 23 years of my life with no such logo, it was awfully invasive to have in the corner.
Then after a few weeks, they "backed down" and made the logo even paler, and smaller. Just less annoying.
Now, I think they've done the usual corporate trick of convincing the viewing public that it's acceptable. I really do suspect they made it large and opaque on purpose, in the beginning, simply so that people would think the logo they ended up with "wasn't so bad after all".
I swear I am getter less sympathetic to corporations each day.
Speaking of getting really annoying. Sorry to rant, but corporate bashing is just so nonunique and tiresome.
I found myself doing the same with the cable company, the local newspaper monopoly, McDonalds (for lying about its fries - yea, I know, lame issue, but it pissed me off). Etc. I found I was whining about tons of stuff.
So I fired them all. It really has to come down to that. Don't like the station IDs on the screen? Fire them. Yank the cable. That's your choice.
Warning: Be prepared to be totally amused when you do this.
Cable: I returned everything except the cable modem (I do have my limits). Apparently nobody ever does this. The guy at the counter thought I must have been shut off for not paying when I returned all the other junk. His announcement "but your account is fine" confirmed the suspicion. Oh, apparently they don't have a process for this either. After returning all the converter junk, I discovered I now have better cable for free than I got when I paid for it (HBO is unblocked now). Guess that cable modem needs a few more things live.
Newspaper: Hell, they couldn't make three out of five successful deliveries. Fired them. Now I get every sunday (for the past two months) free and on time.
Give it a shot. Don't like the service? Fire them. Don't rant. Don't threaten. Pull the trigger. You might actually discover you like it.
Now if I could just fire the postal service...
*scoove*
If you ever watched the late lamented UPN series "Nowhere Man", you know that the logos are there for mind control! They're to turn us into good little citizens^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hconsumers.
:-)
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go put on my tinfoil hat
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
is those annoying logo "bugs". Especially when there are subtitles or other text on the screen and they get obscured by the damn station logo!
The other thing that really pisses me off is when the station scrunches the credits to one side to show a commercial at the end of the show, usually a "what's coming up next" type of thing. I'm one of those people who actually WANTS to read the credits!
You can blame Jim Gabbert, a SF bay area TV personality/former TV station owner/airline pilot/radio talk show host for those annoying little logos in the bottom corner of your screen. As he's won't to point out whenever he gets the chance, he invented those little f***ers. At least that's what he says. If *I* had invented them, I'd keep my mouth shut and lay low.
What I hate the most is when some station takes footage from another station w/o removing the original logo first. You then get to see two overlaid logos, making for a totally useless logo jumble.
I guess I'd hate the minilogos less if they'd only show them periodically instead of all the damn time, on top of your favorite show no less! I guess some stations do that, but not all.
I might be wrong, but don't TV networks buy the right to broadcast shows on their networks? So it seems to me that by putting their little logos on the shows they are just trying to protecting their investment.
I'm really put off by this stuff too. I'm constantly arguing with colleagues over this- they have this knee-jerk reaction to stick a brand name or logo wherever they can fit it, but can never, ever show me evidence that it actually does any good.
In My Humble Opinion, all this does, most of the time, is add another layer of gobbledygook for consumers to weed through. And this certainly does not build brand identity- it just dilutes and obscures it.
Marketing people like to think of themselves as the creative ones. In fact, just the opposite is true. In no other branch of business do you find so much reliance on formulas and boilerplate, or just operating by the seat of the pants. Why? Because marketing executives are often not very well educated, or even very smart to begin with. They're the mouth breathers who work their way up through the sales ranks. Occasionally you'll find a Harvard or Wharton MBA who did their homework, learned their craft, and has their brain engageed. But glorified car salesmen are the general rule.
for future TVs they implement a feature which would allow you to hide/view the little logos. That makes much more sense to me, unless the broadcasters are afraid people are going to tape their shows and steal credit..... :P
You're nothing; like me.
It's GPL'ed software that does realtime scaling, filtering and now has an alpha version of a logo killer.
The point of that poor analogy is that we can't hold so many double standards for one type of logo over another. We can't simply preach against logos and other silly advertisements and then allow our 'FDNY' logos to flood our screens.
More importantly, I say that logo fight is a losing battle anyway. If someone spent the money to wear that logo, then it should be shown. A television program should not blur a Reebok logo because Reebok isn't paying them. People can usually decipher it anyway, and I would guess that the ad works doubly well then, because people are *consciously* trying to figure out what the logo is.
I don't want to start a First Amendment argument, because I am in support of getting rid of these damn popup ads (they are examples of abuse of privilege)...
(Sorry, I know this is scattered. I wanted to make a few points that I couldn't find scattered among the hundreds of other comments.)
ï:85âÖãæW,C61:ÿ=òQhËÀJFZÖâùzi>ÁÒmÙê( ÿávÔø/--rêÚ2ÈÌ --
I'm sure most television viewers out there can associate shows to networks, these days.
Well, actually I think that the logo is needed. The shows on the different stations are so much alike these days, that the only way to distinguish the station actually is the logo. Without the logo, it wouldn't be clear. Especially during movies.
Alexander Skwar -- Homepage: http://www.digitalprojects.com | http://www.iso-top.de iso-top.de - Die
enough said
They should show a logo for the program (not the network) during the commercials. When I switch on the TV or channel surf, I always switch to another channel immediately if one happens to be showing commercials (in the US, there's a greater than 1/4 chance that it will be). If I saw the logo of a program I liked, I might actually stick around and wait for it to start up again. This would have the effect of both helping the viewer and getting more people to watch commercials (during the good programs, at least).
Yes, I know I should plan what programs to watch in advance, or check with a Web site or TV guide, but I'm not that organized. My guess is that neither are 90% of the viewing public.
US broadcast can only advertise a for a small percentage of the airtime. A volation of that is can result in fines. So far the FCC (and the courts) have not decided that the bug is advertising. If the FCC gets enough letters, they will have no choice but to decide if the things are adverts. I still think a better choice would be to go after a broke PBS station saying they said they don't advertise when they do so you would like your donation back. If done in court, it would set a precident that the FCC would most likly follow. Anyone want to donate a few grand to a PBS station and then sue them?
How long until you can't even SEE the image for the sheer amount of video cruft stacked on it?
Obviously the people that design these things don't look at them when they're finished.
Now the color ones are really annoying. I find myself putting my hand up to block it some times. And yes, it was VH-1 that started this.
in the TV industry, they call these logos "Bugs".
The cable industry obviously needs them for station ident since most of their content is syndicated. Someone else also points out that it makes channel surfing easier when you have 40-50 channels at your disposal.
Networks with their own original content uses it to reduce piracy / unlicensed rebroadcast - think news footages.
I don't mind the stations that have small, unobtrusive transparent logos in the corner. These blend right in and you usually don't notice them after a few seconds unless you look for them. Sometimes they're almost TOO hard to see when channel surfing or trying to guess what number my cable company decided to put The Foobar Channel on *this* week... ;-D
;)
;) I hate bottom bars on sports channels, too. If I'm watching NASCAR and I for some inexplicable reason really cared how the AAA-League Arkansas Mud Puddles are doing today, I will change channels and watch the damn game. ;) )
What do annoy me are:
- Big, colorful logos that don't go away. (i.e. Discovery Channel...ick!)
- Moving, blinking, hopping, skipping logos. SciFi is bad about this...I keep thinking their logo is a part of the show and wondering when it's going to eat one of the extras for breakfast...
- Bars and borders. Come on, it's a station logo...it doesn't need the entire width or height of the screen. (This also applies to squishing the ending credits to show your damn ads for shows that suck...sometimes I want to read the credits for a movie for one reason or another, but good luck without a microscope or a 60" screen... Oh well, just more hits for the IMDB
- ADS that show up on the screen during broadcasts. NBC and TNT do this crap all the time with their NASCAR broadcasts. I swear, if I'd seen the flaming Witchblade logo cover Rusty's car one more time during a race, I would have chucked something through my TV. (It's even worse when it's those lame TNT series, because then you get an ad for them every commercial break, and a dozen or two in the broadcast itself. "And we'll be right back!" "Tonight on TNT: Watch Witchblade, it's the awesomest awesome show ever!" "Welcome back! Today's broadcast is brought to you by Witchblade. Here's our leader, Jeff Gordon. Hey, Jeff can't wait to watch Witchblade tonight at 9/8 Central! You should too! Here's a great battle for third which you can't see because our kewl Witchblade logo is blocking the view. Did I mention Witchblade is on at 9/8 Central? Hey, here comes a challenge for the lead, but it's time for another commercial break. We'll be right back, and don't forget about Witchblade!" "Tonight on TNT: Watch Witchblade, it's the awesomest awesome show ever!...")
;-D
DennyK
If there's a tornado, I would like to be warned. But if I'm watching TV its going to take some seriously hardcore rain to harm me INSIDE MY HOUSE! So no thanks on the "its raining" maps.
If these bugs were really meant to tell the viewer what station he's watching, why aren't they up during commercials? If I'm flipping around for a particular network and they're on a commercial break, I'll never find them; if I'm watching a program, I already know what channel it's on.
Could it be that networks don't want to be associated with advertising/advertisers? Nah, couldn't be--they're putting these shows on out of the goodness of their hearts, aren't they?
Maybe there should be a program logo during commercials... yeah, I can see advertisers going for that. "Tampax Tampons, brought to you by the Six O'Clock News!"
The inventor of the bug will be first against the wall when the revolution comes....
I heard once that there's some special signal that the buried in the video signal to let local station's know when to insert geographically-local ads into national shows. I also heard that "they" made some kind of deal with manufacturers that this signals wouldn't be used to make VCRs that wouldn't record ads. I don't know how true this story was, and I would expect that the local stations would strip the signal out when they broadcast progarms anyway.
I work at an NBC affiliate station that has an LMA with a FOX affiliate (meaning we run the station, but technically don't own it, thus skirting some FCC ownership regs). I can confidently assure you that people do NOT know what they're watching. The logos (known in the biz commonly as "bugs") are there to let people know who the hell they're watching. Making sure people know who they're watching is important because of the archaic system used to determine ratings - diaries. That's right, in the year 2001, we still ask people to write down what channel they're watching, when, and who was in the room. Many of the larger markets are indeed metered with set-top boxes, but diaries are still used to determine those all important demographics. I've been to Nielsen's headquarters to audit those diaries, and the fact that these people are determining anything terrifies me. The fact that most of them are probably behind the wheel of a car daily is beyond comprehension. Remember, viewers determine ratings, and ratings determine the future of a show - so consider how long that freakin' Urkel show was on the air, and you'll get an indication of just how smart the average viewer is. That said, I HATE those freakin' bugs, but fortunately, the network feeds are clean - the bug is inserted by a device at the local stations, triggered remotely by the network. If you can tape your favorite show direct from the network satellite, you'll avoid them.
Their should be a class action on this. It does damage to many TVs especially projection TVs.
Headline News Looks Like MTV
tpjmcguigan sayeth:
>DJ's used to always speak over the start and end of songs. This was to ensure anyone recording radio >got a poorer quality version then they would if they bought the record.
>I thought these logos were there to server a similar purpose; to contaminate recordings.
This dosent bother me..What does bother me is when there is a good
song playing, and the DJ starts adding sound effects, or some
other garbage.
ARRRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!
>:-[=]
DON'T EVER, EVER, EVER MESS WITH ANY SONG LIKE THAT!
Thankfuly, This rarely happens where I live.
First, on the subject of television advertising: When I was a kid I watched TV shows like Magnum PI and Rockford files. They had commercials, but not nearly as many or as long duration of commercial interruption. Yes, we need to pay for broadcast television with commercials. Lets increase the advertising cost per commercial and reduce the number of commercials down to a reasonable amount or duration of commercial interruption.
/.ers actually excuse or even support network logo'ing of the programs I watch. The logos started out small and benign, as the different networks started sneaking them one. Each network following the example of the last, sneaking tiny little translucent logos that remained on the screen during the programs that I watch. Then one network decides to enlarge, colorize, or animate their persistent logo. The other networks copycat this action. Now we have large, colored, often opaque logos with vivid animation. TNN actually blocks off the entire lower portion of the screen. Jim Rockford was holding something in his hand that was significant to the plot of the program I was viewing. But I could not see it as it was covered by an obnoxious TNN logo and animated scrolling text and spacecraft to advertise that they now broadcast Star Trek reruns in the evening. Well I watch Star Trek too, but I need not be reminded at five-minute intervals during the entire duration whilst I am attempting to view the Rockford files in the morning. Enough already, can anyone understand "reasonable advertising" as opposed to "cramming it down the viewers throat"?
Why did television networks increase commercial interruptions during regular television programming in the 1990's? Well it is not because they needed more money to pay for "quality" television. Excuse me but I cannot with any sense of honesty claim that programs like "Friends" is quality television. They basically wanted to increase profit so the network fat cats could make more money. Well that is fine too, the all mighty dollar is at the core of the American dream. So as I mentioned above, increase the cost per commercial and reduce the number down to where it was in the late 1970's or early 1980's.
Secondly, on the subject of the network logo: I must say I am rather shocked at some of the ignorant posts here with regards to this subject. I cannot believe that some
In conclusion: Television logos, go away! People, realize that it has gone too far and this is just another Micro$oftism metaphor for corporate America. I believe there is creative value to some programming and the fact that it is being vandalized by corporate logos is very offensive. Next, will museums be placing their logos over valued pieces of art? How about a big sicker right on the canvas of a van Gogh?
Maybe you are too young (or to naive) to remember how cable TV began. One of the advantages they were pandering was that you pay but you got no ads and better quality than open TV.
A few years later, once everybody accepted sheepesly this pact, they, oh surprise, introduced ads. Wait a sec! I was paying to avoid those!.
never mind, this means I'll get to watch all the TV I want, OK? No, said TV companioes, this event is so special that you have to pay for it! PPV was born.
But surely now that I am paying for cable access, for PPV for event at least there will no be advertisement? Right?
Yeah, sure.
And you don't want people to be annoyed... Jeez.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
SimCash writes:
/do/ have a solution. And it's quite an ego boost too, knowing you aren't some pathetic herd animal gobbling up whatever they're dishing out.
So, I concur, fire the scum -- refuse to fill their coffers.
Isn't this fun, too? It's a lot tougher than simply ranting, but in some odd manner, it's awfully empowering. It makes you aware that you
It sort of reminds me of a parallel to the ALF (animal liberation front - a collection of angst-filled upper class kiddies that attack farmers and other hard-working people because their daddy didn't by them a BMW) types that are attacking farms in our parts while wearing cool leather shoes. Their activism has no positive impact for their cause. Their consumerism choice continues to reinforce what they oppose.
If you don't like something, your option is to vote with your own property (money). That's the rule of the game in the US, and increasingly so in the rest of the world. (Don't like it? Name a better alternative that doesn't centralize this vote in the hands of an elite few) Want a bigger vote? Get more property/friends to vote.
Understand though that your non-vote will probably have little effect - passive resistance requires major numbers to make a dent. That's where you need to step up and "positive-vote" (aka spend your money) on things that you do support.
Hate Microsoft? Don't just mooch... buy Redhat (or whatever non-MS OS). Fork it out. Don't be stingy. Buy copies for your friends. Or accept Microsoft's domination.
Same applies for any other special cause...
*scoove*
If you watch RAI24 news (free to air satellite channel in Europe), you'll see a tiny PC window sized image and lots of other things. On the right they always cycle through the current headlines, very interesting but once you read them it's too much. You've got lots of stuff on screen like time, date, weather, maps, etc, but the actual picture shown is minute (the sort you associate with viewing an mpg clip on a pc!).
That's progress for you..
imagine the equivalent on radio - some guy whispering "your listening to WGBX Detroit" over and over again in the background. You'd probably do a "Bad Leiutentant" on your car stereo - at least I would
That was classic intercourse!