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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.
...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
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!
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.
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
OK, got myself going. :) Went and looked:
All other TV questions should be sent to viewer_relations@discovery.com. For a quicker response to your television questions, please call viewer relations at 1-888-404-5969.
Don't file your complaint here...look up the contact info and let the networks know what you think. Anyway, I have a letter to write...
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
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
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.
Ahh... that's how it works?
I wouldn't even call Fox journalism, let alone appropriate political bias from it. CNN is liberal? hrm, as in anything left of Hitler liberal? It wouldn't say it's overtly liberal, maybe domestic CNN is very different.
Now IndyMedia is liberal, or provocatively Marxist depending on your political outlook.
http://www.dscaler.org/ has an experimental filter to reduce logo intensity. It is really hard to make a logo go away completely, but they've got a promising start.
Of course this only helps if you use your computer to watch TV - but anyone with projection system should be doing that - there ought to be enough geeks with projectors on slashdot to make that useful to someone
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.
What if I told you that the UK has TV channels with NO COMMERCIALS! I'm kidding, right? No, there really is!
And guess what, there's NO LOGO, either! (OK, so they've started putting one in for a second or two at the start and end of the program) Is this broadcaster crazy? How does it get its funding?
Now, I know that THE MARKET must dictate everything, and socialism is an EVIL THING that has NEVER WORKED, but guess what, the people of the UK actually collectively pay for these TV channels! And they like that!
They also pay for 5 radio stations (pop/rock/dance, easy listening, classical, current affairs and comedy, sport and talk) and local newsrooms up and down the country.
The issue at stake is that the channel they own, because they pay for it, is doing things that they don't like, such as producing crap TV shows and bastardising their output. So they complain. And believe it or not, they can actually win this one.
Does my bum look big in this?
It's GPL'ed software that does realtime scaling, filtering and now has an alpha version of a logo killer.