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TV Networks Cutting Back On Commercials (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Cable providers aren't the only ones feeling pressure from cord cutters. The TV networks themselves are losing viewers the same way. A lot of those viewers are going to Netflix and other streaming services, which are often ad-free, or have ad-free options. Now, in an effort to win back that audience (and hang on to the ones who are still around), networks are beginning to cut back on commercial time during their shows. "Time Warner's truTV will cut its ad load in half for prime-time original shows starting late next year, Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bewkes said last week on an earnings call. Viacom has recently slashed commercial minutes at its networks, which include Comedy Central and MTV. Earlier this month, Fox said it will offer viewers of its shows on Hulu the option to watch a 30-second interactive ad instead of a typical 2 1/2-minute commercial break. Fox says the shorter ads, which require viewers to engage with them online, are more effective because they guarantee the audience's full attention."
up next: an app for your phone that interacts with all the crap they try to make you watch before they show you any content, then beeps to let you know the actual content is starting.
With all the options available to me, it simply isn't worth it anymore. These cable/tv providers were MORE than happy to screw us for every dime they could when there was no viable option. Now that there is, they are scrambling to get viewers back.
Sorry, but with games, movies, music, and other entertainment options out there, along with Netflix/Amazon video, it's simply not worth it to me to pay a premium.
For those of you swashbuckling types, I suggest an Ubuntu/Sonarr/Couch Potato/Transmission setup.
The networks always cut back on commercials leading into Presidential election years. TV and Radio both reduce commercials and jack up rates because they must offer equal quality time spots to all candidates. As a result, they have to clear out the riff-raff of cheap spots usually filled with "As Seen on TV" and "get rich quick" products in order to have the spots necessary to fulfill both their bread and butter big hitter brands and political ads.
We could eliminate about 75% of the marketing and advertising industry at the bottom of the ocean, and society would benefit substantially, a roughly analogous proportion as the legal profession. No surprise, both are exceptionally well paid professions, with no guarantee of results, which don't require any proof of skill (passing the bar once in life is neither required, nor a particularly notable achievement).
I'd be happy with ads on SyFy if they just hunted down and executed the moron executive that thinks horror, paranormal, CSI and low budget "reality" tv ghost hunts are somehow even related to actual Sci Fi.
The networks need to expect to lose about 20-35% of ad revenue, and work their business model around it. Making the ads "higher value" by being more targeted and invasive-- but shorter-- indicates a failure to understand the problem. TV Advertisements now are effectively worthless. While they originally banked on having an impact on 2-5% of viewers, the quantity and pervasiveness of advertising today has completely marginalized its effectiveness and it is down to *maybe* 1-2%.
If they want viewers to be "engaged" with the advertising, it cannot compete with what the viewer actually wants to see. They have maybe 4 minutes of advertisements they can cram in per hour before crossing this threshold. They can play games with mingling product placement and advertisements to increase value, but really that is it.
Good riddance.
I think that one of the primary reasons that people are rejecting advertising is that the ads are invasive.
To your average consumer, ads are fine. More than fine, actually, necessary to promote products some people would be otherwise unaware of. Just not INVASIVE ads. Forcing users to engage an ad will have the opposite effect.
EVERY grocery store and various other types of stores I go to have ads as you go in. Easily ignored if unwanted, but helpful if desired. Advertisers have been overloading people causing them to shut down completely. They've been seeking that breaking point, and it is nearly a point of no return now that they are finding it.
The invasiveness of the ads causing people to cord-cut and use things like ad-block are caused by the theory that the ads aren't pushy enough, so instead of a page showing specials as you go in, it's more like a used-car salesman who follows you around the store and WILL NOT SHUT UP!!
No wonder people want to smack them.
Has Fox forgotten that vegging out or having background noise while doing other stuff is most of the point of watching TV. Nothing will tick someone off more than have to fumble around and click to proceed every few minutes.
TV shows are now 23 minutes long.
For syndicated shows/reruns on cable nets, they will put back the bits cut out to squeeze in more commercials. New shows will either shoot more material and/or add time back to the opening/closing credits. Opening credits have shrunk over the years from over a minute for a 30 minute sitcom to around 25-30 seconds these days for most shows. End credits have practically disappeared as squeeze credits have turned them into basically network commercial time to promo the next show in the series or the next one to come on that night.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
To me (and many other folks), the biggest single problem with commercials is that they are too loud. I zip past commercials if I'm running a time-shifted version on the DVR, but if not, I mute most of them and always mute the loud ones. In fact, there's no better way to make me ignore a commercial than for it to be too loud. So, a simple step to making commercials more tolerable would be to reduce their volume. (Oh, and while we're at it, can we ban those creepy Allstate commercials that have the deep disembodied spokesman's voice apparently emanating from normal people?)
I assume there are technological solutions to the volume problem, but none seem to come built-in to TVs and they don't seem to be readily available as some sort of add-on box. Perhaps there's some free software somewhere to do this just like there's free DVR software, but some of us don't want to go that far.
Decades ago, some Magnavox TVs featured something called "Smart Sound" for this, but evidently that either didn't really work or somehow otherwise never caught on. Until it does, the broadcasters and advertisers might start solving this problem for everyone on their end.
Ads are not the only problem with TV. The programming has become pretty ridiculous. Reality TV, especially, is extremely stupid. The only reality TV I used to watch were cooking shows, but I think by now everyone understands that they are not "real", that even the time clocks and whatnot are all BS. A friend, who used to like to watch ghost-hunter shows and Finding Bigfoot, complained last weekend, "They never find any ghosts. They never find Bigfoot. God! I've been wasting my time!" So, bad programming combined with too many commercials is just unbearable. I recently got rid of digital cable and went to bare-bones service. I don't miss it at all, and I'm saving $75 a month.
Proverbs 21:19
For those "reality shows", that's easy: they can simply expand those "up next: Chumley eats a Curta calculator on a dare" and "earlier we saw Adam attempt to light a shark on fire using parabolic mirrors" segments around commercial breaks. Seriously, not counting those segments, is there even 23 minutes of actual content left?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Yeah, all that stuff should be over on the History Channel where it belongs. :)
Every channel has lost its original focus. The one I really hate is HGTV for dropping gardening and becoming the real estate channel.
For a little satire of this, see the wonderful film "Repo Man." All of the products in the show are white label. My favorite example is when Emilio Estevez opens up and then eats from a white can labelled "Food."
"So, what is a 'miniature infomercial'?"
Watch a really, really old show, like Burns and Allen. There's a segment in every episode where one character will awkwardly barges into a scene and start talking about the sponsor's product. The other actors react in character (as well as they can; it's rather forced) for a minute or so, then the interrupter will wander off and the main plot resumes. That's a mini-infomercial.
Modern shows do it more subtly with the characters shown driving the sponsor's vehicles with the camera centered on the brand badge or consuming a sponsor's beverage with the label carefully turned towards the camera. But soon they'll start actually mentioning the products in modern shows: "Wow what a great new car this is!" (followed by exchange on the virtues of said car) or "I just love drinking *soda/beer brand x*!" (followed by discussion of how the other character loves it too).
I think most of the tech showed in CSI counts as sci-fi.
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Spotted them doing this in White Collar : for a few episodes they couldn't stop* talking about the features of the new Taurus, principally the navigation and collision avoidance.
* had a short clumsy scene where they talked about it briefly and then got down to business.
Too little too late. You guys jammed them in so much and so hard, plus using heavy compression so they are louder. I'm done. I record with a DVR that auto REMOVES commercials.
Suck it, I wont be watching your commercials anymore.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I want to binge on shows. Right now Netflix is consuming decades of production in one decade or less. I have 3-watched all of Buffy and House, Family Guy and American Dad more than I can count, Angel, Sherlock, entire seasons go by in a few days. I didn't watch Walking Dead until season 5 last year, and I caught up in less than two weeks on Netflix, with season 4 I watched on the pre season 5 marathon opener, thanks DVR.
It is a golden age for old stuff, but that will run out, and back to waiting for more...via binge. It does suck inhaling it all in a week or two, then having to wait a year, but there you go.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
There was something on the BBC news this morning. They're incorporating the ads into the shows.
A character in an Australian soap skates past a poster, and the poster will be for a local product depending on where it's being broadcast.
They were even [the moving version of] shopping different cars into scenes. And the pixels weren't wrong - it wasn't at all obvious, even if you've seen a few.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."