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Netflix Cuts Out Over 6 Days Of Commercials From Your Life Per Year, Compared To Cable TV (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Netflix knows their customers hate ads. "We know one of the benefits of an ecosystem like Netflix is its lack of advertising," Howard Shimmel, a chief research officer at Time Warner, told Bloomberg last year. "Consumers are being trained there are places they can go to avoid ads." In response to Netflix's advertising policy, many networks have actually cut back on the amount of ads they show in an effort to lure back in the younger Netflix generation. CordCutting.com crunched some numbers and found that each Netflix subscriber saves themselves about 158.5 hours of commercials per year. Here is how they figured that out: "First, it took Netflix's recent 75 million subscriber mark. Then, it combined that with a quote from CEO Reed Hastings that said subscribers stream 125 million hours every day. That means every subscriber streams about 1 2/3 hours per day. Then it looked at Nielsen data, which showed that the typical hour of cable TV includes 15 minutes and 38 seconds of commercials. If you combine that with the Netflix subscriber data, then you get that each subscriber avoids around 158.5 hours per year of commercials -- if they were watching Netflix instead of cable TV," writes Nathan McAlone via Business Insider.
Between Netflix and Adblocker, your brain is maybe in need of a wash.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Netflix shows have a ton of product placement, just because the ads are on while the show is running doesn't mean it isn't there.
"the typical hour of cable TV includes 15 minutes and 38 seconds of commercials"
Unless you have a DVR. It takes me about 30 seconds to skip past those 15 minutes of commercials on my TiVo. News is about the only thing I watch live.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
There are 6 TV programs per week that I regularly watch. Commercial breaks are about 3 minutes a piece, and there are typically 5 such breaks in one hour. That works out to 15 minutes per show of commercials, and six such shows makes 90 minutes of commercials. There are as many as 26 weeks throughout the year where there is actually new programming, and I don't watch shows I've already seen so that works out to a grand total of as many as 39 hours of commercial watching in an entire year. That's kinda falling pretty short of their estimate of 6 days. That's not even 2.
Oh, and commercial breaks also gives the opportunity to mentally disengage from the tv screen at intervals that are not overly long, and be sociable with the people one may be watching television with instead of just staring at the screen like a zombie for one uninterrupted stretch.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Sometimes I beat off
Hands on mouse and dick, click click
Mom knocks, get lost bitch!
That's what you are doing if you watch enough television to have commercials occupy six days of your existance per year!
Que another round of Cable cutting...... I love my job
and another howl to congress of how unfair the world is to the poor "impoverished" Cable companies...
Boo hoo
I download commercial free torrents of every show I watch. Even commercial broadcast OTA television shows for this very reason. All torrent TV shows are commercial free. There are shows that I probably wouldn't bother to watch if I had to slog thru commercials.
We have been using MythTV for over a decade. The automatic commercial detection is pretty good, but we usually take a minute to set cutpoints (tweaking the detected commercials), and then transcode the recording to drop the commercials. Our son *never* sees commercials. I'm sure that has saved us tons of begging for toys and whatnot.
With 6 extra days, when my friends tell me to "get a life", I'll be out of excuses.
Read a book. Ok, not on the cheap Kindle but, you know what. Just shut up.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
While watching FX at my friend's place the other day, we put a stop watch on the shows.
8:30 of show, then 4:30 of commercials, repeat.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Or alternatively clicking on "download torrent" :)
I don't think I have watched 6 days of of TV in the past 2-3 years combined.
Satan isn't so bad ... compared with cable TV.
I watch a total of about 20-30 hours of TV programs a year and I do so generally on Funimation.com or iTunes. I sometimes watch a movie on Netflix, but I can't imagine consuming as much as 50 hours a year of staring at an idiot box. I haven't seen a commercial anywhere except on YouTube (which I skip or ignore) in about 5 years.
This is quite a bit more profitable for the companies showing commercials since they tend to create commercials focused on demographics which don't include me and their marketing approach usually makes me avoid their products simply to avoid being considered part of such demographics. Like "I don't want to buy something from someone who thinks I'm that stupid."... so I'm far more likely to buy something from someone who doesn't jam their commercials down my throat.
I've been running software like MythTV for years. Over the past decade, the average is actually more like 12 minutes of commercials per half-hour block (in the USA). If you factor in shows on channels like HBO where they presumably have no commercials at all, it skews the average down pretty sharply.
Not watching TV at all saves you more than 6 days a month. Close the TV and go outside! Have fun!
I like Netflix and since I pay for the service. I expect the service to do any ads without being annoying. Yes, plenty of products get stuffed into content these days.
But at least your watching content not some repeated commercial ad spot like on Hulu which seem's to do deals with certain companies and all you see are a handful of ads. Even if you pay the subscription fee each month, Hulu really doesn't improve that much other than giving you full content access.
When I want pure non ad content I will subscribe to a show on Amazon or Google Play, Apple iTunes. I'd rather pay a little and avoid the ads.
Here is how they figured that out: "First, it took Netflix's recent 75 million subscriber mark. Then, it combined that with a quote from CEO Reed Hastings that said subscribers stream 125 million hours every day.
There is not a 1:1 relationship between subscribers and viewers; husband, wife, 1.25 kids, yada. I suspect--wild ass guess--it is more on the order of ~1:3. So the hours saved per account doesn't change but hours per viewer goes down by ~third. I'm a little surprised it is so few streamed hours per subscriber.
My cable bill is $240 a month. I also have Netflix. Programming on cable is also in sharp decline. If cable wishes to survive they need drastic price drops as well as more investment in high-quality programs. Even the big hits like Game Of Thrones seem to have suffered budget cuts and offer too few episodes per year to stay alive. Meanwhile, Deadwood as well as Boardwalk Empire, could have made wonderful long running series. When cable gets a winner they need to make more of it instead of sending it to the boneyard.
"We know one of the benefits of an ecosystem like Netflix is its lack of advertising,"
Yep, they're absolutely right. This is the number one reason why I subscribe to Netflix and why I do not subscribe to Sky or any of the other big name TV providers.
It's also the reason why I put such a high value on the BBC (yes, I'm in the UK) and why I really don't mind paying the license fee.
When I was a kid I was diagnosed with ADHD. This wasn't some huge thing, it seemed like every other kid in my generation had it. For me, the medication works so it's minor inconvenience at best. But I've noticed that in the past few years as I've switched from cable TV to Netflix and Amazon Prime that my ability to concentrate has improved an astounding amount. It's almost like my brain isn't being conditioned to rip my attention away from what it is I'm focusing on and violently change contexts every 30 seconds anymore...
Every single thing on the television/Netflix/whatever is an advertisement. Ads are advertisements for products, and shows are advertisements for themselves, the network, or the actors/producers/crew/etc. Somehow the media companies have convinced everyone that there is a difference between content and advertisements. Ads only exist to distract you from this fact, like a decoy. It's all mind control at different levels. People will happily drink Kool-Aid-A because someone told them Kool-Aid-B is the one with the poison...
I will be watching some tv program on NF, one that was designed/edited to be shown with commercials.
Perhaps something from the History Channel.
You can tell when the program is going to cut to a commercial, the music queues it up...
But then...
No commercial!
I love it!
What is interesting is sometimes I get an almost anticipatory anxiety, when I can tell it would normally go to a commercial.
But then when the ad doesn't show and the program just keeps on going, its almost blissful.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
At this point in time, blacks land more on the poor and uneducated side of the various demographics. Advertising is aimed at the credulous and uninformed for a reason. It's a business case for the companies doing the advertising: they'll sell more stuff if they aim at a black audience.
Advertising is, and pretty much always has been, a mechanism to sell stuff. Not to be fair, or reasonable, or even-handed.
Ads will become even-handed when the demographics for who are the most credulous balance out. Not until then.
I mute the system the moment a commercial begins. I check my email real quick on my phone (just a matter of seconds), maybe get a snack, turn my head to talk to my SO, etc.
Commercials don't bother me at all. Because I simply don't pay any attention to the content they present.
Hulu has a nice feature, a little timer icon at the top left. You can tell exactly how much time remains in the commercial. I use that to get the mute button off at just the right time, and no sooner. :) But if it goes away, it's no big deal. I still won't be listening, or otherwise paying any significant attention.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
> "Consumers are being trained there are places they can go to avoid ads."
Umm, perhaps the industry is being trained. By the consumers. By the consumers' dollars or lack thereof.
* the old days:
Hi we're a new idea called broadcast TV. During our shows we'll promote products and you'll like it because you've nothing to compare this to.
* nowadays:
Hi it's the networks again, yeah we understand these interruptions are annoying as hell- and despite our attempts to make you understand the need for advertising you've shown a willingness to just pay us directly for some uninterrupted programming. Thanks for humbling us, and now onto your complete un-interrupted show!
* future days:
Now that 'brand loyalty' and 'company/consumer relationships' are part of your life, we can introduce non-commercial "breaks" that include self-promotional announcements (not outside products mind you) but self-promotional announcements that we feel you'll be ok with. You know, because we translate your mere presence as a customer as customer consent. Thank you for your continued dollars, and here is your interrupted show.
For the past 12 years I have *automatically* skipped the vast majority of commercials on cable. The only commercials not skipped are those in live sports such as the SuperBowl. ReplayTV was so far ahead of its time with features such as automatic commercial skip, networked playback from multiple units, show channels etc, that today it is still difficult to replace them. The only downside is that you cannot get beyond DVD quality images or stereo sound. MythTV is about the only viable alternative, but with the advent of streaming video services replacing my ReplayTVs is becoming less important.
When cable was first coming in, late seventies and early eighties... and I am not making this up, I saw the ads... a huge part of their advertising emphasis was "buy cable, and you'll never have to watch commercials again".
And that was back when there *might* have been 10 min of commercials per hour.....
mark "they lie, like a rug"
If you use an Android set top box, you spend those 6 days searching for content they don't have, trying to figure out how to make the interface work with a remote, shopping for a new remote after you throw yours against a wall, and researching Netflix alternatives.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
The cable companies are desperately clinging to content monopolies (ex. ESPN, etc.) to survive. I rarely watch anything live on TV anymore, other than the local news. Even sports, which I at one time swore had to be watched live, is better on the DVR. I watched the Superbowl that way last year. Zipped over all the commercials and that ridiculous time waster of a half time show. Must have cut a good hour out of it.
When I watch Netflix the thing I notice about having no commercials is not only less time to watch the show but the flow does not get interrupted.
It's not only the commercials. The amount of money the cable companies charge is an absolute ripoff. You are paying for 200 channels, of which you might actually watch 10 or less. The cable companies have fought tooth and nail against a la carte programming. If they ever do agree to it you can be certain that it will cost as much or more than the 200 channel package.
8640 minutes of /non stop/ commercials.
Not exactly "nobody", but I imagine that the majority of TV watchers aren't willing to pay $200-$300 for a TiVo device and $600 more for a subscription to the required service. Or to which competing "digital recording device" do you refer?
Through adblocker, paid services that actually remove ads and alternative sources of media I haven't been watching adverts for a while and it's changed how I view them completely. When I'm traveling and end up flipping on the traditional TV it is completely unwatchable. The Hunt for Red October was on the other night on AMC and it was a complete fucking joke. Your view time feels like MOSTLY ads just due to the pace of the movie coming to a screeching halt every 10 minutes.
I don't deny the need for consumers to know your product but it is completely psychotic the amount of time they demand for their trinkets. 30 seconds it more than enough for your product and 1-2 of them per 30 minutes should be the limit.
I know this will never happen but that's why I work to eliminate them in my life. YouTube's system has it mostly correct... I watch shows from content creators like RedLetterMedia (shameless plug) and they have hour long videos that have roughly 90 seconds of ads throughout. THAT is appropriate. I will even watch them intently because they are responsible. Traditional TV I mute and turn away so I'm certain I don't see them at all.
So the amazing thing here is imo this: Cable tv, which is not free, but costs money, gives You 25% commercials????? So.. 25% of your free time, you're watching stuff you don't want? How the hell did they ever sell that? And why do people accept it?
CenturyLink recently started charging a $3.50 fee to process payments via credit card.
I'd prefer not to trust them with my bank account info, especially because they want to constantly raise the amount and automatically debit it.
After calling them up though I did manage to get them to reduce my $80 a month bill (40 Mbps down) to $25 if I'd do a 12-month contract.
The thing is, I'll have to call in another year and complain to get even a reasonable rate again.
Try watching CBSN or the ABC or NBC "news" channels on a Roku.
The stories are often very short and there's almost always a commercial before them.
Sometimes the commercials are longer than the actual "news" clip.
If that's "fewer commercials" it really makes me wonder just how bad it had gotten since I cut the cable. I'm fortunate enough to be served by DSL which is more than fast enough for me - when it works at least, but it has fewer outages than Comcast.
It's no wonder I end up watching France24, SkyNews and even RT with my Roku rather than American news channels. I used to be able to get AlJazeera English there too - AlJazeera America had commercials just like all their US competition.
On those channels, you might occasionally hear "And now the weather brought to you by Qatar Airlines" which is not as annoying as them thinking anyone cares about their global weather forecast over the next 5 days.
I do wonder though why Qatar Airlines thinks it's a good idea to bring "the weather" especially when the weather can often be very bad.
You don't have to buy the most expensive/latest TiVo to get the benefits of their new skip capability.
But you do need to buy TiVo service, and I seem to remember a sub costing $600 even on a device that isn't "the most expensive/latest".
Also, you can get the service as a subscription model.
If you're willing to pay $150 per year (source) for the use of a DVR, you might as well get the cable company's DVR, especially if you can bundle the federally mandated basic service (just locals, C-SPAN, and public access) with your existing Internet access from the same cable company. It's fewer boxes by your TV, and possibly more likely to support oddball cases such as SDV than putting a CableCARD access card in a TiVo DVR.
Last, they have sales on a regular basis
Sales on only the hardware or also on the sub?
It's very strange that people still opt to pay for so much advertising. I am always amazed when I find a TV connected to cable and flip through the channels and channels of ads. Why isn't cable TV free already?