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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.
Oh, and commercial breaks also gives the opportunity to mentally disengage from the tv screen
You know what else does that? The pause button. We use that when we want to talk about what we're watching. Then we un-pause, and go on watching it... on our schedule.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I wouldn't exactly call my feelings "moral outrage," but commercials are actually quite annoying. I personally never noticed it until I "cut the cord" and haven't had cable for quite a few years. Once you get used to TV all the time without commercials, you realize how truly disruptive and annoying they can be. Personally, when I stay with family or whatever now and they have broadcast TV on, I usually just leave the room and go do something else. TV is already mostly a waste of time, but with commercials it has now become unbearable for me.
Imagine if you were trying to read a book or look at art in a museum or something, and every 5 minutes some annoying person would come around and shout at you or do something random and stupid to distract you... That would be really ridiculous, but most people accept it when watching TV. Once you live without those distractions for a while though, you realize how weird it is.
Or alternatively clicking on "download torrent" :)