Excessive Advertising
When I was a kid you would see "end of part one" and that would be it, now you no longer see "end of part" anything because TV companies are either ashamed or embarrassed by the number of breaks they have within a program.
So many instances I do not know where to begin. According to ofcom TV companies are allowed to advertise a certain amount within a 24 hour period (apparently) but what this means is that when you watch transworld sport on channel 4 on a Sunday morning the ad breaks are few and only 30 seconds to a minute long, when you watch Lost the ad breaks are every six to seven minutes and last about five minutes or longer, for me this makes the program unwatchable, how can you get "zoned" on a program and lose yourself in the story line when every six minutes some women comes on the telly talking about fanny pads and dry elbows?
The ABC channel on freeview cuts to an add break as soon as the start credits have rolled, thats an ad break after less than 2 minutes of program, how the fuck can that ever be acceptable? What do you think happens when a BBC program (which I have paid to have made via my licence fee btw) is sold to a commercial TV company? how do they fit a 57 minute long program into their schedule and still manage 22+ minutes of adverts within the hour? I have no idea what the criteria is for cutting and who decides which part of a program is superfluous to our needs but rest assured, telling you about the latest Vauxhall or hair remover is far more important than getting the full story on the Balkan conflict or the death of JFK.
I have the World at War DVD, every episode ever made and I shudder to think what is cut from the broadcast version, what if children use this program as a reference, do broadcasters omit the D Day landings to make way for a cereal/toy/Macdonalds advert? Something has to be removed as it is not possible to broadcast a one hour documentary and include 22+ minutes of adverts and to me that is unacceptable.
I cancelled my Sky subscription purely because of advertising, I used to admire Murdoch, he had vision and knew, nearly twenty years ago, that satellite tv was the future and I remember him saying he was prepared to lose five million pounds a week until it took off, you have to admire that, however in the early days it was all free and paid for with advertising, Eurosport, MTV et al were all free, I am not sure how long ago it was but pretty much all the channels became subscription only despite still carrying adverts and now programs are even sponsored, appletise sponsors friends and so on, so now you have to pay a subscription of around £480 a year for the movies package plus be bombarded with adverts plus programs being sponsored anyway, wtf?????????????
As if that was not enough the logo on some channels renders the program unwatchable anyway, imagine the scene in terms of endearment when Debra winger is giving it her all in the death scene (oops hope I have`nt spoiled it) all the while a giant bright green ITV4 logo is plastered all over her face, the poor bitch, Even worse is the Sci-Fi channel, as well as a huge logo they have scrolling text on the bottom of the screen so large its impossible to ignore. One more thing, these broadcasters logos DO DO permanent damage to your screen, I have two Toshiba tv`s one cost £550 6 or 7 years ago and the other is 2 years old approx and cost £2000, both have permanent damage due to the logos, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence on the web and if any proof were needed just read the denials about it from the broadcasters themselves, also, strangely enough, from the TV manufacturers, its almost as good as when a football manager gets a vote of confidence
When Sky becomes free again (its inevitable, plenty of free tv on the web now and most people do not include adverts in torrent files :) ) I would no longer watch anyway and I would make a point of not buying anything I accidentally saw advertised (I switch over automatically when the advert break starts, the remote is always at hand)
Yes I do have too much time on my hands
[SEETH]