Was watching “Watters’ World’ last night and it finally hit me how many commercials are being crammed into the programming breaks. In one, I counted six ads ... mostly 30 seconds each. I swear there was more time dedicated there to commercials than to programming content. Is this legal? The answer is yes ... see: Tampa Bay Times Answer. I seem to remember when such drivel was limited by FCC regulation. If this has changed, me thinks that greed is overtaking entertainment in our media.
Watch out advertisers ... there will be a tipping point! For me it is very close!
The tipping point has already occurred. Once you experience sessions on Hulu, Amazon Prime, Netflix, YouTube, and other such services, consider that you paid to not have ads. So while you pay handsomely for broadcast TV, they saturate you with ads. So much so that you forget what you were watching.
ReplyDeleteI'd especially like to have prescription drug ads disallowed as is the case in every other country. The United States (since only 1997!) and New Zealand are the only two countries in the world where direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs is legal. Try to imagine how much less prescription drugs would cost here if they could not write off advertising as a marketing expense?
Prediction: Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. will eventually have ads. I’ve already seen them on YouTube.
ReplyDeleteYouTube has no subscription system so they do need some revenue method.
ReplyDelete