Enough with all the clutter (graphics) on my HD screen! - Page 2

Thank christ I don't know how to read!

Yep, round-the-clock banner ads and popups are a frighteningly real possibility.

I realize that advertising is the price we pay to get the content for free, but when will advertisers realize that annoying the living sh*t out of their "premium" audience is NOT the way to sell their products?

There is no law that says TV ads must not be annoying.

It is getting bad. I will not watch TNT and its sister channels because of these pop up and other garbage. Not matter what they are showing.

It probably won't make a difference, but write the various networks and vote with your remote.

If TNT didn't have exclusive NBA games, along with the awesome Inside the NBA studio show, I'd be right there with you.

Talk about ANNOYING bugs.

that ruined it for me. i couldn't watch it.

Pretty soon, the only time we won't have ads on our screen... will be during the commercials!

Once again, only the Simpsons has dared to deal with this annoying trend in television.

Good God, that bug really pissed me off, I was hoping to record It's A Wonderful Life in upscaled HD, but I would rather the dvd then stare at that advertising for 2hrs...

I find advertising to just be annoying anyway, I was read about products before buying, I never shop by what I have seen on tv, we as Americans, need to shop letting all this bombardment of crap draw us in, to make crap sell....

I started to watch it and turned it off. Between the technicolor NBC logo and the bright white ad (over a rather dark black and white movie), I couldn't stick with it. I'll pull out the DVD if I feel the need to see it. Besides, it kind of looked like crap OTA here in Connecticut, anyway.

Considering the tactics of producers and providers, I would not be a bit surprised if even dvds start to have that same kind of advertising. This is the beauty of the digital world - more and more creative advertising.

Entertainment media producers and providers are apparently seeking the viewing public's limit of tolerance for advertising. After seeing what's happened to "successful" newspapers over the years, they're no doubt betting that it's infinite, and the shocking thing is that they may be right.

Hopefully most viewers will tune out before advertising becomes an incessant presence. I stopped watching F1, Nascar and other sporting events long ago for this reason. Don't be surprised if MLB, NFL and NBA players eventually all become walking billboards - maybe with new-technology LED lights that make ignoring their advertising impossible. (After all, someone's got to pay those steroid-kings' salaries, right?)

If all new stuff contains advertising, I could not care much less. I simply will not buy it or watch it. Goodbye to it all - even the so-called "news" programming - most of which nowadays is nothing more than corporate-controlled propaganda. Goodbye to that, too.

So, before advertising takes over that world completely, I say keep your media library up to date with media that does not contain advertisements. Leave the new advertising-riddled creations to the pathetic among us who will endure anything to see the never-ending saga of who screws or defeats whom.

And to think I used to find just the network bug really annoying. NBC has been the worst OTA network and I hope their escalating usage backfires. ABC and CBS are much better in HD, but I fear that they too will succumb. Between this and the halted production from the writer's strike, there could be irreparable damage to network viewership. It's been on a decline and now seems headed for a cliff. I don't think HD is going to help much.

Posted by Herge:

I recollect years ago, when Ted Turner owned the Atlanta Braves and OTA channel 17 WTBS in Atlanta, he had one of the Braves pitchers (can't remember who it was) wear #17 on the back of his jersey with the name "channel" above the number. Turner claimed "channel" was the pitcher's nickname. I believe MLB saw to it that that didn't last too long. I wonder what MLB would do today?

Me neither. I am about to delete NBC from my channel list.

The real question is how is having "Clash of the Choirs" in my face for two hours going to make me want to watch it? Does NBC think it takes us that long to read four damn words?

In the latest NBC viewer panel survey, they asked us if we had heard about a number of shows listed. I lied and said I had not heard of "Clash of the Choirs". They'll probably consider using a larger font for their continuous promotions.

It's all your fault!!!!!!!!

I would have said, "Heard of it? Sure!.....It sounds awful..."

Not possible. The format of the question was "Click on the boxes of the shows you've heard of:"

By admitting I had heard of it would be admitting that the "Clash of Choirs" burned into the corner of my screen came from one of their awful 24/7 promotions.

Isn't that exactly what your upscaling DVD player does anyway? Are you saying that It's a Wonderful Life won't be shown in true HD this year but will simply be upconverted?

Not exactly. The DVD is not anywhere near the quality of broadcast media the networks use. Upconverted SD from the network will look better than an upconverted DVD if the local station is passing reasonable bandwidth on their HD channel. Even an OTA bit rate between 12 and 15 Mb/s is still better than DVDs maximum bit rate of 8Mb/s.

On the other hand, here in Connecticut, the video looked pretty lousy on Channel 8, so I can't say the DVD could really look any worse in our case.

I wonder what the ratings will be for this show, hopefully it will tank and we can stop seeing the annoying adverts. I can't wait till Tuesday and see the ratings that fredfa posts and hopefully the show will be canceled before the show actually ends Monday night 8/7 Central.

Don't you mean:

Monday Night 8/7 Central?

lol.. Thats about the height on my 65" HD CRT

The ad creep is a little out of control. I remember when we could watch programming without the network watermarks on them and it wasn't even that long ago. Now I'm focused on a movie/show and some strange animation pops up and I lose focus on what I'm trying to watch. I basically only watch sports and sitcoms on TBS throughout the day, but it's spreading to videogames as well. I downloaded the PS3 demo of Burnout: Paradise and saw billboards shilling products such as Vizio.

Remember 5 or 6 years ago, the features of the HDTV broadcasts that were talked about? I am still waiting. Here is what was mentioned:

--Great picture quality
--The ability to have multiple camera angle choices for a sporting event, like the NFL.
--Fantastic information about whatever you were watching, like real time statistics, bios about the players, what the coaches had for breakfast
-- Directors and actors talking during the movies (ugh)
--Great picture quality

Instead many broadcasters have broken up their allotted spectrum with multiple channels that nobody watches, crap all over our screens, not great picture quality, and too much information that we don't need or want.
The FCC can and should do something, but the chairman is a flake, and in the broadcasters pocket.

There were a couple of sources of restrictions on the amount of television advertising back in the day.

One was the FCC. While I'm not sure any more whether the FCC had hard limits on the amount of advertising that stations could run, stations were required to log and report the amount of advertising that they ran during a "sample" week at license renewal time. The pretty strong implication of this was that if you reported an excessive amount of advertising during your "sample" week on your renewal, you might be at increased risk of having your license renewal challenged. The net effect is that radio stations were effectively discouraged from running more than 18 minutes of advertising per hour, and television stations from running more than 16 minutes per hour. Anything above that was likely to raise eyebrows at the FCC.

Aside from this, the FCC did have a blanket prohibition on "program length commercials". This prohibition was repealed in the early eighties, which is when we started seeing informercials.

The other source of restrictions on advertising was the NAB Code of Conduct, which set maximum levels of non-program material for different dayparts on television. The NAB limit was 16 minutes per hour during the daytime (lower for children's shows, and with an exemption for news programs), 9 1/2 minutes per hour for primetime on network affiliates, and 12 minutes per hour for primetime on independent stations. The Code of Conduct was thrown out as a result of a court decision that found it to be restraint of trade.

Tom,

Thanks for the info. I didn't know the details but I was sure there were limits on commercials, even if they were voluntary, years ago. Wouldn't it be nice to have 50 1/2 minutes of actual programming in prime time these days?

One other memory. On the Jack Benny Program, Benny's sidekick (can't remember his name but he was middle aged and a little chunky) used to do an infomercial of sorts for Camel cigarettes during the program. He'd sit on a chair, smoking, telling you about the great taste, etc. They would last for maybe 5 minutes. Once in a while you can catch these on reruns of the program on PBS. This was in the 1950's and I presume it was before the two "limits" you described in your post were in effect.

Again, e-mail these two and let them know how much you enjoyed "It's a Wonderful Promo":
James.Hoffman@nbcuni.com
Michael.Pilot@nbcuni.com

TV networks are not in the entertainment business any more than radio stations are in the music business. They are all in the advertising business. With the exception of the premiums like HBO, the networks don't run programs for your entertainment. They run them as a way to attract eyeballs to the ads they sell.

As long as we viewers find ways to avoid ads, we can expect the broadcasters to do what ever they can to circumvent those methods.

The only alternatives are pay channels or publicly financed broadcasting like PBS once was or the BBC in England.

Of course I hate this as much as anyone, but the free market is the system we have chosen to work under. Either deal with it or work to change it.