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Kids in ‘Netflix Only’ Homes Saved from 230 Hours of Commercials a Year

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Re: Kids in ‘Netflix Only’ Homes Saved from 230 Hours of Commercials a Year

#151
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that is certain is that there are more commercials now. If you watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory sans commercials, you will notice that it is only 17 minutes long! And that includes the 60 second intro. So 13 minutes of commercials for 16 minutes of actual content. No chance I'll be going back to regular TV.

Is that all that different from what it was before? My recollection of 80s sitcoms & children's programs is that they had 3 commercials of 3 minutes apiece, plus a 3 minute break between programs. That's 12 minutes. Actually, I can test this...I've got some old My Little Pony episodes lying around on a hard disk. They're 9 minutes apiece. IIRC they ran 2 to a timeslot, so that's 18 minutes of show per 30 minute times…

I don't know about kids cartoons, but I just watched the original Star Trek episodes from the late 60's and they are 50 minutes each (for a 1 hour time slot) so that's 10 minutes of commercials. Hour long episodes are now about 40 to 41 minutes in length, so the number of commercials has doubled since then.

Re: Kids in ‘Netflix Only’ Homes Saved from 230 Hours of Commercials a Year

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every year when I go home for Christmas I watch TV with my parents and I'm always astounded that they pay more money than me to get access to worse content, and it has ads. It's really astounding that folks put up with it.

I have the same experience. I visit my parents about once every other month and usually end up watching a show or two with them. The programs are amazingly childish junk, the kind of stuff that disturbed me most about high school enshrined as sport. And the advertisements just never stop. If anyone has any doubt what the goal for Comcast will be now that net neutrality is gone, it will be to make Netflix, Amazon, Hul…

I haven't watched cable since ~2009 and no longer subscribe. Not only are the shows just bad, but the image quality is terrible. If ISPs drag down the streaming video services then I hope Netflix returns to a robust DVD distribution model. IF not then I'll just buy DVD box sets before I support extortion.

Re: Kids in ‘Netflix Only’ Homes Saved from 230 Hours of Commercials a Year

#153
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ALL shows have product placement. Some more blatant than others. You can't get around that.

Product placement in series and movies really break my heart, because it plain and simply taints the piece forever. When it's released, sure, okay, so you do your product placement and get some extra cash to finance the series. Fine. But now, your series which hopefully is good enough to still be watched 20 years, 30 years from now has characters randomly bringing up how they drive an Audi and did you see that builti…

I find just the opposite to be disconcerting. Back in the day, Some procedural cop show was talking about "FacePlace" as a stand in for Facebook.

Then again it sticks out like a sore thumb to me when shows you IP addresses that can't be valid....

Re: Kids in ‘Netflix Only’ Homes Saved from 230 Hours of Commercials a Year

#154

Cue the "I don't even own a TV crowd".... 97% of American Households own a television. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/business/media/03televisi... Then right behind them the "I don't subscribe to cable crowd and I don't understand why people do" 75% of households still have cable or satellite. http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/24/a-stunning-number-of-ameri... And I'm one of the 25% that don't subscribe to cable but…

97% of American Households own a television. Which is down from 98.9% since last year, and is the first decline in 20 years, according to the article.

Re: Kids in ‘Netflix Only’ Homes Saved from 230 Hours of Commercials a Year

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only started watching west wing least year. I was shocked that network tv could produce something so smart, balanced, thoughtful, albeit 20 years ago.

There have been some astonishingly good television programs to come out of broadcast television. West Wing, MASH... Wait, I'm sure there have been more. Right? Yeah, never mind.

Star Trek. I mean, for certain values of "astonishingly".

Re: Kids in ‘Netflix Only’ Homes Saved from 230 Hours of Commercials a Year

#156
post #36

If you have kids who watch netflix, it's interesting how they recoil in disgust at advertising interrupting a show. And it carries over to YouTube too - if they see pre-roll they skip as soon as possible. It'll be interesting when they're teens what kind of media related app will be the 'it' app for them

Interesting. The one good thing with ads on the web is that it works as a micropayment. I wonder how a service like Youtube would work without ads ? I currently have a no-ads subscription on Youtube (packaged with a google music, so it is pretty attractive to me) but I don't think this service would work as a gated subscribe only website.

Brendon Eich is working on "Brave Browser", which aims to use Ethereum to enable an ideal relationship between consumers, content producers, and advertisers.

Re: Kids in ‘Netflix Only’ Homes Saved from 230 Hours of Commercials a Year

#157
post #21
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ALL shows have product placement. Some more blatant than others. You can't get around that.

That is simply not true, firstly most cartoons and anime, but also other shows that come with a higher budget seem to be able to avoid product placements.

Didn't Hasbro and Tomy create Transformers explicitly as a marketing/ sales vehicle?

Re: Kids in ‘Netflix Only’ Homes Saved from 230 Hours of Commercials a Year

#158
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason, Opus Magnum didn't cause the "I do this all day already" reaction yet for me, despite clearly being a programming game. Maybe it's the theme and presentation of it? Or maybe it's just the relaxation of the bugs at least being obvious.

I think these games seem like fun (despite being similar to _work_) as they are free of consequences... the player can mess up and walk away without it impacting their daily life, that likely takes a lot of stress away from the activity.

Yeah, I think a lot of things that are stressful about work go away when you aren't afraid of the consequences of fucking up. It turns out that you can be both extremely productive and quite relaxed at work if you don't care about getting fired.

Re: Kids in ‘Netflix Only’ Homes Saved from 230 Hours of Commercials a Year

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only started watching west wing least year. I was shocked that network tv could produce something so smart, balanced, thoughtful, albeit 20 years ago.

There have been some astonishingly good television programs to come out of broadcast television. West Wing, MASH... Wait, I'm sure there have been more. Right? Yeah, never mind.

Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Re: Kids in ‘Netflix Only’ Homes Saved from 230 Hours of Commercials a Year

#160
post #23

I was thinking about this the other day, and I was wondering whether the fact that my kids are not exposed at all to commercials might make them more susceptible to advertising when they grow up.

Implying that watching more advertisements helps you develop a tolerance for it.

It does in a way. When I watched standard tv programmes years ago, the ads would be a thing you have to go through, and try to ignore. Now they're not tolerable - I'll choose not watching something over watching it with ads. Not sure if it makes me more susceptible to ads I do see (unlikely, I barely but anything anyway), but it limits the exposure a lot.
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