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
We dont have Netflix, but we have HBO. So my kids watch Sesame Street, Pinky Dinky Doo, etc. They won't watch anything on Cartoon Network because of the commercials. In face, my kids have zero tolerance for commercials now.
We got YouTube Red because of the ads on iPad were out of control. It's insane the amount of commercials YouTube puts in a 10 minute clip of Busy Beavers, etc.
If you're watching it in syndication it's probably either cut or sped up (or both) to squeeze in even more commercials. The intro and credits combined are about a minute on that show as most 30 minute shows are. I don't complain about the speeding too much as I watch most shows are 1.5x and cut out the commercials so a show with 18 minutes of content takes 12 minutes.
I could see speeding up shows to 1.5x if I was a reviewer and was watching them for work. But speeding up your entertainment seems strange to me. It'd be like ordering French Laundry to go.
The entertainment density is often very low.
It doesn't work this way for content that tries to communicate a specific mood, but for slapstick humor chains like BBT, more jokes is just funnier than less jokes per minute.
No offense but you went from consuming video games that make people stupid to producing video games that make people stupid and that's a success story? That's like my kids getting a job at the production company of Dora The Explorer and me thanking all the 980 hours a year on average they wasted on TV consumption.
> No offense but you went ... to producing video games that make people stupid ... Where did the GP say they make video games? Maybe they do, but I don't think you know, and you shouldn't assume.
…really? "Nerd minstrel show?" Ah yes, we poor nerds, overcoming centuries of repressive awkwardness and desk jobs.
Maybe an analogy in poor taste, but the premise of BBT is basically “look how many negative stereotypes of scientists and engineers we can get our audience to point and laugh at, if we take our lazy awkward mean-spirited writing and put a laugh track over the top”. Try searching for versions with laugh track removed to get a better sense of the writing per se without the extra emotional manipulation. Compare with Sil…
Someone made a series out of Revenge of the Nerds?
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.
Its gonna differ per country. I remember in the 90s 3 commercial breaks in a movie here in NL was default. I was shocked and annoyed when I learned in early 00s it was every 20 min. I don't know what it is now, I avoid commercial TV like the plague. Though public broadcasting also still has them. As a kid and young adult I used to be able to sometimes laugh at commercials. Nowadays, some commercials appeal more to me due to age diff, but many don't because they use youth language. On top of that I find practically all commercials are condescending, stupid, and annoying. Their attempts to deceive and manipulate are laughable, ineffective, a waste of my time, and a waste of my mood. Nothing good comes out of me watching commercials. Not for the advertiser, nor for me. I cannot remember the last time it stimulated me to buy something I otherwise wouldn't. That is, from TV commercials and ads on the Internet. Product placement, embedded marketing, marketing buzz works fine. I suspect there's so many TV commercials because it is ineffective. If less people watch than before, its more expensive to buy the rights, so they gotta advertise more. Or perhaps its corporate greed.
I suspect regular programming isn't getting dumber, the alternatives are just getting smarter. When I look at the crap I watched as a kid in the 80s (which included a good amount of 70s reruns), basically all broadcast TV today is far superior. But the competition for broadcast TV isn't "no competition" now, it's the Internet, and computer games, and Netflix. The entertainment industry has been blown wide open by the…
except that smart games like factorio only accounts a super tiny amount of gamers, most of which are actually playing games like league of legends, call of duty, cs go, dota 2, hearthstone and overwatch. they're all really fun games don't get me wrong.
People are designing circuits in Minecraft, and have been for years. That's an extreme example, but even my 8 year old son plays with redstone circuits and watches youtube howtos on how to do interesting setups in Minecraft on the Wii U.
In February of this year Minecraft apparently had 55 million players (with 122 million copies sold).[1]
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.
To be fair, the commercials are the best part of watching The Big Bang Theory . Much better to spend a few minutes imagining how cool I would be if I just owned Product X rather than see a nerd minstrel show with an annoying laugh track.
> nerd minstrel show
Do we have to go through this every time BBT is mentioned on the internet. We all know the show sucks and why, and adding this descriptor only starts the same stupid fight that appears on every BBT thread and is never resolved and just makes everyone angry.
No offense but you sound like my aunt who would tell me all the time that video games would make me stupid. But I wouldn't be working in tech today if it wasn't for my passion for video games. (note: I also limit screen time for my kids)
Watching TV and play video games have not the same effects on the brain. Watching TV puts your brain in idle mode
Depends on the show. A lot of media is incredibly stimulating and stick with you for hours or days (or more) after you've watched it.
Even complex shows like Game of Thrones can be stimulating simply because of the complexity, even if it's nothing more than made-up stories. And stuff like Blue Planet or Black Mirror are genuinely thought-provoking.
I've been almost entirely commercial/advertising free for years now. Not gonna lie, it isolates you from mainstream society a bit. Whether that is good or bad is debatable.