This promise did not age well: >“We won't break programming at awkward times,'' promises Dick Cox, president of CBS Cable,
What a name to have
Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)
221–230 of 361 posts
Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, let’s optimize for those things then. Right now growth mostly means making the rich richer. Trickle down economics have been discredited for a while. I wish governments would set quality of life targets instead of gdp targets. If you need to grow gdp to get to a better quality of life, fine, but please, let’s all stop spreading the lie that gdp growth inevitably leads to increased quality of life, because often…
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I think the reason you are being downvoted is due to your aggressive tone and due to you not including many sources in your claims (or at least, minimal reasoning behind them).
Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as I am given the option to purchase content without advertisements I will do so. If I can't watch a piece of content without ads, I'll either wait until I can or pirate it. Usually the former. Frankly I think content is just overvalued and the actual creation of content is extremely inefficient, from a financial point of view. My personal experience has been that Hollywood film/television studios are poorly…
I’d be interested in hearing more about what you mean by market distortion here. A lot of the silliness in things like how much stars are paid seems applicable to software development — tiny incremental value adds become very substantial with a large enough audience.
I don't know what it is off the top of my head but I think actor pay isn't that big a slice of the cost.
What I mean by market distortion is really the lack of insight into value creation. How much value is created by whom in the pipeline, essentially. Data driven, direct to consumer enterprises are changing this a bit and that's great. But my experience is that data doesn't change minds of the top stakeholders, and there are incentives to make decisions that are bad for consumers even if the data says that both sides can win.
Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)
#224Im enjoying Hulu/Netflix/Prime Video while I can. My kid has grown up in a household without commercials and where you get points for who can hit “skip” the fastest when one does pop up. Commercials were always annoying but when you aren’t used to seeing them then it really hits home that your seeing the exact same commercial for floor wax sixteen times an hour and the exact same commercial for anti-AIDS drugs sixtee…
> the exact same commercial for anti-AIDS drugs sixteen times per hour. European here, I will go over my surprise / weirdness about having ads for chronic disease medication like that, to ask : do you actually, you as the patient, choose which medication you receive for disease like that? Does your opinion override that of the doctor? Is it not ultimately a moot choice both by you and the doctor because the one you w…
Direct to consumer TV ads for pharmaceuticals were illegal in 1981. This did not change until 1997. As I remember it, in the few years after 1997 there were still relatively few drug ads on TV. It was nothing like today. It seems like the number of ads has dramatically increased in more recent times I would guess because many large pharmaceutical companies lack the pipelines they had in the 1990's and are under more pressure to increase sales on existing drugs.
Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)
#225I will bet a lot that Netflix is headed this way too. Once Netflix stops growing, it will need to find additional growth, and advertisement will be the way to additional profit.
"Growth" is now one of my most hated overused business lingo, after "innovation". Is it too naive to hope that this pandemic will make us collectively question the value of creeds like growth for growth's sake?
“Engagement” is another one.
Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the exact same commercial for anti-AIDS drugs sixteen times per hour. European here, I will go over my surprise / weirdness about having ads for chronic disease medication like that, to ask : do you actually, you as the patient, choose which medication you receive for disease like that? Does your opinion override that of the doctor? Is it not ultimately a moot choice both by you and the doctor because the one you w…
Twenty-odd years ago, I saw a tv ad for the drug Paxil. It was about social anxiety disorder. Didn’t know that was a thing, so I never looked into fixing it. Talked to my doctor about it. Got a prescription, took the medication for several years. It changed my life for the better.
That may be a culture difference, and it might not even be entirely healthy (with the god doctor syndrome), but from where I stand your relationship with your doctor and/or his skill was not where it should be if he doesn't regularly ask you the usually basic/boring questions that detect there is an issue to fix, and you don't naturally tell them you feel bad about X or you have this or that issue.
Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)
#227It's amazing how much commercials have crept in. If you watch an "hour long" show from the early 80s, it's roughly 48 minutes. If you watch a similar show from 10-15 years ago, it's closer to 44-45 and in the last few years, it's more like 42 minutes. I assume it's only going to get worse as TV ad revenue drops faster with more alternatives.
That reminds me, that I would love for Netflix to have a common episode length filter. Or at least a category for around 20 minute shows.
Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
People had watch parties the moment episodes dropped for GoT. Bars would even air episodes in later years. Most of the world watched it together, both legally and illegally. It was definitely the same thing.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/30/media/game-of-thrones-season-... > Sunday's episode of "Game of Thrones" notched a series record of 17.8 million viewers, according to HBO. "The Long Night" broke the record set by the season premiere just two weeks ago when 17.4 million viewers tuned in. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/02/2... > 106 million people watched ‘M.A.S.H.’ finale 35 years ago. No scrip…
> Maybe almost 100 million watched Game of Thrones illegally
I think you hit the nail on the head. I live in a country where you can't, to my knowledge, get HBO legally at all, and yet a huge number of people kept up with it, to the point of having a weekly watching party when the series was live. It only takes one tech-savvy person and a USB stick.
Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)
#229Im enjoying Hulu/Netflix/Prime Video while I can. My kid has grown up in a household without commercials and where you get points for who can hit “skip” the fastest when one does pop up. Commercials were always annoying but when you aren’t used to seeing them then it really hits home that your seeing the exact same commercial for floor wax sixteen times an hour and the exact same commercial for anti-AIDS drugs sixtee…
You are on hacker news so it's likely you are a successful young adult male, what do you mean hn readers aren't in a desirable demographic? (apologies if that doesn't exactly describe you)
Google might know you are a lost cause but they don't actually care, they still sold the impression.
Anyway you might have Google targeting turned off, which is why you're seeing ads for floor wax instead of whatever saas is advertising on YouTube that day you happened to read a blog post about.
Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I really wish there were laws mandating a very obvious " this scene was sponsored by X" overlay. I don't think an in-vision in-scene notice should be required, as that is very intrusive to the viewer . However, I would support a requirement of full transparency, and I do believe they already notify people of product placement per episode (or am I thinking YouTube? I know I've seen recent notifications somewhere ). A…
> as an adult viewer who is quite capable of making my own purchasing decisions Is there anyone who isn’t susceptible to the psychological trickery in advertising? I woulda once said something similar, but looking back as the years pass, I can see that was a delusion.
My dad is 65 years old and still thinks he is immune to advertising, but he literally reads email ads and deal sites, and users those to inform his decisions. I am pretty sure he thinks an ad has never convinced him to buy a product he didn't already want, therfore he is immune to it.
If you define influence to be whatever you want, of course you can say you are not influenced by ads.