Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981) • Hacker News Board

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#291

Post by Uehreka » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

mark-r wrote: post #285

bigbob2 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shouldn't programmers by default be suggesting the best algorithm/programming language/design patterns for the problem at hand? In a perfect world, yes. But we live in an imperfect world where sub-optimal choices are made due to time constraints, lack of knowledge/experience, etc. I don't understand. Are you saying you frequently have non-technical customers of your software business asking for specific languages,…

Do the vendors of these languages, design patterns and frameworks have billions of dollars riding on your choice? If so, you'd better believe your non-technical customers would be seeing ads pushing them to advocate for one over another. The more non-technical the better, because technical deficiencies become less of a barrier. You already see this today with products pitched at the bosses rather than the underlings…

Agreed. I think the point is that this is bad, and that if “patients asking their doctors to prescribe particular drugs” is an analogous situation, then it too is bad.

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#292

Post by sgustard » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

nolok wrote: post #186

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #157

Im 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…

The first goal of drug advertising is to define a category and convince people they have a disorder that no one had ever heard of before. Viagra invented "erectile disfunction" and went on to make billions of dollars, and an industry was born.

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#293

Post by InvaderFizz » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

culturestate wrote: post #184

jstanley wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, uBlock Origin is very effective against Youtube. I never see ads on Youtube.

Do you mean display ads or pre-rolls? I don't get any display ads but I get pre-rolls constantly with uBO.

I don't get any ads whatsoever on YouTube with uBO. What I do get is about a 20% chance of something screwing up in the ad blocking process for prerolls and getting the grey "there was an error" screen instead of a video. I just hit reload and the video starts playing.

Slightly annoying, but I don't utilize auto play, so I don't have to worry about it stopping my playlist or passive watching.

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#294

Post by banads » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #290

banads wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>shouldn't my doctor morally and by default be suggesting the best treatment for what I have? >Shouldn't programmers by default be suggesting the best algorithm/programming language/design patterns for the problem at hand? Are you implying non technical users would somehow be able to make a crucial technical design decision because they saw an ad somewhere? That seems quite absurd. In my professional experience, eve…

> Are you implying non technical users would somehow be able to make a crucial technical design decision because they saw an ad somewhere? ... In my professional experience, every time a non technical stakeholder has tried to force a specific technology to solve a complex problem, it has been disastrous. No, and in fact I am against TV advertisements of prescription medications. However, what I am challenging is the…

We are in agreement. Doctors advice should definitely not be unquestionable. In fact, there are a number of studies which show iatrogenesis as being one of the leading causes of death in the US.

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#295

Post by iso1210 » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

nolok wrote: post #186

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #157

Im 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…

One reason that healthcare in the U.S. is so expensive compared with every other country is these adverts.

US TV costs something like $78b a year (based on 36% of $220b [0]), or $600 per household, on top of cable costs.

If 25% of adverts are for prescription drugs, then $150 a year of health spending is what you pay for the 6 minutes an hour of tedious healthcare adverts. (There's another $450 extra you pay when buying mattresses or whatever else is advertised on TV)

[0] https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Total-US-Ad-Spending-See-L...

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#296

Post by jklein11 » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

nolok wrote: post #186

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #157

Im 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…

I think the end game for pharmaceutical companies is something like this. They show this ad to 1 million people. Of those 1 million people, 3000 are HIV positive. Of the 3000, 1% ask their doctor about the new drug. Now 30 physicians research the drug and find that it might be more effective in patients that present with x or have y comorbidities. They start prescribing it in those cases. Rarely do physicians care about what it is going to cost the patient.

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#297

Post by sgustard » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

caseysoftware wrote: post #26

It'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.

Ad revenue has also dropped with DVR use. It's amusing to think about adding 20% of ads to compensate for 20% of viewers skipping over the ads, since it's a race to 100% ads that nobody watches.

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#298

Post by Kalium » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

RedShift1 wrote: post #195

klausjensen wrote: post #169

I don't pirate because I don't want to pay for content - I pirate because it is the only way I can get a lot of content. I wish there was a global way to subscribe to and pay for content in a market/app-independant way. If you are not in the USA, Canada or UK, your options to pay for the most popular, newest content are very, very limited. And if you are in a very small and/or somewhat impoverished country, forget ab…

I've argued about this numerous times: ISP's need to provide customers with an opt-in p2p license that adds a small fee to their monthly bill. This monthly fee is transferred to a central authority, the ISP does not make any profit from this fee. The license would allow users to torrent whatever content they want. Torrent trackers would be fully legal, their only legal obligation would be keeping track of torrent pop…

Are you purposely modeling this on how ASCAP works?

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#299

Post by iso1210 » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

xxpor wrote: post #271

nolok wrote: post #186

Earlier 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…

As an American, what shocked me in the UK was the amount of ads for sports gambling. Literally every commercial during games was for a betting site. It felt pretty gross.

You're right, it's shocking, although I think it's mainly during sports (which sports nerds already pay a fortune for to subscribe to sky sports / bt sport).

The vast majority of TV viewing in the UK is on BBC, amazon prime, netflix or disney plus, and thus doesn't contain commercials, just adverts for other shows from the same provider. The rest of the stuff is mainly aimed at old people sat at home - visited my nan today, who had some terrible channel on (channel 65 or something). Adverts were almost entirely for stairlifts and to leave money to charities in wills.

Re: Will cable TV be invaded by commercials? (1981)

#300

Post by iso1210 » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #266

Razengan wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we notice that profits come from Company X's purposeful activities that are desired by customers that choose to spend money with Company X instead of Company Y. Many companies make money from activities that are not desired by customers.

>Many companies make money from activities that are not desired by customers. I wasn't making some absolutist 100% statement about every company that ever existed. Sure, hated companies like cable company Comcast or Ticketmaster have profits. Netflix doesn't have that sort of monopoly power. Also, my comment about "desire" is relative desire between choices of spending money on different companies -- X vs Y. Why did…

While netflix doesn't have a monopoly on tv shows, they do have a monopoly on a given show. If you want to watch Tiger King, you have to have Netflix.

However even that monopoly falls down once legalities are ignored. In the 90s the only way to watch US shows in the UK was via the internet, so that's what I did. If netflix introduces adverts, then people will use piratebay or whatever to watch it without adverts.