[Cause]

Lets just adopt a quick don't ask I won't tell attitude to how I know this

But American TV broadcasts its shows with a giant logo in one of the corners, which is actually close to the centre of the screen than it should be anyway. Then they cover the screen with hashtags and every know and then the entire lower third of the screen becomes an advert banner! Things seem to be well out of control! Does this not drive you mad? I shudder to imagine local TV would ever turn out like this.

[worry]

That's just the beginning. Constant banner-sized animated advertisements that cover the bottom third of the screen. It's disgusting. No wonder people like Hulu so much even though you still get ads with a paid subscription. You at least get a clear screen during the show you want to watch.

[Tiste Simeon]

Reminds me of that Family Guy where an ad for 24 crosses the bottom of the screen and Stewie gets all annoyed with it, then another one for "Shovin' Buddies" comes up with generic people jostling good naturedly to get to the front. You also have Cross Armed Opposites and Slowly Rotating Black Guy. Tried to find clips but they're all completely terrible quality...

[Vengeance]

The banners and logo's are the least irritating thing about broadcast Television. A majority of the programing is crap. Anything that is good is on pay TV. It should be no surprise that people would rather stream both legally and illegally then bother to watch 20 minutes of commercials.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Captive audiences.

[amphibian]

I watch TV with captions on and those usually block out what's going on.

That being said, there are far too few shows that intelligently move the captions around when needed. Sometimes there's foreground action that needs to be shown (sleight of hand stuff, letters etc.) and a smart captioning staff will move the captions up to the top of the frame for a moment.

One slight side-effect of caption-watching is that I'm constantly looking away from the fine details of the faces of the actors and more towards their chests or overall movements. So I see a lot of cleavage/boobs and I see more body language than most people do, but I miss out on the facial work.

[QuickTidal]

During the Season premiere of ARCHER on Teletoon this season the network chose to run a banner with tweets running across it for almost the entire thing...and the network twitter account was barraged with complaints. Hey Teletoon, if you get FIRST run rights for an FX show and are the only network who has it...don't piss off the fanbase by putting social media crap across the bottom of their screen.

But yeah, a lot of the American feeds that get pickjed up in Canada have that shit.

I long ago got used to the logos in the corner...though does everyone remember that started out innocuously as just a logo that would stay for a few seconds and then fade? I can't recall how long it took to change that but I TOTALLY recall where I was when the logo stayed in the corner. I was pissed. But it's just the norm these days.

But yeah, Netflix and HBO and such have ruined me for that network crap, by showing me clean screens. Happily.

When the regular networks fail due to shifting viewing to streaming and internet pay-based systems...I'm not going to be upset about it.

[Tarthenal Theloman Toblakai]

Over in the UK I watched Game of Thrones last night, and I swear there was an ad break every 4 minutes. I had to finish a game of Blitzball on FFX HD my PS Vita prior to watching though so had to pause the start, luckily this meant I skipped all the ad breaks bar the last one. Also the fact that you guys in the US recieve shows before us means that the illegal downloads are made even worse. I mean, if I hadn't read the books already I would be damn tempted to jump on the band wagon and find a stream or something, luckily I can live with waiting having already read what will happen. Makes me glad when I miss a cool series like Arrow and catch up on Blu ray, no ad breaks, no waiting for each episode

[McLovin]

It's the natural evolution of things. DVR allowed viewers to skip commercials, so now networks just make the entire show a commercial. Soon all quality TV will be subscription or pay-to-stream, and networks will complete their transformation into a reality/talk TV wasteland with occasional local news coverage.

[Traveller]

Tarthenal Theloman Toblakai, on 15 April 2014 - 07:04 AM, said:

Over in the UK I watched Game of Thrones last night, and I swear there was an ad break every 4 minutes. I had to finish a game of Blitzball on FFX HD my PS Vita prior to watching though so had to pause the start, luckily this meant I skipped all the ad breaks bar the last one. Also the fact that you guys in the US recieve shows before us means that the illegal downloads are made even worse. I mean, if I hadn't read the books already I would be damn tempted to jump on the band wagon and find a stream or something, luckily I can live with waiting having already read what will happen. Makes me glad when I miss a cool series like Arrow and catch up on Blu ray, no ad breaks, no waiting for each episode

I usually record it and watch it the day after... but on Monday I watched as it aired.

It was terrible... the wedding scene was chopped into about four commercial-stuffed segments. Last week they showed it at 2am and it was totally ad-free, which was so much better.

I can't believe how much they butcher hour long programs.

You wouldn't go to the theatre and have the entire performance stop so people could stand and try to sell you cars, perfume and other crap for six minutes. It would be ridiculous - so why do they do it on tv?

I record everything now but it's still a pain forwarding through adverts every few minutes.

My big bug with banners is with the one right at the end of an episode (like in Sons of Anarchy) where the music and final montage gets muted so a voiceover can tell you what's on next - breaking the mood and destroying the scene. That makes me seriously fucking angry.

[Macros]

Well to be fair traveller you pay £10 to go to the cinema to watch one film.
do you pay the network a fee per episode? No.
They gota pay the bills, granted they take it too far Imo, but its a cold hard fact none the less

[Jakovasaurus]

Here in America we have HDTVS that are so big they cover a wall, so these annoyances are hardly noticeable. We buy the latest and biggest the moment they become available.

[Traveller]

Macros, on 15 April 2014 - 03:35 PM, said:

Well to be fair traveller you pay £10 to go to the cinema to watch one film.
do you pay the network a fee per episode? No.
They gota pay the bills, granted they take it too far Imo, but its a cold hard fact none the less

I understand that, but some programs get away with longer ad breaks at the beginning and maybe halfway through, so they don't interfere too much but still pay the bills. Putting ads in five minutes apart through the build-up to a finale is taking the piss imo.

And putting banners all over the screen and talking about what's coming up next during a program they are trying to get ratings for is idiotic as more viewers will turn to other less interrupted sources. Why pay out on a good show if they're then going to render it unwatchable?

[Spoilsport Stonny]

I dropped my cable TV subscription years ago in favor of a Netflix/Hulu/iTunes model and I've never looked back. I still have to pay the oligopoly for my monthly internet use, but I don't miss cable, commercials, the 'bug' (what we call the translucent corner logo in the broadcasting biz) or especially the bill. The lack of commercials my kids are exposed to has made the decision a no-brainer.

[worry]

So now they're less like "Daddy can I have that doll with an impossible body and thirty extra outfit/jewelry packs you can buy?" and "Daddy can I have that neon green and purple tank that transforms into a nuke?" and more like "Daddy can I get the entire Criterion Collection on blu-ray pleeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

[QuickTidal]

Tarthenal Theloman Toblakai, on 15 April 2014 - 07:04 AM, said:

I had to finish a game of Blitzball on FFX HD my PS Vita prior to watching t

You will need to win 200 of these to get Wakka's celestial weapon.

[Spoilsport Stonny]

worry, on 15 April 2014 - 09:58 PM, said:

So now they're less like "Daddy can I have that doll with an impossible body and thirty extra outfit/jewelry packs you can buy?" and "Daddy can I have that neon green and purple tank that transforms into a nuke?" and more like "Daddy can I get the entire Criterion Collection on blu-ray pleeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

Man, wouldn't that be sweet? I did watch Cocteau's LA BELLE ET LA BETE on Hulu with them, and not once did they ask about the singing teapot. Future looks good.