Advertising isn’t the problem. And before I get my balls cut off, I’ll back away slowly while explaining myself…
We’ve always paid for ads. Back in the old days you paid for a cable subscription and got to watch ads every 15 minutes. That’s not a new phenomenon. Hell, television was designed around the advertising break. The entire one hour series 5 part script model was created with the “cut to ad break” in mind. You think about your CSI:Miami “sunglasses of justice” stinger, or your fourth ad-break plot-twist as the Romulan war bird uncloaks and the music dun-dun-duns into a commercial for cheese-its…
That’s not a problem in and of itself. In fact I kind of miss it when shows were written that way. Heck, Tubi and Pluto TV do it and no one complains about that. And if Netflix wants to add those back into their free tier, more power to 'em.
But advertising is not about getting served a few commercials every fifteen minutes anymore. It’s literally in front of the content, within the content, etc… It’s not about “hey look, it’s an ad break, let’s go refill our 7-up and take a piss”, it’s inlaid with the content, as well as taking up as much, if not MORE time than the actual content itself. and THAT’S part one of the problem.
Part two is the fact that if you’re going to make more money by making me pay for your service AND watch advertisements, you better damn well be giving at least some of that new money to other creatives that are MAKING those advertisements. Make a commercial with actors and actresses; pay them. Hire a writer to create ad-copy, just like we used to do. But if you’re going to charge me AND make me watch lazy shit you made with A.I. slop, than THAT is where I’ll happily take my ship and head onto the high seas.
I’d be perfectly happy to sit through two or three traditional advertisements every fifteen minutes just like we did in the old days. But what I WON’T stand for is watching five minutes of lazy A.I. ads after every five minutes of actual content and be expected to PAY for the service on top of that.
This point doesnt really make sense when you consider that there are TV channels that don’t have ads like any of the BBC channels, PBS and even Disney Channel. They are channels that only promote their own other shows but for the most part don’t have ads in between the shows.
Back in the old days you paid for a cable subscription and got to watch ads every 15 minutes
Oh, hell no. We had HBO my entire teen years, and that was the huge difference between cable and broadcast - there were no commercials on HBO.
I never had cable as an adult; I didn’t like being beholden to someone else’s tastes and show times, so we just rented videos: Blockbuster, or more often the locally owned rental place - they had weirder stuff.
When Cable became “infinite channels,” they did start showing ads, but that wasn’t paying for content: that was paying for delivery. It was supersized broadcast TV. To emphasize this, packages cost extra, and those special, extra channels (HBO, etc) didn’t have commercials. The basic package was just extra broadcast TV.
Netflix is more analogous to HBO than cable. Supporting this is their original operating model: a subscription fee that got you DVDs mailed to your house. Just like a subscription fee to Blockbuster that got you a certain number of rentals per month.
Don’t try to normalize it by claiming “it’s always been this way,” because it hasn’t.
television was designed around the advertising break
Television was free. Netflix was originally movies. Movies don’t have ads (not specific, non-story related ones, anyway; they’ve always had product placement). It’s been only relatively recently that Netflix has gotten into the episodic game, which is even less justification for ad breaks, because episodes are shorter than movies. Which have no ads.
You’re entitled to pay for what you like and be happy with it, buy fuck if I’m going to pay someone to watch their ads. If I was a TV watcher, I’d pay for choice - a thousand channels, with ad-ridden content. I draw the line at going to a movie theater, paying for a ticket, and then having the movie interrupted with ads, which is what this is equivalent to. You can always skip the ones up front with timing, and fuck those ads too.
Advertising isn’t the problem. And before I get my balls cut off, I’ll back away slowly while explaining myself…
We’ve always paid for ads. Back in the old days you paid for a cable subscription and got to watch ads every 15 minutes. That’s not a new phenomenon. Hell, television was designed around the advertising break. The entire one hour series 5 part script model was created with the “cut to ad break” in mind. You think about your CSI:Miami “sunglasses of justice” stinger, or your fourth ad-break plot-twist as the Romulan war bird uncloaks and the music dun-dun-duns into a commercial for cheese-its…
That’s not a problem in and of itself. In fact I kind of miss it when shows were written that way. Heck, Tubi and Pluto TV do it and no one complains about that. And if Netflix wants to add those back into their free tier, more power to 'em.
But advertising is not about getting served a few commercials every fifteen minutes anymore. It’s literally in front of the content, within the content, etc… It’s not about “hey look, it’s an ad break, let’s go refill our 7-up and take a piss”, it’s inlaid with the content, as well as taking up as much, if not MORE time than the actual content itself. and THAT’S part one of the problem.
Part two is the fact that if you’re going to make more money by making me pay for your service AND watch advertisements, you better damn well be giving at least some of that new money to other creatives that are MAKING those advertisements. Make a commercial with actors and actresses; pay them. Hire a writer to create ad-copy, just like we used to do. But if you’re going to charge me AND make me watch lazy shit you made with A.I. slop, than THAT is where I’ll happily take my ship and head onto the high seas.
I’d be perfectly happy to sit through two or three traditional advertisements every fifteen minutes just like we did in the old days. But what I WON’T stand for is watching five minutes of lazy A.I. ads after every five minutes of actual content and be expected to PAY for the service on top of that.
There are no ads on the CD I bought from the merch table at a concert last week.
This point doesnt really make sense when you consider that there are TV channels that don’t have ads like any of the BBC channels, PBS and even Disney Channel. They are channels that only promote their own other shows but for the most part don’t have ads in between the shows.
Oh, hell no. We had HBO my entire teen years, and that was the huge difference between cable and broadcast - there were no commercials on HBO.
I never had cable as an adult; I didn’t like being beholden to someone else’s tastes and show times, so we just rented videos: Blockbuster, or more often the locally owned rental place - they had weirder stuff.
When Cable became “infinite channels,” they did start showing ads, but that wasn’t paying for content: that was paying for delivery. It was supersized broadcast TV. To emphasize this, packages cost extra, and those special, extra channels (HBO, etc) didn’t have commercials. The basic package was just extra broadcast TV.
Netflix is more analogous to HBO than cable. Supporting this is their original operating model: a subscription fee that got you DVDs mailed to your house. Just like a subscription fee to Blockbuster that got you a certain number of rentals per month.
Don’t try to normalize it by claiming “it’s always been this way,” because it hasn’t.
Television was free. Netflix was originally movies. Movies don’t have ads (not specific, non-story related ones, anyway; they’ve always had product placement). It’s been only relatively recently that Netflix has gotten into the episodic game, which is even less justification for ad breaks, because episodes are shorter than movies. Which have no ads.
You’re entitled to pay for what you like and be happy with it, buy fuck if I’m going to pay someone to watch their ads. If I was a TV watcher, I’d pay for choice - a thousand channels, with ad-ridden content. I draw the line at going to a movie theater, paying for a ticket, and then having the movie interrupted with ads, which is what this is equivalent to. You can always skip the ones up front with timing, and fuck those ads too.