Cable networks are speeding up TV shows to cram in ads

[taneq]

I'm still boggled by the fact that people pay for cable TV service and then accept ads at all, let alone ads at the cost of messing with the actual content.

[legopelle]

Two things shook me while watching TV on my USA trip.

One is the sheer number of ad breaks in programming. Here in Sweden there's only a few with a good chunk in between.

The second is ads during programs. I mean not even having the courtesy to pause but instead overimpose.

I sort of get it now why USA import shows have the weird breaks though.

Given, I seldom watch TV here anymore, so I might be mistaken.

[michaelt]

If you imagine you escape ads when you pay for content, you're going to be disappointed. Even Netflix does paid product placement in 74% of its original series [1]

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-hulu-netflix-driving-...

[scarface74]

When we lived in an apartment, we were required to pay $99 for an Internet + cable bundle with Comcast. It sucked so badly that one of the deciding factors when we bought a house was that AT&T Fiber was available. We also had every bedroom, the office, and the living room wired for gigabit Ethernet with the expectation that we would be using only internet based video services.

Now, we have three Roku TVs and two 4K AppleTV boxes (thanks to DirecTVNow). We subscribe to Netflix (free with T-mobile), DirecTVNow, and Hulu.

My dad came up and he loved our RokuTV so I bought him one. He likes it, but he would never go cable free.

With cable, you just turn it on and start watching. With the Roku TV, you have to sign up for an account, add channels, login to all of your subscriptions. If you have cable, you have to login to all of the different channels with your cable subscription. WiFi is also more flakey then cable. Then on top of that, they have to worry about going over thier 400Gb cap.

Can you imagine most 70+ year olds having to go through all of the hassle with five TVs? Heck, except for the RokuTV, all of thier TVs are CRTs, including one that I bought for myself when I moved out in the mid 90s.

[dazc]

Amazon's ads for their own shows and services on Prime are becoming gradually more intrusive though. I wouldn't be surprised to see regular ad slots being introduced at some point in time?

[mrhappyunhappy]

I remember days where there’s we’re no ads on cable tv as that was one of the selling points. Also used to be no ads in theatres. I can’t fathom why anyone would pay money to see ads. I’ve been cable free for a decade and could never go back. Won’t even if you pay me to. Nope.

[bachmeier]

Actually, as the quality of service continues to decline, it will bring traditional cable TV to an end that much faster. For the most part, people don't accept this stuff, and they're rapidly moving away from it.

[Shivetya]

six of one, half dozen of another.

It can add up pretty quick if you subscribe to more than a few streaming services and with many groups going their own way we might likely end up back with group providers. What makes the cable free work for us is that it felt odd in this day an age to have internet and cable as both are effectively a transport method. Why cannot the cable provider stream over my internet connection at a discounted rate?

on a site note about speeding up shows, when watching most informational videos on youtube you can speed them up to 1.25 speed with no real loss in quality. some presenters are a bit long winded

[jpmattia]

Some folks here may not be old enough to remember: Cable originally started without ads. The revenue stream proved to be too juicy to ignore.

There's probably a prediction in there about Amazon/Netflix/etc.

[verelo]

This shocks me too. I’d at least like the option to turn off ads for an additional fee. No way will i pay and watch ads however!

[xstephen95x]

in NYC, internet+cable and just internet were the exact same price, so..

[lower]

Here in the EU (edit: at least in Germany), TV stations sometimes slow down their shows to cram in more ads. There are rules that there may be only one block of ads in a show of up to 45 minutes, two blocks in a show of up to 90 minutes, and three blocks in a show of up to 110 minutes. So, if the content is just under 90 minutes or so, stations will stretch it slightly, so that it comes above the limit.

[chunkyslink]

Fancy that. The EU making some good laws to protect the consumer from the corporation. Lovely stuff.

[colde]

For broadcasts in Denmark, the rule is that ads cannot interrupt a program. It has to be before/after programs.

Some channels get around that by broadcasting from other countries to Denmark though.

[Aaargh20318]

Not sure if it’s a EU wide rule though. IIRC the rule in my country is just a maximum of 12 minutes per hour.

[marmot777]

Since I 100% stopped watching regular TV, watching shows on netflix, etc., so that even a few minutes of regular TV drives me crazy. It's the frenetic ads, the toxicity of many of the shows, and god knows what else that's crazy making. Now I know that it's actually sped up. How could that not affect someone's mental health in some way even a subtle way?

[0xcafecafe]

Same here. In addition I can't stand the wild swings in volume. Baby sleeping in the other room so you set it to the lowest volume possible where you can hear. When it breaks into a commercial, the volume seems to increase by 50%

[scarface74]

Besides sports, I don’t see why anyone watches live TV on a schedule in 2018 when both a DVR and on demand is a thing - even if you do have a cable subscription or an OTA service like Sling and DirecTV.

If I recall correctly from my time having Comcast, they don’t show commercials when you watch on demand after three days. I think it has something to do with ratings only count live + 3 days.

[bittermang]

TBS has been doing this for YEARS. They use every trick in the book, but messing with the timing of episodes is the most jarring. And frankly, ruins a lot of shows, comedy is all about timing after all.

[scarface74]

It was even worse “Turner Time”, where they would start and end all shows 5 minutes pass the hour to make you miss the first 5 minutes of a show on another network to convince you to keep watching.

https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1626/why-do-wtbs-s...

[jyriand]

Probably that's why soccer is not popular in US. You can't interrupt soccer game for an ad. That's not the case with NFL, where you see an ad every time players stop playing.

[a_f]

From my experience the US broadcasts of soccer do have a ad popover the playing game on some games; often over or in addition to the scoreboard. It is much like an animated banner that you would get on a website. It does not cover the entire screen; but it is still intrusive. Of course there is still exposure to the stadium side banners, and shirt sponsors as with all soccer games.

[prestonpesek]

If they are this desperate, prepare for net neutrality to become more important. I’ve already started to experience delays in streaming speeds and reliability. Please call or write to your representative and express concern that your internet service provider has a clear incentive to inhibit the free flow of information to your home, and that you are deeply concerned about this.

[massysett]

[2015]

[imgabe]

Is anyone still watching network/cable TV?

[smelendez]

Yes. And they are disproportionately heavy video consumers with indifference to how many ads they see.

[kj4ips]

Does this mean that the networks are creating derivative works of the content they licensed, and then airing that? Especially if they are cutting out opening titles.

Overlays and EAS have usually been acceptable, and composing the end titles with something else is a longstanding practice, but it doesn't actually modify the content directly.

[chrisper]

So happy to live in a country where downloading TV shows from the web is legal.

No more annoying ads and restrictions.

[dmortin]

Is uploading legal too? Because downloading is legal in other EU contries too, but uploading is not, so you can't use torrent to download, because that uploads too.

So if uploading is not legal then you can't use torrent.

[chriswait]

Which country is that, out of interest?

[qrbLPHiKpiux]

Comparison video blocked, copywrite claim. Disagree. It’s fair use demonstrating allegations.

[Senderman]

With automated processes for copyright claims becoming so common, fair use is really getting trampled on.

[marsrover]

This is pretty user hostile. Glad I don’t have cable anymore.

[mrfusion]

This is how the death spiral starts for cable.

[ssttoo]

Well, isn’t that a standard practice in radio? The songs are a tad shorter and, as a result, a bit pitched up. Part of it is about ads, but mostly it’s about increasing the chance of you liking what you hear (more songs means maybe you’ll like one, at least) and not changing the station. If we can fit 11 songs in the space of 10, that’s a wider net.

Why wouldn’t TV follow suit?

[usrusr]

No need to speed up music, just fade it out early. Pop music has evolved to be structured in a way that not much will be lost, survival and success of the most radio-friendly. Few songs break that rule and those that do are either deliberately short or way too elaborate for radio anyways.

[agumonkey]

I wonder if radio in the 50s used this or if it's the result of change in market (probably due to TV too) that made them consolidate into simpler format and more ads. In which case it would be a metaphor for the faux-death of TV.

[ddtaylor]

What percentage do they speed it up?

[Jaruzel]

Up to 9.0% now apparently.

Working link to the Seinfeld example on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6i1VVikRu0

[dannyw]

7.5% for Seinfield.

[kokey]

Read all about it on a news web site that confine the text to part of the page in order to cram in ads.