It struck me the other day that I never see television commercials any longer.\u00a0 I was sitting in the kitchen having a meal and I saw a funny commercial.\u00a0 I called to my wife to have a look.\u00a0 Her response was “yeah I’ve seen it.”\u00a0 My wife, God bless her, won’t run the kids out of the living room from watching TV or playing xbox.\u00a0 She’ll just watch TV in the kitchen or bedroom.\u00a0 Since we have a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) in the living room and regular TV on all the other TV’s.\u00a0 Actually that is partly true.\u00a0 I have set it so that we can watch the DVR (live or recorded shows) on any TV in the house.\u00a0 No remote control at the other TVs but you can still watch it.<\/p>\n
I’m not above telling the kids I’m going to watch TV, so get off the xbox. \ud83d\ude09\u00a0 I’ll start scanning the 500 channels for something to watch, then always remember I should check the “recorded list”.\u00a0 You know things that you have set the DVR to record for you.\u00a0 Sometimes a show will be on that I am recording.\u00a0 It seems I’m usually 5 to 15 minutes late for it, but no problem I can just go to the recording and start watching it before the show is over.\u00a0 The plus side is I can SKIP the commercials!<\/p>\n
I’ve learned that on those RARE shows that I make a point to be in front of the TV when it starts, to wait 15 minutes before watching the program, simply so I can skip all the commercials.\u00a0 15 to 20 minutes is usually enough to fast forward through all the commercials in a one hour episode.<\/p>\n
Recently a program update was downloaded to our DVR.\u00a0 It seems the fast forward (one button push) is now going MUCH slower than it was before.\u00a0 The commercials were taking what seemed to be twice as long to be over.\u00a0\u00a0 At 1\/2 fast forward speed I was 1) Getting bored 2) Able to see what product was being pushed.\u00a0\u00a0 I cannot say for sure but I wondered if this was something that was forced on the content and PVR provider by the companies that are purchasing time for commercials on the various businesses that collectively provide the content.<\/p>\n
Now I press the fast forward button twice!\u00a0 Problem solved.\u00a0 I thought, who in their right mind would be watching a television commercial.\u00a0 Sure there are those that are funny, or have people in it that you like to see, but the majority of the commercials you either already know about the product, or you could give a rat’s ass about.\u00a0 There are those that think that just seeing the product image for a fraction of a second may be enough to help you choose their product when you are at the store, etc…<\/p>\n
All in all there is NO value to watching a television commercial.\u00a0 It takes your attention away from the show that you are watching.\u00a0 Hell sometimes I forget what I was watching until it comes back on.\u00a0 And who in the hell thought it was okay to place a mini-infomercial in there?!?!?!!?\u00a0 Don’t get me started.\u00a0 So who is watching television commercials?\u00a0 The poor!\u00a0 The people least likely to buy a product are having it pushed in their faces.\u00a0 The poor are the only people that wouldn’t have a DVR, or some means to skip the commercials.\u00a0 Of course there is always a possibility that the poor have a VCR and can still find a VHS tape, and even they can skip commercials.<\/p>\n
Software has been available for a number of years that will automatically detect and skip television commercials.\u00a0 I have video card and associated software in my PC that make it a PVR.\u00a0\u00a0 With that video card and software I can schedule and record shows, and the commercials are automatically detected, time stamped and during playback they are skipped.\u00a0 You’ll see the scene coming to an end, fading\u00a0 and then WE’RE BACK!\u00a0 When I first say this I would sit there and giggle like an idiot.\u00a0 I was so impressed that I could watch a television show and not have to endure the commercials.<\/p>\n
I guess it’s pretty plain to understand why the companies that provide the DVRs to it’s customers don’t include the software to automatically skip commercials.\u00a0 I wonder if it’s ever been discussed in some high level meeting charging people to unlock the fast forward function in a DVR.<\/p>\n
I’ve been listening to podcasting for the last several months, and prior to that I would watch a weekly ustream.tv broadcast.\u00a0 They are all free.\u00a0 They do have commercials, but they are done in the more 50’s style where the host tells you about the product.\u00a0 Most don’t have commercials, just entertainment.<\/p>\n
I believe that as bandwidth on the Internet increases to each household you will see more content provided by individuals, then by groups of individuals and eventually be production companies.\u00a0 The 500 channels that you have available now will be infinitesimally small in comparison to the selection that you’ll have.<\/p>\n
So television commercials are for poor people, as the rest of us (who are not currently poor) skip past or use technology to ignore them.<\/p>\n
UPDATE!<\/strong><\/p>\n I was flipping around on our AT&T UVerse DVR “live” feeds and I saw “Ferris\u00a0Buller’s Day Off” playing on VH1, so I stopped to watch it. \u00a0After a little bit the commercials started. \u00a0This was a live feed so I wasn’t able to fast forward. \u00a0I was eating a late diner so I was paying more attention to my food than the commercials. \u00a0It seemed like a rather long time before the show came back on but, well who knows. \u00a0After eating I joined my wife in the living room (I was in the kitchen). \u00a0Another sliver of the show came and went then the commercial BLOCK. \u00a0She started counting commercials. \u00a0When the count hit TEN she announced it! \u00a0We kept counting, normally at this point I would just have found something else to watch. \u00a0Oh my God, 15 my wife announced, then 16, 17 and 18. \u00a0As the 18th\u00a0commercial\u00a0came to an end neither of us knew what to expect next. \u00a0Personally I was hoping for 20 because I already knew I was changing channels. \u00a0Nope 18, E-I-G-H-T-E-E-N commercials!<\/p>\n Since the show was back on we watched a bit more. \u00a0Then my wife said “Don’t we have this on DVD?” \u00a0She was right, I went to the shelf, put it in the DVD player and in less tine than you could watch 18 commercials I found the exact spot we had been watching. \u00a0We finished the move commercial free.<\/p>\n You people running these stations are idiots! \u00a0For $50 you can buy a DVD player and movie. \u00a0Who are you pushing these commercials to? \u00a0How are you able to convince\u00a0companies\u00a0to purchase commercial time? \u00a0Do you tell them you’ll be the 11th\u00a0commercial\u00a0in a block of 18?!?!?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It struck me the other day that I never see television commercials any longer.\u00a0 I was sitting in the kitchen having a meal and I saw a funny commercial.\u00a0 I called to my wife to have a look.\u00a0 Her response was “yeah I’ve seen it.”\u00a0 My wife, God bless her, won’t run the kids out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/muckleroy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/muckleroy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/muckleroy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muckleroy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muckleroy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/muckleroy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/muckleroy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muckleroy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muckleroy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}