Cable Channels Speed Up TV Shows To Cram In More Ads

[dixiegrrrrl]

TBS and others are using compression technology to play content back at a slightly faster clip in order to get a few more seconds of air time for ads.

Some cable channels have gotten so edit- and compression-happy that they can now fit in more than 20 minutes of ads each hour,

several minutes more than what you’ll find on most prime-time network broadcasts.

http://consumerist.com/2015/02/19/cable-channels-speed-up-tv-shows-to-cram-in-more-ads/

[Dont call me Shirley]

1. Just figures. Plus the ads are so clear and loud compared to the muffled hard to hear shows.

I'm glad I can dvr past that crap.

[Sherman A1]

3. Precisely

I watch less and less TV and when I do, it's recorded so I can skip the commercials.

[ladyVet]

45. Me, too. I seldom watch anything live anymore.

The TV's on in the background, but the shows I watch, I record and play back to skip the commercials. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was counting how many commercials, and there were usually around five. Now there are seven to twelve, every commercial break. Add in the breaks between shows, when they scrunch everything to one side to either get in another commercial or two, or start the next show, and it's getting crazy. Cable or regular network channels, makes no difference.

I have to turn the TV up up really loud for some shows, and then the commercials blast through so loud the neighbors can hear them. Sleepy Hollow is really bad. I can barely hear either actor on that one. Good thing Tom Mison is so drool-worthy just to look at.

[olddots]

2. all too true

the FCC became obsolete when cable was devised , look for more shifty processes to come our way .

[RKP5637]

4. Well said!!! >>> "there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?" n/t

[jberryhill]

5. They need to get the programs down to a minute

...in order to have 29 minutes of ads around them.

Gone With The Wind in 20 seconds isn't all that bad:

[bbgrunt]

24. haha! good one!

[yeoman6987]

6. Sheesh. As if there aren't too many already.

I guess Amazon Instant Video is going to benefit even more now and Hulu with less commercials. Netflix too but normally shows are shown much later, but perhaps the wait will appeal to some who don't want to watch commercials.

[MANative]

7. Not surprising, but it's certainly wasted on a viewer like me.

When commercials start, my TV goes on Mute. I'm one of those odd multi-taskers - always reading a book or writing or something while TV is on - so I look away, too. It's a habit I "inherited" from my late father, who couldn't stand how much louder the commercials were than the main programming. (It would hurt his ears - hearing aids.) Couldn't tell you any product advertised during just about any program that I watch. There are only three shows that get my full attention - Downton Abbey, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder. Oh, and football.

[dixiegrrrrl]

38. When we had tv, I did the same thing with the mute.

Mr. Dixie was raised on tv and it took some doing before he was ready to give it up. So the blank eye sat in the living room for a few years.
But he did agree to mute the commercials.

Comcast is concerned by the fact that people under 35 are not using cable/tv much. They seem to be able to get anything they want to watch via smart phones and tablets.

I do not miss tv at all, and I do like the money we have saved by not having cable.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

8. Why I'm building up a movie and select TV library

and will soon cut loose of the dish.

[spanone]

9. did (still do?) same to music.

[randys1]

10. And they blast through the credits, the same credits that are so very important to working

actors and crew.

Those credits are very important and even though much of it is reruns, it is still a way to keep your name in mind with those who matter.

[lpbk2713]

43. They run the closing credits at least four times faster

and many more times smaller while they run ads on the other part of the screen. No human could possibly discern what is being displayed. Obviously they think they are meeting some legal or union commitment. As you say, the creative people who were a part of the film are seriously taken advantage of.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

11. I don't recall what I was watching the other day, but in a single block of ads,

I sat through at least a dozen ads in a row, several in the same block for time warner itself, which means it was unable to sell that airtime to anyone else.

[shanti]

12. the joke's on them, heh

i record everything so that i can ff thru the commercials.

[AwakeAtLast]

13. I wondered why the voices sounded different

Higher pitched, drives my ears crazy.

[Quasimodem]

33. And here I thought the Munchkins were finally getting more work.

In the 80s, the show "Max Headroom" showcased BlipVerts -- commercials so fast and scrunched together that their audience was beginning to spontaneously combust.

Sci-fi often predicts the future, just a little bit off true -- in this case, not BlipVerts, but BlipGrams.

[procon]

14. Is that why most of my recorded programs start/end times are slightly off? nt

[FSogol]

15. Full disclousure: I've always speeded up my posts to cram in more

smilies,

[dixiegrrrrl]

39. Lol....I noticed!

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

16. Local news now starts with a commercial.

[ohnoyoudidnt]

17. I do like my DVR.

I just record what I want to watch and view it later so I can FF through all the BS. Not that there is much worth watching on cable, anyway. I'm tempted to just cancel it and use online streaming. If they raise my rates again, I might just do that.

[dixiegrrrrl]

46. We saved about 150.00 a month

by dropping the tv, and the cell phone plan.
Mr. Dixie now justs buys minutes, for about 20.00 a month. Good plan, if you do not talk much on cell phone.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

18. IIRC, CBS got caught doing this in the 80's with its late night programming.

This is pre-Letterman era. I think they were rerunning Columbo episodes and they were compressing the non dialog parts almost imperceptably, not just editing scenes and lines out.

[NBachers]

19. I haven't had cable since the 1980's- then, pay tv meant pay money so you didn't have commercials

I'm not going to pay money to watch commercials.

I've got an antenna so I can watch some over-the-air Obama speech or debate or something; otherwise, it's my trusty Roku and whatever channels I can watch with that.

These pig cable companies don't deserve my money.

[onehandle]

20. No cable channels. No problem. nt

[mindwalker_i]

21. Apply market forces

Stop watching TV. Dump your cable and hit them in the pocketbook. As long as suckers keep paying for cable, regardless of the product they get, cable will keep doing these things. At some point, I just can't feel sorry for people who keep bending over.

[jtuck004]

22. "Okay everyone. Act faster." n/t

[SheilaT]

23. I don't have cable or a dish.

I do all my watching of TV and movies via the internet. I've gotten so spoiled by never seeing commercials at all, that even Hulu is so annoying that I rarely watch anything there. I prefer to do without.

[cascadiance]

25. I found a bug on Dish Net that may drop some content after a commercial break...

Dish Network puts in its on ads for "local" ad slots by having ads stored on your receiver and then aired when local ad breaks come up both in your live content you are watching and in your DVR playbacks. Most of the time it works fine, even if it might show a frame or two of the ad it is overlapping at the end. But at times if you have the broadcast delayed by less than a minute or maybe a minute or so in such a way that is probably not the full length of time of an ad break, when it plays back with these ad placements, it will switch your broadcast from that amount of time delayed to "live" at the end of an ad break, and step on whatever delayed content you had after that ad break. I don't think it is intentional, but in effect you are watching ads instead of the delayed content when it "skips ahead" to live content.

Hopefully they are fixing this. I reported it a few weeks ago to them.

[arcane1]

26. You know what's next, right? Little pop-up ads are so 1990's

[Newsjock]

27. Next: Compulsory viewing

[pinboy3niner]

30. ...

[zappaman]

34. Took me a second to place that.

What a cool series!

[dixiegrrrrl]

40. I have noticed that tv screens have station ids, and moving announcements of shows coming up

all sorts of things pop up when watching a show.
Have seen this when over at someone's house who has tv.

[arcane1]

42. Me too. I even saw them Squish the picture to make room for ads!!

Not to mention all the damn ads in the script!

[Ramses]

28. I killed cable TV years ago.

I will never subject myself to that. Plus its expensive as hell and they show garbage. I find everything I need online and on an old fashioned radio.

[mwooldri]

29. Nothing new about this.

In analog TV days, European TV stations ran movies at 25 frames a second - so it can work with 50 Hz electricity.

Though yes, re-runs can be edited down for the time allotted for that program. It doesn't surprise me one bit.

[Cryptoad]

32. Geez,,,,,

the next thing yall will be telling us that they make recordings of all our Digital Communications..!

[HeiressofBickworth]

31. Years ago there was a local channel that was so blatent about it

that they plugged commercials in on a rigid schedule -- regardless of whether the show was mid-action or an actor mid-sentence. I quit watching that channel because it was so damned annoying. I have noticed that the credits have been sped up and compressed to a portion of the screen so they can cram in more commercials.

Liberal use of DVR has resolved most of the problem. There are a few that block the fast-forward function. I don't watch them if they have blocked it.

Let us not forget my favorite mantra: it's all about the money. They are not bringing shows to you for your amusement. They are capturing your attention so you will sit through the commercials. The goal is to increase viewership in order to be able to charge more for advertising time. IT'S ALWAYS ABOUT THE MONEY!

[fadedrose]

35. This ticks me off

They squeeze 15 short commercials at least into some spots and by the time you see all that garbage you forget what you saw before they started.

I would think that with the cost of cable, we'd have shorter commercial times. The more they get the more money they want. This is like having Pay TV even for junky programs and old repeats.

Congress should shorten time allowed for commercials. We have enough billionaires as it is...

[dixiegrrrrl]

41. Back in the day, it was illegal to have more than x number of minutes for commercials.

Pre-Reagan, when the FCC had balls.

[L0oniX]

36. Just another reason to go with Netflix.

[Liberal_in_LA]

37. ugh

[CBGLuthier]

44. They have been doing this for years and it is not just cable

some of the OTA subnets like MeTV and AntennaVision do it too. It can be quite comical at times when people move way too fast.

[meow2u3]

47. 10 minutes of TV show, 20 minutes of commercials?

How greedier can those advertisers get? ON PAY TV?!