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Comment by bartread | Hacker News Reader

> counter programming and to skip the 18 minutes of advertising per hour of TV.

^^^This.

I basically can't tolerate watching anything on ITV, Sky, or other commercial TV in the UK nowadays, nor for well over a decade, due to the frequency and quantity of ads. I also strongly object to what I presume is audio compression applied to ads to make them louder than surrounding scheduled programming.

And counter programming is an obnoxious practice.

Let's face it: lots of people have always wanted to watch what they want when they want to. Lots of people don't want to arrange their lives around the TV schedule. Good riddance to it.

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When I bought a DVR, some cable networks were starting to speed up scenes of shows in order to fit in all of commercials.[0] I think this started in the late 90's but that's just my personal recollection. I did spot a Reddit thread pointing out this issue seven years ago. I suspect some scenes are cut from syndicated shows for the same reason.

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/02/cable...

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/2vwgk9/tbs_spee...

Oh yes this is pretty well known and pretty easy to know, just count the minutes of the show and minutes of ads… the show is shorter in syndication.

I don’t remember where but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard show runners talking about it on DVD commentaries.

We had 60 years of TV getting to that 18 minute mark per 1 hour show.

I wonder how many minutes of advertising or signups will be involved after 60 years of internet.

I can imagine a 20 years from now - to continue watching Netflix Original Series "Idiocracy Now: Season 2 Episode 7 - Jim invents plastic soil mulch" sign up for this exclusive opportunity to get a new AI robot dog....

I'm honestly pretty hopeful about ads in the streaming era. Netlfix has been streaming since 2007, streaming original shows since 2013, and aside from some admittedly obnoxious ad placements in some shows (Coke in Stranger Things S3), they've resisted the urge to ad up. Some services are dabbling with ad-tier subscriptions, which is worrisome.

Netflix autoplays ads whenever you load it up or are scrolling around to find something to watch

Prime returns things you cannot watch without paying in its search

It forces you to watch ads before it starts the show

They've all barely gotten started, I assure you

I recently realized that you can turn off Netflix preview auto-play through the web app. This setting isn't shown in my smart TV app but turning it off in the web app carries through to other devices.

You can select free to me when browsing amazon to only see things that don't charge you to watch it, at least on the ui on my phone.

With prime pre show ads, you can right on your ring on the remote (on fire TV) to skip, despite a prompt not appearing on screen

I was recommended lost in space, but they had some really obnoxious product placement. You don’t go to space and get excited about Oreos. You get exited about space.

A lot of ad volume problems come from failure to normalize audio between what the studio distributes and what the advertiser distributes. Failure to fix something can be innocent or malicious: someone high up can simply not prioritize it, and no one could honestly say it's to serve advertisers without an admission. Some of it is innocent, some isn't. Laws are passed to regulate it, but they find ways past it.

> A lot of ad volume problems come from failure to normalize audio between what the studio distributes and what the advertiser distributes.

Weird how this supposed lack of normalization never seems to result in overly quiet commercials...

Like hospital billing errors always being in favor of the hospital.

They use psycho-acoustics. It's not actually louder, in the sense of carrying more acoustic energy overall; but the sound-engineer emphasises those parts that we perceive as "loud". Regulators are pwned, and refuse to act.

Movie sound-engineers seem to have started doing the same.

I really don't understand why annoying ads have't become extinct, in accordance with the Darwin principle.

[Edit] And advertisers hire loud, shouty actors to present their ads; it's almost as if they were challenging us to change channel or stick in a DVD.

Not an advertisement, and I have no other relationship except as a satisfied customer: Consider getting a TV Speaker from ZVOX that has the 'output leveling' feature. It really works, and keeps those of us who are 'aural'-sensitive from being whacked on the side of the head by crazy audio. Also works to fix bad Movie mixes (avengers... black widow...). This seems to be the cheapest unit with the 'Output Leveling' feature: https://zvox.com/collections/accuvoice/products/av100-accuvo...

> Regulators are pwned, and refuse to act.

Congress mandated a very specific method for controlling loudness by incorporating an ATSC standards document. As long as broadcasters stick to the standard what is the FCC to do? See https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-111publ311/pdf/PLAW..., and https://www.atsc.org/atsc-documents/a85-techniques-for-estab...

The problem is less worse now than before circa 2011. Although most people have switched to streaming so they wouldn't realize.

> I really don't understand why annoying ads have't become extinct, in accordance with the Darwin principle.

Unfortunately it's because of the Darwin principle. While I hate them to death annoying stuff is more memorable than pleasant stuff - you can sit on a beach all day and get bitten by a mosquito at one point, you're definitely going to remember the mosquito more than hours of pleasant relaxation. Annoying loud crap gets our attention, I think, in part, because things that are annoying and loud are dangerous (both in the modern and historically) so we're trained to pay more attention to them. I wish it wasn't true but Advertising gains effectiveness from obnoxiousness - like if a marketing company could make your house smell like rotten fish every time they were blasting information about their insurance you'd sure as hell remember their name.

If it helps (not that ITV has anything _worth_ watching), I think TV stations recognize this - both ITV and Channel 4 have ad-free on demand options for a few pounds a month

Ironically, the ad-free version of C4 still has 'promotional messages' on some shows.

Counterprogramming. That reminds me of a guy who used to come on Johnny Carson's show once a year (IIRC) to talk about the new fall season of TV. He had a big board with all the weekday prime time time slots and a bunch of sticky signs (Velcro? magnets?) for the shows both old and new and he'd do a spiel where he'd shuffle them at manic speed, demonstrating how network execs program prime time. It was quite entertaining. Does anyone else remember this guy ? Any pointers to info about it ?

My kids are basically growing up with Stremio and Youtube on desktop (with adblock). I imagine most children of techies are the same.

My kids would sooner turn something off than sit through an ad.

My kids (4 & 6) saw real ads on TV for the first time in their lifes’ about a week ago. Otherwise they had always just watched netflix. They watched disney channel on TV and were mesmerized by all the ads for toys. „Oh I want this one“, „and this one“, „dad can we buy that one?“. Was bizarre to see that for them this was somehow really special.

I don’t make it easy for kids to skip ads. Ads is a way to stop them from watching for too long.

I almost feel like it's part of a "media readiness" thing. I have to wonder what happens to the kids raised on a perfectly curated media diet when they move out and actually drink from the marketing firehose for the first time unattended.

At some point in your childhood, you should desperately want something from an advertisement and get hopelessly let down with it, just so you can learn the lesson that advertisements lie.

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