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Comment by Tangokat | Hacker News Reader

The US is absolutely infested with ads. Visiting from Europe turning on the hotel TV is unwatchable. Also a fair amount of the ads are outright scams.

"Buy this rare silver dollar by calling a phone number" LIMITED SUPPLY!!

Making money by any means necessary even by scamming people who don't know better. The worst thing is that Americans I asked about this thought it was perfectly fine and normal.

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Living in Australia, we get a lot of US TV, and it was weird when there was this weird pacing cut within a TV show. Then you realised that it was put in as a US ad break, but AU rules didn't allow as many ads so it just sort of faded to black and then came back again.

Contrast that to UK TV, which we get a lot of too. The pacing and breaks are much more in line with what you're allowed for ads in AU, so there's no weird interruptions in the middle.

I always found it a fascinating mirror to the broader cultural differences writ large.

I watched the Ironman world championships for women the other day (the men's race are happening right now) and it was so full of ads. Not only are the race named after a sponsor, even the aerial photography was "courtesy of Qatar airways", even when it was clearly from a helicopter and a cable mounted camera. The hosts took every opportunity to talk about their sponsors, at the podium ceremony the sponsor's car was more prominent than the winner, etc. And this is an event where the price of entry is more than $1000 for the thousands of participants, and they have to qualify by doing at least one other event from the same organisation previously.

Same thing with other American sport events, every single thing is "brought to you by x". It permeates everything.

To be fair sport sponsorships are a thing everywhere, just look at any team shirt or race car.

It's different though. I get what the OP is saying. It's happened in Aussie sports too - the commentators announcing any replay as the "Harvey Norman replay" during the NRL, as an example. Sponsorships of features of a programme stand out much more than sponsorship logos on jerseys, probably because you're much more actively focused on the commentary audio than you are on the particular images on a jersey of a player.

I got the men's event on now. Instead of "look at the time" it's "look at the time on the Wahoo Element" (a Wahoo Element is a particular sports watch). Instead of the swim leg it's the Roka swim leg (Roka makes wetsuits). There's a Vinfast logo on screen all the time (Vinfast is a car brand and the title sponsor).

It's not just the commercials (I've seen a beer commercial so far) or the brand logos on the athletes, it's the fact that every single thing is "courtesy of x", which means that even between the ad breaks the commentators has to talk about sponsors.

This is different from soccer games, cycling races live Tour de France, most world championships, etc. But I recognize it from UFC and various clips I've seen from NFL and other American sports.

It sounds like we have now entered the parody territory...

The quantity is one thing, the quality is what shocked me. The US has Hollywood making movies and the cheapest ads I’ve seen compared to European offerings. Think the difference between the ads that run on your average clickbait page compared to what you’d see on cnn.com, just worse.

I guess there’s a race to the bottom when you have a lot more TV channels to fill with ads, but it’s quite jarring.

I know 50 years of Americans since I am one and no one thinks it's ok...but it's so common I suspect we are expert at ignoring it, which is a slippery slope, to your point.

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