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Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

I would observe that in some sense this isn't just a "kid growing up with different tech gets it better than the adults" story. My wife and I both feel the exact same way about TV, in our mid-30s. We just have the historical perspective such that we don't have to ask "why". Also it's less cute when we ask why. But otherwise the same.

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There's no age limit her. We're in our 40's, we watch a lot of series and movies, but we've rarely seen commercials in the past 10 or so years. Sometimes we start watching a show or movie more or less by accident, but that usually ends at the first commercial break.

Both of us find it hard to imagine people can actually tolerate watching TV that way, even though we've done the same for a long time.

But imho it's not so much TV that is broken. It's advertising. In today's world of on-demand personalized information, advertising has zero value. It's just noise. In SF movies we often see a world full of advertising everywhere, with lots of sound and motion. I like to believe the (near) future will be exactly the opposite: the advertising industry, no longer adding any value or generating any ROI, will collapse. Taking old school "broken" TV with it.

> It's advertising.

Agreed. It's simply a bad business model; you're the product, not the customer, etc. It also has a hugely distorted effect on content production, incentivizing shows to shoot for safe returns and broad appeal instead of monetizing hardcore fans of innovative niche programming. Put simply, I want businesses to care whether they have my money, not my eyeballs.

I cut most forms of advertising out of my life 7-8 years ago: no radio, no broadcast TV, and FlashBlock+AdBlock. Once you do so, it's hard to go back. (Although YouTube's trend towards more and more video ads is getting frustrating; I wish I could throw $20/month at YouTube Pro or something to make it go away.)

> no radio

There's definitely quality non-profit radio stations (NPR affiliates, for example) depending on where you live. At worst you get the fund drives that are annoying (but understandable) for a week.

EDIT: This assumes you're in the U.S., though.

I listen mostly to NPR. Occasionally (pledge drives, reruns, shows I don't care for) I will turn to traditional radio to fill the void while driving (older car with no MP3 interface). It's amazing to me how many commercials they have! They feel interminable and it feels like at least half the channels have commercials playing at any given time. It really makes me appreciate KQED (local NPR station) and is the reason I support them.

Fortunately, I'm seeing more and more cars support USB interfaces. Now I can just load up a USB stick (they are so cheap) with my music and old episodes of This American Life and I'm good to go for hundreds of miles.

I've been listening to a commercial rock station on HD (KSAN fm on HD2), and it doesn't have any ads or announcements. There are silly "you're listening to station X and it's awesome" announcements every now and then, but that's about it. Everything else is just music.

I have no idea why they don't have any talking or ads, but i don't mind. I suspect it's because this is an offshoot station--there is the normal station, with more mainstream classic rock, talking and ads and then there is this "HD2" station with no ads and different music.

I really don't know why they run this station or even how it makes any money, but it's there and it's nice. So, for whatever reason, not all commercial stations have ads.

It might be like the early days of YouTube or Hulu: few commercials as a loss leader to get people in the door, and then gradually ratchet them up.

Where I am it seems like the commercials are synchronized across stations so you can't flip through radio stations and listen to music.

I've switched to Pandora and my mp3 collection on my phone. I pipe that to my car stereo, which works well enough.

I listen to NPR occasionally, but I'm also not one of those people that wants my media chosen randomly. I usually consume NPR-type content in podcast form. (Although more and more podcasts are becoming advertising-driven... grrr.)

I feel like using AdBlock is unethical. You are using a sites resource, while depriving them of the revenue they need to provide you that resource. I vote with my feet so to speak, and stick mostly to sites with subdued advertising.

I disagree. No site has a right to force me to look at ads. And I don't have a right to force them to provide a service. Their offer is "come here for free, and we're hoping you'll look at these ads." They could change their offer. They could require payment. Maybe their service is something people will pay for and maybe not. If I don't pay and I don't look at ads, I have no right to expect the site to keep existing. But that's OK with me.

It's like a casino that sells cheap dinners. Clearly, they want you to eat the cheap dinner and lose much more money gambling. But you're allowed to eat it and leave. If they wanted to prohibit that, they could make the dinner available only to those who gamble. But if they haven't set that condition, you don't have to obey it.

All that said, I don't mind tasteful ads. I don't block ads on StackOverflow because they're interesting. I do block ads on Yahoo Mail (on the rare occasions that I log into my throwaway account there) because they're annoying and often offensive. If Yahoo says to me, "we're closing your account because you block our ads", I will say "that's fine."

There are services I'm willing to pay for and services I'll only use if they're free. Looking at ads is a form of payment. Some sites are worth it, and others aren't.

I found that turning off AdBlock has dramatically reduced my browsing of time-waster sites. It's also a sobering reminder of what the web looks like to most people, and it's not pretty.

"But imho it's not so much TV that is broken. It's advertising. In today's world of on-demand personalized information, advertising has zero value."

What happens to Google & Facebook without advertising?

They start charging? Just shooting from the hip here...

Their advertising is less broken.

I'd still rather pay for GMail instead of seeing ads.

I'd still rather pay for GMail instead of seeing ads.

You can; it costs $50/year, though: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/features.html

I've been happy with Fastmail.fm, which has ad-free plans with reasonable storage for $20/yr, or decent storage and bring-your-own-domain for $40/yr. They also have business plans starting at $90/yr for 5 accounts, which is significantly less than what G charges.

disclosure: I have no affiliation with Fastmail.fm other than being a longtime customer.

Seems like a pittance, given the value you're receiving in return.

The (paid for) Google Apps for Business still has a line of Ads at the top of the email listing. No ads down the RHS, though.

You mean the bar that says "Web Clip?" You can turn that off. Mail Settings -> Web Clip tab.

This is my least favorite argument when talking about removing advertising from my life. Facebook and Google will simply do something else. Why is "ad supported" always considered the only business model?

What business model do you see for Google that doesn't involve advertising but would allow them to continue providing Gmail and search? Yes, they might conceivably charge $15/mo for a while. But then Comcast will come along and say, "Hey, here's a (mediocre) search and email service that we will bundle for 'free'!" and just like that, Google basically stops providing search and email (or provides it only to bundling partners).

>>>But then Comcast will come along and say, "Hey, here's a (mediocre) search and email service that we will bundle for 'free'!"<<<

I don't know about you, but I would pay for Gmail in a heartbeat. It's a great service. I can guarantee that Comcast would make something 1,000 times crappier and that I'd waste hundreds of hours of my life fighting with it.

In fact, I'd rather be paying for Gmail so that I'd be their customer and not their product. I'm happy that I pay for Pinboard because I know that it motivates them to please me and not someone else to whom they can sell my data. And I'm happy because my payment is an investment in the continued existence of a service I value.

You're asserting that Gmail and Google search aren't valuable enough for people to pay for them. If that's true, they shouldn't exist in a free market. But I don't think it's true.

The question is not what you or I would do, but what the general population would do. How many people consider gmail to be critical enough that they will pay for it?

> You're asserting that Gmail and Google search aren't valuable enough for people to pay for them. If that's true, they shouldn't exist in a free market.

The free market involves advertising. How much entertainment in paid for with advertising? Should none of that exist? Should, e.g., "How I Met Your Mother" be cancelled? I seriously doubt it would exist in an advertisement-free market.

I don't think advertising will go away, but will change. Companies will still want to attract new customers, i.e. advertise their wares/services. People who have other people's attention will probably still sell it. However advertising will change to cope with the new system.

Yup. I've been cable-free for about 2 years now, and I'd never go back. Since Comcast "discounts" cable internet (which, by the way, is my /only/ high-speed option besides 768kbit/sec DSL -- I have the 20mbit package or whatever they're selling it as these days) if you bundle it with basic cable, it only ends up being about $1.50 cheaper to NOT have basic cable. That said, basic cable is seriously not worth $1.50/month to me; it is worth literally less than nothing IMO. In fact, they should be paying me to watch their tripe. I'll take my payments in discounts to my cable internet, TYVM.

In some cases and at some times in the past it was actually cheaper to get the internet service when bundled with Cable TV service. In effect, some are or were somewhat paid to get it.

The cable company pays a per-subscriber charge for come channels (most notably ESPN). For others (like HSN), the broadcaster pays the cable company. If they can get you to sign up for basic cable they're still making a bit of money, since all the ones they pay for are in higher tiers.

If you have internet through your cable provider they already have to make sure the signal gets to your house and you're already in the computer, so adding you as a TV subscriber costs them nothing at all.

I never watch broadcast TV, but when my internet connection goes down it's a handy troubleshooting tool - when I flip the TV on and see car commercials it means there's no cable break.

Also, the 1.50$ goes to paying for lobbying efforts like the one behind SOPA.

Same here. I actually just participated in a Nielsen tv ratings survey, which asked about DVD players, VCRs and DVRs connected to the tv. No spot for Roku, Apple tv or Netflix enabled sets.

Hopefully they at least had a comments section where you could mention that?

They did, and I did. I also talked to one of their support people, they said I could record the station/channel as netflix/apple tv. Who knows how that will be processed though...

Early 30's here, and 3 years without cable service. I get exceptionally aggravated when I'm at a a bar or a friends house watching something because I can't stand the interruption of commercials anymore. It's amazing how fast you get used to just watching something straight through and how annoyed you get when you can't. It blows my mind that in the age of Netflix other people can still tolerate commercial broadcasts.

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