21 ms·

Kids in ‘Netflix Only’ Homes Saved from 230 Hours of Commercials a Year

758 points by joeyespo 9y ago

partycoder 9y ago
Time to double down on product placement.
- nuclearchicken 9y ago
  Product placement is difficult in the shows I watch most: The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, Vikings. Luxury items don't and didn't exist in the aforementioned shows. I watch TV sitting with a laptop. I mute during the commercials and look at whatever for 2-3 minutes and return to watching. Done this for decades. I will likely go straight Internet connection in 2018 once I figure out how to get BBC and BBC America.
  - niftich 9y ago
    The Walking Dead had a longtime product placement deal with Hyundai. Although it was much ridiculed, much of the point of product placement is to cause positive associations to be made between the product and the setting. Many people may not have thought of a Hyundai as a rough-and-tumble kind of car, but seeing it in such a setting normalizes that association ever so subtly, not unlike why repetition is an effective strategy to commit something to memory.
    - nuclearchicken 9y ago
      Good point. My brother, a veteran, will not own a Kia because of the Killed in Action acronym. I cannot blame him.
deleted 9y ago
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hristov 9y ago
Sounds great but the sad reality is that Netflix shows have commercials inside of them. I was really excited about this netflix show "love" until the macdonalds product placement inside of it just made me sick and i stopped watching it. I haven't been watching much original netflix shows since then, but whenever i feel like peeking into a new show i notice product placements pretty soon.
- sigzero 9y ago
  ALL shows have product placement. Some more blatant than others. You can't get around that.
  - lebanon_tn 9y ago
    The FX show Baskets has its product placement front and center the entire time. It's hilarious and I don't mind one bit though.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - coding123 9y ago
    There are a few shows like Chuck that were basically saved by blatant product placement. It's funny to watch - breaks the illusion for a moment - but knowing the story behind how it basically saved the show makes it worth it for the fans.
    - nofilter 9y ago
      Oh man, Chuck was awesome! I'm adding it to the list of shows to re-watch.
  - herbst 9y ago
    That is simply not true, firstly most cartoons and anime, but also other shows that come with a higher budget seem to be able to avoid product placements.
neals 9y ago
I accidentally watched some TV the other day. Having not seen any regular programming for at least a year, I was amazed at how much ... dumber it has become. Also, why did we sit through so many commercials for so long? It feel a little like a twilight zone episode, where we sit there watching a box telling us what to buy.
- bastawhiz 9y ago
  Every year when I go home for Christmas I watch TV with my parents and I'm always astounded that they pay more money than me to get access to worse content, and it has ads. It's really astounding that folks put up with it.
  - otakucode 9y ago
    I have the same experience. I visit my parents about once every other month and usually end up watching a show or two with them. The programs are amazingly childish junk, the kind of stuff that disturbed me most about high school enshrined as sport. And the advertisements just never stop. If anyone has any doubt what the goal for Comcast will be now that net neutrality is gone, it will be to make Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc cost more than the Comcast On Demand stuff (which has ads you can't fast-forward through, a tiny selection, etc). So once it costs you $12 to watch 2 movies on Netflix instead of $12 to watch movies all month long, then they will feel that the playing field is 'fair'.
    - itronitron 9y ago
      I haven't watched cable since ~2009 and no longer subscribe. Not only are the shows just bad, but the image quality is terrible. If ISPs drag down the streaming video services then I hope Netflix returns to a robust DVD distribution model. IF not then I'll just buy DVD box sets before I support extortion.
  - DubiousPusher 9y ago
    I think TV remains popular with certain people largely out of ease of use. You can just turn it on and you don't have to make a decision about what to watch. It's always there. Also, changing would require learning something new. People genuinely find learning to have a level of discomfort so they avoid it. https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/03/learning-hurts-your-brain/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/03/learning-hurts-your-...
meesles 9y ago
This would be fantastic news if the content was anything worthwhile. At the end of the day, I'm not sure I care whether the kid is watching commercials or some other inane show. It's still passive consumption. Personally, of course I want less commercials. But being able to consume more per minute isn't necessarily a good thing, IMO.
- isostatic 9y ago
  My kids watched a show his morning which explained where eggs came from, and what happens when they are heated - how the proteins change shape, how the outside heats faster than the inside, etc. Also how bread is made, both manually, then showed automated kneading (this is a show aimed at under 6s, so anything beyond proteins changing shape seems excessive) Yes it's passive, but it's still better than brainwashing then to buy McDonald's
dragonshed 9y ago
My family and I 'cut the cord' in 2005, back when Netflix meant DVDs, and other than access to sports, we haven't missed TV at all. These days we use an Apple TV 4th Gen, with only Netflix, Plex and KPBS apps, and I believe my kids are better off for it. They still have access to way too much TV, but at least we know what they're seeing.
- ashark 9y ago
  Unlimited streaming has its own problems, because your kids know it's never impossible for them to watch their favorite show, unlike with the bad old days of Saturday morning cartoons and just a handful of OTA TV stations. You can just say no, of course, but it's easier when you don't have to. Actually, the entire Internet kinda presents the same problem for adults and personal willpower.
  - otakucode 9y ago
    The 'problem' with willpower is not temptation. Temptation is only a problem for those with no willpower who paradoxically want to believe that they do. There are two solutions. Either study philosophy and come to understand why you act the way you do and seek to modify that if desired... or actually evaluate the real consequences of your actions and decide if whatever their label might end up being whether the consequences are actually worth being worried or ashamed about. Most often, people are worried about things that harm no one, making their worry absolutely meaningless.
the_common_man 9y ago
> The average child watches 2.68 hours of television a day, or almost 980 hours a year This is a very sad statistic. I cannot imagine what this non-stop television consumption is doing to their brains. I am guessing this does not include the tablet screen time which is another 3 hours per day or so.
- coding123 9y ago
  It's pretty horrible - I grew up with about that much per day. I grew up pretty successfully however I would have to admit that success is only due to everyone else my age growing up like that. If I had to live by the rules of the people we call fuddy-duddies we'd be totally f'd. The older generation takes more time to do tasks right, spends time to talk to each other on the phone, has a much stronger sense of belonging to the community around them. I know this might get down-voted but it's absolutely true.
  - kaybe 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuddy-duddy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuddy-duddy In case anyone else does not know.
Animats 9y ago
This is great. The next generation will view ads as abnormal.
- whitepoplar 9y ago
  I don't think ads will ever go away, so my main hope is that ad targeting gets so good that the industry is able to make the same amount of money (or less!) while showing 10x fewer ads. Humanity is paying a huge cost at the moment for inefficient ad placement.
  - isostatic 9y ago
    Or make 10 times as much with the level of adverts people are apparently happy with now. Which do you think is more likely?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  You'd hope. The more likely future is one where the next generation will not be able to distinguish advertising from content anymore.
  - pfranz 9y ago
    Didn't ads start out as integrated with content? A combination of government intervention and advertisers themselves transitioned from sponsoring a specific program with heavily integrated content (live-reads) to more polished, structured, fungible advertising of the 30-second spot. I wouldn't be surprised if it evolves again. You already see podcasts going from sponsored live-reads to injecting ads per-download. For better or worse, this allows lower-volume (local and more targeted?) ads instead of large companies who are one of a handful of sponsors for the whole show.
nickjj 9y ago
Why is it just limited to kids? It saves adults too. Sure, an adult might switch channels during a commercial but your time is still wasted because now you're filling the gap with random surfing rather than consuming the content you're interested in. It honestly surprises me at how cable providers managed to exist for so long without getting a backlash from its customers. A 1 hour show on American TV typically only has 42 minutes of actual content. The other 18 minutes are filled with commercials. You are losing 30% of that 1 hour off your life, not only that but you're paying a premium to receive it. After removing special promo prices even basic cable from most major providers is a lot more expensive than streaming services.
swamp40 9y ago
Now Netflix just needs to accommodate kid's 3-5 minute attention span, which is reason for YouTube's popularity - along with the quick and easy selection of related content. Then they could take over, and make parents much happier. Maybe even happy enough to pay an extra $1.99 a month for trustworthy content curation?
- brianwawok 9y ago
  Kinda sorta get this with kindle fire and the kindle family or whatever it is called. There are some videos for the kiddo based on age.. for little kids you get the 3 minute nursery rhymes. $2 or $3 a month.
- jimktrains2 9y ago
  > Now Netflix just needs to accommodate kid's 3-5 minute attention span My 2yro just sat through the Nutcracker the other week. He sits and listens to about half an hour of Dune each night. (We're just about to finish Dune Messiah.) Sure I don't know how much he comprehends, but he's not fidgeting or trying to find toys to play with. He will also sit and build with Duplo-style bricks or wooden trains for hours, and with those there is a visible engagement metrics. (And yes, he does have his moments, and times where he does like to go from thing to thing, but it's not constant just like the long spans of attention aren't constant.) I know it's n=1, but I don't believe that kids have an inherit and maximal 3-5 minute attention span.
moreorless 9y ago
I am curious to see if kids in "Netflix Only" homes spend more time watching shows because of binging. When I had Netflix, I found myself watching more than I normally would.
feverishaaron 9y ago
Naw, kids from Netflix homes are just watching long-form commercials. Dino Trucks, Nexo Knights and Ninjago all dominate my boys' Christmas wish lists this year.
- megaman22 9y ago
  That's kind of an inversion of who's leading things, but kids television and the toy industry have always gone hand in hand. Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers and HeMan were cartoons before they were toys (I think...) but it was all about the merchandising.
  - pfranz 9y ago
    He-Man was an action figure made by Mattel. TMNT started as a comic book, but from what I understand was a parody of popular things; Teenagers, Mutants, Ninjas...not sure why turtles were thrown in there. TMNT didn't get gain popularity until they started making action figures.
    - zhengyi13 9y ago
      I hadn't ever thought of TMNT as being a parody, at least not in original Eastman and Laird form - I missed most of it, but parts of it were pretty dark, particularly Raphael's character IIRC. I got introduced to it by way of Palladium's adoption of the world/setting as an RPG, who expanded the world with a whole bunch of amazing sourcebooks that never went anywhere near the silliness of the later incarnations involving "COWABUNGA DUDE!".
- baq 9y ago
  real money is in merchandising. george lucas understood that. even elon musk understood that recently ;)
  - ynniv 9y ago
    If you haven't seen it, Musk was quoting a great scene in Mel Brook's Spaceballs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRFQJCHcPw#t=36 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRFQJCHcPw#t=36
gman83 9y ago
I was thinking about this the other day, and I was wondering whether the fact that my kids are not exposed at all to commercials might make them more susceptible to advertising when they grow up.
- technovader 9y ago
  Implying that watching more advertisements helps you develop a tolerance for it.
  - viraptor 9y ago
    It does in a way. When I watched standard tv programmes years ago, the ads would be a thing you have to go through, and try to ignore. Now they're not tolerable - I'll choose not watching something over watching it with ads. Not sure if it makes me more susceptible to ads I do see (unlikely, I barely but anything anyway), but it limits the exposure a lot.
    - foobarian 9y ago
      The communist country I grew up in had TV commercials too, but their commercial blocks came with 'begin' and 'end' jingles and were called 'Economy-propaganda programs.' Calling a spade a spade!
- dragonshed 9y ago
  As a viewer, I get minimal entertainment and no value from them, and having cut the cord long ago, I find them irritating. I'm hoping my kids grow up to be irritated or intolerant of commercials as well.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Probably not. Children are constitutionally defenseless against advertising so it's doubtful that childhood exposure to advertising is helpful.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  Alternatively, I can envision them being more skeptical about advertisements. It'd be great to see some long-term studies done on this.
athenot 9y ago
One side-effect of all these commercials is to shorten the attention span of viewers. I feel that kids are taught to only get into a thought/storyline for a maximum of 8 minutes then switch mental contexts 4 to 8 times before returning to that original story. While I have no evidence about it, I don't see how this can be healthy. In contrast my children watch shows with episodes ranging from 12 minutes to full-length movies of 1h30 without interruption.
kleiba 9y ago
I live in a 'Netflix free' home -- I watch as many commercials a year as a any kid in a 'Netflix only' home. It's not clear to me why the article assumes that not having Netflix means you're consuming commercials.
- grzm 9y ago
  Would you care to unpack that? The interesting thing about personal anecdotes is when they provide context as to your experience. How many commercials did you watch a year? Do you have a TV? Do you choose not to any media at all? Only movies? How do you compare your experience to others?
  - dukeflukem 9y ago
    I took this as he doesn't watch TV or TV-like content at all.
  - kleiba 9y ago
    The important point is the list of alternatives you provide yourself: a statement worded in this way "kids on netflix only homes are being saved from 230 hrs of commercials a year" apparently implies two alternatives -- either "netflix only" or "being exposed to 230 hrs of commercials a year". There are, however, a lot more alternatives, and you list some of them.
    - grzm 9y ago
      Please don't just drive by taking potshots at headlines that aren't written the way you want them to be. Read the article. Post something substantive. Engage. Share.
- chris_wot 9y ago
  That makes no sense. Kids who watch Netflix get zero ads. Kids who watch commercial television are bombarded with ads.
  - kleiba 9y ago
gdilla 9y ago
If you have kids who watch netflix, it's interesting how they recoil in disgust at advertising interrupting a show. And it carries over to YouTube too - if they see pre-roll they skip as soon as possible. It'll be interesting when they're teens what kind of media related app will be the 'it' app for them
- on_and_off 9y ago
  Interesting. The one good thing with ads on the web is that it works as a micropayment. I wonder how a service like Youtube would work without ads ? I currently have a no-ads subscription on Youtube (packaged with a google music, so it is pretty attractive to me) but I don't think this service would work as a gated subscribe only website.
  - evv 9y ago
    Brendon Eich is working on "Brave Browser", which aims to use Ethereum to enable an ideal relationship between consumers, content producers, and advertisers.
    - cyborgx7 9y ago
      A relationship that still includes advertisers is never ideal.
      - BrendanEich 9y ago
        No ads unless each user opts in, then only: 0. Consent required for any ads at all, from user and (see 2) publisher if involved. 1. User private ads, anonymously confirmed (ANONIZE2 ZKP protocol, will move on-chain when Ethereum supports it). Ad placement is signal- and cookie-free, by a machine learning agent running only on device and looking at only your on-device data (private sync uses secret key, no data in clear on any servers), matching against common per region/language ad catalog listing edge urls + keywords per ad. 2. Revenue share of 70% to inventory (ad slot) owner, i.e., to the user in (1). If publishers partner on indirect ad slots p, pub gets 70%, user gets 15%. In all cases users gets at least as much as Brave gets. So users of Brave block ads and trackers by default. If you want to contribute anonymously you can fund your user BAT wallet (we are doing initial grants). Pinned a la Patreon contributions as well as private pro data by view count and time send tokens in one transaction on chain per 30 days of uptime. But when BAT ads are up and sharing revenue to users, the you can opt into those to fill your wallet. If you want to can out, you will be able to, but only via KYC (banking “Know Your Customer) level vetting. By default your revenue will flow back to your pinned and supported sites and creators.
33degrees 9y ago
I wonder how many hours of commercials a year are watched in homes where ipads are the main source of entertainment; I’d wager it’s up there with regular television.
- noam87 9y ago
  considering YouTube makes me watch 25 seconds of advertising for a 40 second video... could be a lot.
  - 33degrees 9y ago
    not just youtube, but all those free to play games too.
  - nuclearchicken 9y ago
    uBlock Origin, Decentraleyes, Privacy Badger. You are not obligated to watch ads. Don't fall for the lie. Your computer, your rules. Google are already rich enough.
  - isostatic 9y ago
    YouTube has a skip ad button after 5 seconds, and I'm not convinced there's an advert on every clip (at least on the YouTube app on phone - obviously no adverts on the desktop)
emodendroket 9y ago
I mean, I guess that's an improvement, but that's a lot of TV.
habosa 9y ago
I think I might be the only person I know that doesn't mind regular TV commercials. They're actually 100x less annoying than your average online commercial. When I'm watching casual TV (not a serious drama or a movie) I don't mind the interruption. Gives me a chance to think about something else, check my phone, talk to someone, or walk away.
- megaman22 9y ago
  At least with broadcast TV, you see different commercials once in a while. Streaming, I usually see the same three ads played in a row every break. It makes me actively hate and have negative associations with whatever product they are trying to push.
- isostatic 9y ago
  I don't get watching tv with commercials. When I watch a show it's because I'm interested in the show. I don't want to be jarred out of the narrative to think about something else, even pressing the fast forward button.
draw_down 9y ago
After spending a little time hardly ever watching or hearing ads, they seem insane. The way they are acted and written, the subject matter, all of it is just so crazy. It seems impossible to understand how they encourage people to buy whatever product is being advertised.
aviv 9y ago
Every minute a kid watches a stupid Netflix kids show is a wasted minute they can be stimulating their brain positively instead of numbing it with manufactured industrialized content. Having said that my kids do get a couple hours on the weekend and it's actually fascinating to see what happens when they put the iPad away. It's almost like they need a half hour or so to re-adjust to real life after all the stupid content they just watched. Then they go outside and do what kids do best - be kids.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  What does that readjustment period look like to you? Pure curiosity.
  - aviv 9y ago
    It's like watching someone come down from a high. Technically they are doing just that. They get pretty intense, very demanding, can't handle the calmness and relatively (to the stupid show they just watched) quiet environment. And they know it too. Both my kids express that finishing watching shows on the iPad doesn't make them feel good. They're very aware of it. Now that it's nice out they would rather skip it altogether and go on a hike early in the morning, so I don't mind so much when they do opt for an iPad kind of morning once in a while.
    - l33tbro 9y ago
      How do they go with reading? Seems like a balance between stimulation and calm.
      - aviv 9y ago
        They love reading. Going to the library to return and find new books to read is one of their favorite activities.
    - manmal 9y ago
      My son is going through the exact same thing! My theory is that there’s a dopamine adaption going on, or sthg like that. For him, it’s the same with audio books or digital games btw. The longer he consumes content, the longer the cool-down phase lasts after that, though the max duration is about 15 minutes — after that he is fine. What he does differs everytime, but it ranges from swearing to crying to just poking at food with an absent look, saying nothing.
samstave 9y ago
Commercials are mental cancer. Online ads are mental cancer. Cancer pays. People like money. People are selfish. They will opt for seeking for payment from cancer when given the option. looking at you google
ciconia 9y ago
We've been a no-tv family since forever. We do have a Netflix subscription (though we do find the selection of shows and movies too small, but still...) My kids have a genuine aversion to commercials. With Netflix and YouTube, they can watch content they choose without the constant interruption and"garbage time" of TV.
jstewartmobile 9y ago
I don't watch much TV, but my wife watches a lot of these shows. The product placement is fairly blatant, and the storylines themselves seem very materialistic. What if this is not a replacement of advertisement as much as it is a more thoroughly integrated form of it? I mean, which would you rather be: The guy who pays for a blatant ad that is segregated from the content, or the guy with a slick PR rep who gets your product glowingly mentioned inside the content?
mendelbot 9y ago
Maybe kids should just stare at a screen less and go outside
skate22 9y ago
My parents would always agressivly mute commercials when i was a kid. I'm pretty glad they did.
- jvandonsel 9y ago
  Yeah, I also trained my kids from an early age to hit the mute button when a commercial comes on. Without that magic button we can't possibly watch live TV.
dsr_ 9y ago
Ahead of the curve here, we had TiVo and MythTV before the kids were old enough to work the remotes. From way back then: "Why can't we watch it again?" "Pause this while I go to the bathroom." "Hey, look, is that a toy?" "Dad, why do people put up with commercials?" And now that they're teenagers: "Dad, did you remember to record that show that I forgot the name of and didn't remind you to set the recording?" I guess some things don't change.
manishsharan 9y ago
On the other hand, Kids in Netflix only homes are probably not exposed to news and world events that does not come from Facebook and Twitter and other filtered media. They are probably not exposed to opposing or uncomfortable opinions and views. Those Netflix only homes should at least get PBS.
- pasquinelli 9y ago
  yeah, that was my first thought too. pbs only would be much better: free, not tailored for binge watching, and the cartoons actually end at some point-- on the regular pbs channel at least.
- kaybe 9y ago
  I'd argue that news is not for kids, unless it is specifically tailored to them (eg the German public kids TV channel has special kids news (and no ads)). It is easier to learn about the world's problems from less explicit sources. News can be worse than horror films, which are at least known to be fictional.
  - manishsharan 9y ago
    I would take a more nuanced approach: I agree that Kindergardeners are probably better off without news. But maybe 2nd graders and up should be exposed to the news . Most of the images on evening newscasts are normally sanitized ; they are definitely not at par with horror films. Filtering out images of hunger, poverty and suffering will lead to a ignorance and denial about these issues when they grow up.
    - marcosdumay 9y ago
      Well, try explaining for a 2nd grader the concept of nuclear weapons, and why people seem afraid of NK having them.
  - xxpor 9y ago
    I'm not really sure what you mean. It's actually frustrating how tame the news is, at least in the US. If they actually showed the effects of war, the public would be able to be more rational about the consequences. I actually grew up watching PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
limaoscarjuliet 9y ago
Father speaking here - kids are on youtube, being pushed way more commercials than ever before.
- jopsen 9y ago
  Isn't it you responsibility to push adblock in your kids? Firefox for Android can block ads... But yes, it's much harder with tablets and phones..
  - limaoscarjuliet 9y ago
    Yes, I'm pushing back. My statement was a response to the article, title of which suggests that "just by switching from TV to Netflix we reduce children's exposure to commercials". This statement is incorrect, as the kids are on YouTube anyways, so little to no savings are done here.
  - edgan 9y ago
    I recently setup piHole to do DNS based blocking of YouTube ads. At first I set it up for the whole network, but then my Amazon Shopping app misbehaved. So I set it up just for my Nvidia Shields that we watch YouTube on. It had a couple glitches at first, but has been working very well.
narvind 9y ago
There are 2 shows everyone seems to be talking about: Netflix and Bitcoin. I need to tell my wife to record them on the VDR.
indus 9y ago
I wish I could inject the following in the Netflix html through a proxy at home.. >> Mental Health General's Statutory Warning <<< >> Binge watching is injurious to kids health <<<
scarface74 9y ago
Cue the "I don't even own a TV crowd".... 97% of American Households own a television. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/business/media/03television.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/business/media/03televisi... Then right behind them the "I don't subscribe to cable crowd and I don't understand why people do" 75% of households still have cable or satellite. http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/24/a-stunning-number-of-americans-no-longer-have-cable-tv-says-report/ http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/24/a-stunning-number-of-ameri... And I'm one of the 25% that don't subscribe to cable but I refuse to call myself a "cord cutter" because my entertainment still comes across a cord - it's just not coax.
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  I own a television but it's never used as a 'television'. It's a screen with an Xbox connected on which I have Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, and games.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    So instead of watching content provided by the major networks over Coax delivered to you by one of the major ISPs, you watch content over TCP/IP brought to you by one of the major ISPs owned by the same content providers. Hulu is 30% own by Fox, Disney, and Comcast and the other 10% is owned by Time Warner. You're still watching content on your television, over a wire, brought to you by the major content providers. What's the difference again? I also subscribe to Netflix, commercial free Hulu, and commercial free CBS. But how I get my content isn't in a practical sense any different than a cable subscriber except for a lack of ads and I don't have to pay all of the extra fees. I'm also not bothered about admitting I have 6 TVs throughout my house all with Rokus.
    - JohnTHaller 9y ago
      No Commercials: I don't see them. That's one of the biggest things about 'cord cutters'. You can't reach them with TV commercials. So, advertisers have to figure out another way to 'reach' me. No Schedule: I watch what I'd like to when I'd like to. I never care what's 'on TV' or when something is scheduled. I watch things when I'm in the mood to and have the time to. The idea of specific weeknight lineups or specific programs bringing an audience to another seems silly and quaint. No Access to Cable-Only Programming: I have no access to cable-only programming. If you lock your content down to your cable TV channel and your app that requires me to login with my cable account, I can't see it. And, no, I'm not going to pay $50 a month to get cable to see your TV show. A majority of the time, if I'm sitting on the couch, I'm playing a game, watching YouTube, or watching a movie. So, yes, there's a pretty big difference between a typical TV watcher and a cord cutter in terms of advertiser reach, access to content, dollars spent, and schedule. As more folks take this approach, more of the industry has to adjust to keep pace.
mmanfrin 9y ago
I have an iPhone, an Amazon Echo, and a Google Home device. I recently had to watch live TV because I was watching a sports game, and the number of ads that targeted my listening devices was obscene. Every other ad was either for the Echo or Home, or for something unrelated but mentioning 'Hey Siri, tell me about [product being sold]'. To me, it feels like it's an effort to subvert the always-listening/always-watching tracking. If Google has now searched for some random thing being sold because of that ad, then those ads will be shown to me when I browse on my computer (since it's all part of the same profile). It's intrusive, obnoxious, and I feel zero remorse doing anything to avoid ads (such as use an ad blocker).
- funnelsgun 9y ago
  A friend of mine has Google Home and it just doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest! Perhaps I just don’t know how to get the most out of it, but whenever I go to his I either just ask it dumb questions or get it to change the music - to his frustration...
  - mmanfrin 9y ago
    I've become a bit too used to using the echo as an alarm clock (which I can set without turning on a screen or looking at a light) and for morning/evening news briefings, which is really just a proxy to NPR/BBC podcasts, but it's useful. It is definitely something that I wish there was a 'self hosted' version of that was anywhere near as capable.
    - Fifer82 9y ago
      Really? I mean, Really???? You have an unregulated device in your home, mining away on data which... you paid for, hard cash. Not a game, not a movie, not a simulation, not an experience. And your only use is an Alarm Clock? This is gold mate, gold. You know when people say "ach, the guy is just an idiot with money"? mmanfrin is what I see.
      - rdruxn 9y ago
TheBleak13 9y ago
I can't watch normal cable TV anymore with all the commercials. I honestly think there are more commercials and they're longer these days.
alwaysnotright 9y ago
I watched a lot of TV and commercials as a young kid on Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Disney channels, commercials ranging from baby dolls, batman and Lego. I wanted a lot of the stuff they showed on TV, and I got gifted a lot, but not everything. I come from a middle class norwegian family which meant that we could afford a lot of toys and stuff, but not everything at once. I don't think it influenced me that much, but I certainly tried to influence my parents to buy the crap which I had seen on TV. In retrospective, I wish my parents had said "no" more to the crap I wanted and received, I didn't need it at all and it was all a matter of my parents saying "no" more.
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  One of the biggest blessings in disguise for me was not having much money as a child[1]. From the moment we left college, I've made more money than all of my close friends, and I somehow spend the least as well. We've talked pretty openly about income and budgeting as we all entered adulthood and learned our way around personal finance, and it's been fascinating to me to see how wanting to purchase unnecessary things is this vice that my friends consistently struggle with, to varying degrees. I don't have especially good willpower: I just seem to be missing that urge almost entirely. My lifestyle is far from ascetic, but the value bar for making something tempting to buy is just set way higher for me for some reason. I buy everything I feel like; I just don't tend to feel like things unless I think I'll get a lot of enjoyment/value out of them relative to their price. In retrospect, a couple years of disappointment before getting used to my mom saying "no" to most purchase requests was a pretty small price to pay for not constantly struggling against urges to spend irresponsibly.
- sytelus 9y ago
  It's not about ads making you want stuff, it's about ads setting a frame of reference for your kids. For example, ad for Barbie would may teach kids that looking beautiful is very important. Or ads for bazooka may teach that having and operating guns is fun. Or that simply collecting something is cool. It is not a secret how Disney has ruined lives of countless little girls by continually brainwashing them about being princess whose sole purpose is to look good and attract a prince. They have had massive contribution in turning off little girls from pursuing intellectual endeavors. Ads are teaching your kids what should be desirable and what is good for them.
zeep 9y ago
PBS Kids has done the same in our home... and it's free (just need an antenna)...
Feniks 9y ago
I've been almost entirely commercial/advertising free for years now. Not gonna lie, it isolates you from mainstream society a bit. Whether that is good or bad is debatable.
- degenerate 9y ago
  It's good.
- cmpb 9y ago
  I’ve had the same isolation experience after kicking Facebook 3ish years ago. Also, it seems to have only gotten more isolating since. My wife effectively has to operate as a proxy between most of our family/friends and me, which is not a position she enjoys, and is not a position I intended on her being in.
- isostatic 9y ago
  I still come out with advertising jingles from the 90s that embedded themselves in my conscious as a teenager. No idea if those jingles exist now - I did make a effort to watch the Christmas adverts, m&s, John Lewis, Tesco, bbc, Sainsbury's etc, on YouTube. I also make a conscious effort to look at movie trailers, and indeed let YouTube play past the first 5 seconds on trailers of films that I don't know about and look interesting.
superflit 9y ago
My kid has three years and because of me always watched Netflix Kids. Tried Youtube Kids but too much "infomercials" and weird videos. We went to grandmas house and once the commercials started he said: "Daddy take this out.. This take out" And I was kind surprise. He did not have the concept of Commercials and hate it. Now I think about myself, having to wait commercials and be woke up at certain time to watch my favorite cartoons. Love it, I only wish it was possible to have a password on Netflix Profiles.
sharpercoder 9y ago
Delivering ad-free content is potentially a billion-dollar business. I'd be happy to pay a flat fee and read articles online, watch TV, movies, documentaries et cetera ad-free. Off course, some content services offer this. The problem is twofold: "new" services I discover still give me ads, and I need to subscribe to many services to get ad-free content. I much rather have one service I pay to resulting in many content providers allowing me to consume ad-free content.
pteredactyl 9y ago
Who's the marketing genius at Neflix to come up with this meme?
stadeschuldt 9y ago
In Germany we have public, non-commercial television channels for kids like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KiKa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KiKa
sytelus 9y ago
This is one of the biggest advantage of not having an actual TV in the house. We watch everything on demand ad-free on YouTube, Netflix, Xfinity Streaming and Prime Video. The ads on TV even in kids specific programs are horrible. On non-kids programs it's absolutely something kids shouldn't be watching. Another huge advantage of not having actual TV in house is that we need to watch everything on PC or tablet. This adds friction in the process compared to just taking remote and press button. Also small kids typically will need parents help to watch anything instead of just starting to flip channels by themselves and exposing themselves to all commercial nastiness in very early age. Finally, once everything you want to watch is on demand, you have very different mindset. You never rush for specific time to watch TV. Time after dinner can be some activity. There is no compulsion that you must be first to watch GoT right along your friends. All that silly competition dies out. Now a days we watch many movies and TV series many years after they have been released and we absolutely don't feel as if we missed out by not watching right when they came out. Entertainment exists for us instead of other way around. I pity parents who still haven't figured this out and have actual TV sets in their houses.
deckarep 9y ago
Every time someone is like: “what? You don’t have cable you weird person you!” This is why. Got tired of paying a premium for commercials and over the years the commercial breaks got longer, and longer and longer. Hey cable subscribers...go ahead and channel surf and take some stats on how often a commercial is playing as you iterate through each channel. It’s ridiculous. Netflix is alright with me.
- __david__ 9y ago
  I'm a cable subscriber. I haven't watched an ad in nearly 20 years. DVRs solved the ad problem years and years go. (don't get me wrong—Netflix is great, too. And also torrents. Not even thinking about ads is better than fast forwarding through them).
  - deckarep 9y ago
    I used to have a DVR and it did help of course. But I was never fond of having to pay the rental fees of the unit for this feature. True it is still better.
real-hacker 9y ago
Tubi TV takes the opposite direction, free subscription + ads. Which model do you think most people will prefer?
znpy 9y ago
Okay so here i am, jumping on the "look at me, no tv in more than five years!" train. I don't even own a tv. When i visit my parents and watch tv, quite frankly, it's 95% trash + 5% stuff i have already seen on the Internet (but badly translated in my native language).
cslarson 9y ago
Took the family to see a kids movie yesterday. There was an like 30 minutes of ads at the beginning. I don't think they realise how jarring that is and how that's not something I want my kids to experience. Will reconsider going next time.
- isostatic 9y ago
  Normally films are Adverts-Trailers-Film The trick is to arrive near the start of the trailers - they are adverts, but personally I think they add to the cinema experience, as does overpriced popcorn. The adverts though should be destroyed - just add 50p to the ticket, it's not going to change anyone's decision of whether to go or not.
qwerty456127 9y ago
Can't service providers just offer completely ad-free experience to those willing to pay the price that would make this kind of subscriptions commercially viable?
halamadrid 9y ago
So we checked into a hotel today and my 4 year old decided to try TV for the first time. His was initially frustrated with the time it took for him to find a channel he thought he would like (Disney Junior). He had to hop through a ton of channels and missed a few kid friendly channels as Ads were playing on them. Finally he found Disney Junior, and then the whole ad thing started. He was so frustrated with all the ad breaks, he switched off the TV. Enough said.
andrewalan 9y ago
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dba7dba 9y ago
Someone told me a conversation he happened to overhear in a restaurant in LA. This was like 10+ years ago. He was having lunch at a restaurant and next to him were 2 gentlemen working in the TV industry. The conversation was about how the TV station/channel decided to increase ad time and this forced them to re-edit all TV shows to be shorter. One negative aspect of netflix is that my kids just endlessly scroll through show after show, but doesn't actually watch it. And when they do, they rarely finish it (meaning really enjoy or get into the show). It's like when you don't really enjoy food when you have too much of it easily accessible. So this new year, I'm even cutting netflix streaming service. Will see how that goes.
partycoder 9y ago
TV is destined to disappear. Alvin Toffler predicted it: mass produced solutions are not a thing in the post industrial age.
hendler 9y ago
The exception has been the emergence of YouTube content which is not a normal advertisement but designed to hold you or your children's attention. This six year old child is making millions of dollars: http://wgntv.com/2017/12/11/this-6-year-old-is-making-millions-reviewing-toys-on-youtube/ http://wgntv.com/2017/12/11/this-6-year-old-is-making-millio...
kccqzy 9y ago
> The average child watches 2.68 hours of television a day, or almost 980 hours a year That’s unusual. And it just reminds me of how different other people’s lives could be. When I grew up, no one in the family liked watching television. I still remember buying DVDs and watching those, but just not regular television programming.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  That's the confusing thing about averages. My experience was on the other end of the spectrum: I watched TV quite a lot more growing up. I think it would be more helpful to have a min max and mode than a mean.
  - isostatic 9y ago
    Median too. On average both Bill Gates, you and I are billionaires.
alistproducer2 9y ago
My kids are netflix babies and when I gave them a toys r us catalog to look through to pick Christmas gifts out of they looked at it for 2 minutes, threw it aside and didn't ask for anything. Without commercials, they have no sense that they should even want the crap in a toy catalog. Big difference from when I was growing up.
- totalZero 9y ago
  Do they cry when you tell them spoilers? On a serious note, I'm not sure how you managed to pull this off as a parent. Two weeks ago I saw a young child of Asian tourist parents in the streets of Manhattan, standing in front of a major chain drugstore and excitedly flagging down the parents to bring attention to a prominently displayed colorful plastic dump truck placed in the window display, precisely at baby level. I want to figure out how to keep my future kids from doing that.
- mbid 9y ago
  > My kids are netflix babies The times we live in...
- isostatic 9y ago
  My kids are the same. They still want the various go jetters and paw patrol toys because that's the actual program.
jwatte 9y ago
Add YouTube red (free with Google play music) for the family, and some NPR presets on the radio, and the worst you'll hear are the terrible underwriting credits... It's been great!
montrose 9y ago
Our kids only watch Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube. A couple days ago, my 8 year old son asked me what Pepsi was. I consider that a good sign.
fulafel 9y ago
Quality public broadcasting solved this in Europe a while ago.
hoppelhase 9y ago
Imagine how our surroundings would look like if there were absolutely no ads.
Skye 9y ago
Meanwhile in the UK... there tends to be a lot less advertisements on TV, and when shows from the US are played, there are points where they left room for an ad-break, which isn't used. For the ultimate in no-advertising, you just watch a BBC channel. Apparently there is a limit of 9 minutes of advertising per hour according to this document from the regulator... https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-codes/code-tv-advertising/regulation-ad-minutage https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-co...
- timthorn 9y ago
  And on the main channels, the limit is 7 mins/hour - these are averages across the day, but there are further restrictions for children's programming, including that programmes of 30 mins or less cannot be interrupted by adverts.
- pizzapill 9y ago
  Afaik most countries in Europe have at least a couple of TV stations that are really restricted when it comes to commercials. Usually supported by the government and/or citizens. I remember that we could receive government funded Austrian ORF 1 in Germany. They usually showed the same movie as other German commercial TV stations at the same time but without ads. Saving around 1 hour per movie.
  - Faark 9y ago
    There also is (was?) a daily limit on advertising for german stations, even commercial. Thus barely any ads at night. Some shows even had to be classified as add due to heavy product placement, so we barely got any other adds that day.
- isostatic 9y ago
  My kids know about three channels "Bbc" (watching "do they know" at the moment) "Amazon" "Netflix" We went to the cinema to watch Paddington last month. They had barely any idea what the adverts before the film were.
  - 9y ago
juicyfroot 9y ago
People still watch TV? You got to be kidding me. It has been 15 years of no TV. Isnt it child abuse to allow your kid to watch almost 2 weeks of their waking lives in a year on ads?
TheYcMaster 9y ago
Or Kodi only
samnwa 9y ago
But of course if you are a Hulu-only home you get 2X the ads and worst quality than TV.
tzakrajs 9y ago
Too bad the kids couldn't be saved from Netflix.
popman 9y ago
Is there any foolproof way of detecting if some video or audio is a commercial or not? A TV tuner that just replaces commercials with a placeholder image and a countdown to when the break is over would make broadcast TV just about tolerable for me. (time-shift, and skipping past commercials is a better solution, but there's some things you want to see live)
AkshayD08 9y ago
Children watch 2.6 hours if TV / day ? That sounds too much!

758 points by joeyespo 9y ago

partycoder 9y ago

Time to double down on product placement.

nuclearchicken 9y ago
Product placement is difficult in the shows I watch most: The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, Vikings. Luxury items don't and didn't exist in the aforementioned shows. I watch TV sitting with a laptop. I mute during the commercials and look at whatever for 2-3 minutes and return to watching. Done this for decades. I will likely go straight Internet connection in 2018 once I figure out how to get BBC and BBC America.
- niftich 9y ago
  The Walking Dead had a longtime product placement deal with Hyundai. Although it was much ridiculed, much of the point of product placement is to cause positive associations to be made between the product and the setting. Many people may not have thought of a Hyundai as a rough-and-tumble kind of car, but seeing it in such a setting normalizes that association ever so subtly, not unlike why repetition is an effective strategy to commit something to memory.
  - nuclearchicken 9y ago
    Good point. My brother, a veteran, will not own a Kia because of the Killed in Action acronym. I cannot blame him.

deleted 9y ago

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hristov 9y ago

Sounds great but the sad reality is that Netflix shows have commercials inside of them. I was really excited about this netflix show "love" until the macdonalds product placement inside of it just made me sick and i stopped watching it. I haven't been watching much original netflix shows since then, but whenever i feel like peeking into a new show i notice product placements pretty soon.

sigzero 9y ago
ALL shows have product placement. Some more blatant than others. You can't get around that.
- lebanon_tn 9y ago
  The FX show Baskets has its product placement front and center the entire time. It's hilarious and I don't mind one bit though.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- coding123 9y ago
  There are a few shows like Chuck that were basically saved by blatant product placement. It's funny to watch - breaks the illusion for a moment - but knowing the story behind how it basically saved the show makes it worth it for the fans.
  - nofilter 9y ago
    Oh man, Chuck was awesome! I'm adding it to the list of shows to re-watch.
- herbst 9y ago
  That is simply not true, firstly most cartoons and anime, but also other shows that come with a higher budget seem to be able to avoid product placements.

neals 9y ago

I accidentally watched some TV the other day. Having not seen any regular programming for at least a year, I was amazed at how much ... dumber it has become. Also, why did we sit through so many commercials for so long? It feel a little like a twilight zone episode, where we sit there watching a box telling us what to buy.

bastawhiz 9y ago
Every year when I go home for Christmas I watch TV with my parents and I'm always astounded that they pay more money than me to get access to worse content, and it has ads. It's really astounding that folks put up with it.
- otakucode 9y ago
  I have the same experience. I visit my parents about once every other month and usually end up watching a show or two with them. The programs are amazingly childish junk, the kind of stuff that disturbed me most about high school enshrined as sport. And the advertisements just never stop. If anyone has any doubt what the goal for Comcast will be now that net neutrality is gone, it will be to make Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc cost more than the Comcast On Demand stuff (which has ads you can't fast-forward through, a tiny selection, etc). So once it costs you $12 to watch 2 movies on Netflix instead of $12 to watch movies all month long, then they will feel that the playing field is 'fair'.
  - itronitron 9y ago
    I haven't watched cable since ~2009 and no longer subscribe. Not only are the shows just bad, but the image quality is terrible. If ISPs drag down the streaming video services then I hope Netflix returns to a robust DVD distribution model. IF not then I'll just buy DVD box sets before I support extortion.
- DubiousPusher 9y ago
  I think TV remains popular with certain people largely out of ease of use. You can just turn it on and you don't have to make a decision about what to watch. It's always there. Also, changing would require learning something new. People genuinely find learning to have a level of discomfort so they avoid it. https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/03/learning-hurts-your-brain/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/03/learning-hurts-your-...

meesles 9y ago

This would be fantastic news if the content was anything worthwhile. At the end of the day, I'm not sure I care whether the kid is watching commercials or some other inane show. It's still passive consumption. Personally, of course I want less commercials. But being able to consume more per minute isn't necessarily a good thing, IMO.

isostatic 9y ago
My kids watched a show his morning which explained where eggs came from, and what happens when they are heated - how the proteins change shape, how the outside heats faster than the inside, etc. Also how bread is made, both manually, then showed automated kneading (this is a show aimed at under 6s, so anything beyond proteins changing shape seems excessive) Yes it's passive, but it's still better than brainwashing then to buy McDonald's

dragonshed 9y ago

My family and I 'cut the cord' in 2005, back when Netflix meant DVDs, and other than access to sports, we haven't missed TV at all. These days we use an Apple TV 4th Gen, with only Netflix, Plex and KPBS apps, and I believe my kids are better off for it. They still have access to way too much TV, but at least we know what they're seeing.

ashark 9y ago
Unlimited streaming has its own problems, because your kids know it's never impossible for them to watch their favorite show, unlike with the bad old days of Saturday morning cartoons and just a handful of OTA TV stations. You can just say no, of course, but it's easier when you don't have to. Actually, the entire Internet kinda presents the same problem for adults and personal willpower.
- otakucode 9y ago
  The 'problem' with willpower is not temptation. Temptation is only a problem for those with no willpower who paradoxically want to believe that they do. There are two solutions. Either study philosophy and come to understand why you act the way you do and seek to modify that if desired... or actually evaluate the real consequences of your actions and decide if whatever their label might end up being whether the consequences are actually worth being worried or ashamed about. Most often, people are worried about things that harm no one, making their worry absolutely meaningless.

the_common_man 9y ago

> The average child watches 2.68 hours of television a day, or almost 980 hours a year This is a very sad statistic. I cannot imagine what this non-stop television consumption is doing to their brains. I am guessing this does not include the tablet screen time which is another 3 hours per day or so.

coding123 9y ago
It's pretty horrible - I grew up with about that much per day. I grew up pretty successfully however I would have to admit that success is only due to everyone else my age growing up like that. If I had to live by the rules of the people we call fuddy-duddies we'd be totally f'd. The older generation takes more time to do tasks right, spends time to talk to each other on the phone, has a much stronger sense of belonging to the community around them. I know this might get down-voted but it's absolutely true.
- kaybe 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuddy-duddy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuddy-duddy In case anyone else does not know.

Animats 9y ago

This is great. The next generation will view ads as abnormal.

whitepoplar 9y ago
I don't think ads will ever go away, so my main hope is that ad targeting gets so good that the industry is able to make the same amount of money (or less!) while showing 10x fewer ads. Humanity is paying a huge cost at the moment for inefficient ad placement.
- isostatic 9y ago
  Or make 10 times as much with the level of adverts people are apparently happy with now. Which do you think is more likely?
jacquesm 9y ago
You'd hope. The more likely future is one where the next generation will not be able to distinguish advertising from content anymore.
- pfranz 9y ago
  Didn't ads start out as integrated with content? A combination of government intervention and advertisers themselves transitioned from sponsoring a specific program with heavily integrated content (live-reads) to more polished, structured, fungible advertising of the 30-second spot. I wouldn't be surprised if it evolves again. You already see podcasts going from sponsored live-reads to injecting ads per-download. For better or worse, this allows lower-volume (local and more targeted?) ads instead of large companies who are one of a handful of sponsors for the whole show.

nickjj 9y ago

Why is it just limited to kids? It saves adults too. Sure, an adult might switch channels during a commercial but your time is still wasted because now you're filling the gap with random surfing rather than consuming the content you're interested in. It honestly surprises me at how cable providers managed to exist for so long without getting a backlash from its customers. A 1 hour show on American TV typically only has 42 minutes of actual content. The other 18 minutes are filled with commercials. You are losing 30% of that 1 hour off your life, not only that but you're paying a premium to receive it. After removing special promo prices even basic cable from most major providers is a lot more expensive than streaming services.

swamp40 9y ago

Now Netflix just needs to accommodate kid's 3-5 minute attention span, which is reason for YouTube's popularity - along with the quick and easy selection of related content. Then they could take over, and make parents much happier. Maybe even happy enough to pay an extra $1.99 a month for trustworthy content curation?

brianwawok 9y ago
Kinda sorta get this with kindle fire and the kindle family or whatever it is called. There are some videos for the kiddo based on age.. for little kids you get the 3 minute nursery rhymes. $2 or $3 a month.
jimktrains2 9y ago
> Now Netflix just needs to accommodate kid's 3-5 minute attention span My 2yro just sat through the Nutcracker the other week. He sits and listens to about half an hour of Dune each night. (We're just about to finish Dune Messiah.) Sure I don't know how much he comprehends, but he's not fidgeting or trying to find toys to play with. He will also sit and build with Duplo-style bricks or wooden trains for hours, and with those there is a visible engagement metrics. (And yes, he does have his moments, and times where he does like to go from thing to thing, but it's not constant just like the long spans of attention aren't constant.) I know it's n=1, but I don't believe that kids have an inherit and maximal 3-5 minute attention span.

moreorless 9y ago

I am curious to see if kids in "Netflix Only" homes spend more time watching shows because of binging. When I had Netflix, I found myself watching more than I normally would.

feverishaaron 9y ago

Naw, kids from Netflix homes are just watching long-form commercials. Dino Trucks, Nexo Knights and Ninjago all dominate my boys' Christmas wish lists this year.

megaman22 9y ago
That's kind of an inversion of who's leading things, but kids television and the toy industry have always gone hand in hand. Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers and HeMan were cartoons before they were toys (I think...) but it was all about the merchandising.
- pfranz 9y ago
  He-Man was an action figure made by Mattel. TMNT started as a comic book, but from what I understand was a parody of popular things; Teenagers, Mutants, Ninjas...not sure why turtles were thrown in there. TMNT didn't get gain popularity until they started making action figures.
  - zhengyi13 9y ago
    I hadn't ever thought of TMNT as being a parody, at least not in original Eastman and Laird form - I missed most of it, but parts of it were pretty dark, particularly Raphael's character IIRC. I got introduced to it by way of Palladium's adoption of the world/setting as an RPG, who expanded the world with a whole bunch of amazing sourcebooks that never went anywhere near the silliness of the later incarnations involving "COWABUNGA DUDE!".
baq 9y ago
real money is in merchandising. george lucas understood that. even elon musk understood that recently ;)
- ynniv 9y ago
  If you haven't seen it, Musk was quoting a great scene in Mel Brook's Spaceballs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRFQJCHcPw#t=36 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRFQJCHcPw#t=36

gman83 9y ago

I was thinking about this the other day, and I was wondering whether the fact that my kids are not exposed at all to commercials might make them more susceptible to advertising when they grow up.

technovader 9y ago
Implying that watching more advertisements helps you develop a tolerance for it.
- viraptor 9y ago
  It does in a way. When I watched standard tv programmes years ago, the ads would be a thing you have to go through, and try to ignore. Now they're not tolerable - I'll choose not watching something over watching it with ads. Not sure if it makes me more susceptible to ads I do see (unlikely, I barely but anything anyway), but it limits the exposure a lot.
  - foobarian 9y ago
    The communist country I grew up in had TV commercials too, but their commercial blocks came with 'begin' and 'end' jingles and were called 'Economy-propaganda programs.' Calling a spade a spade!
dragonshed 9y ago
As a viewer, I get minimal entertainment and no value from them, and having cut the cord long ago, I find them irritating. I'm hoping my kids grow up to be irritated or intolerant of commercials as well.
emodendroket 9y ago
Probably not. Children are constitutionally defenseless against advertising so it's doubtful that childhood exposure to advertising is helpful.
CaptSpify 9y ago
Alternatively, I can envision them being more skeptical about advertisements. It'd be great to see some long-term studies done on this.

athenot 9y ago

One side-effect of all these commercials is to shorten the attention span of viewers. I feel that kids are taught to only get into a thought/storyline for a maximum of 8 minutes then switch mental contexts 4 to 8 times before returning to that original story. While I have no evidence about it, I don't see how this can be healthy. In contrast my children watch shows with episodes ranging from 12 minutes to full-length movies of 1h30 without interruption.

kleiba 9y ago

I live in a 'Netflix free' home -- I watch as many commercials a year as a any kid in a 'Netflix only' home. It's not clear to me why the article assumes that not having Netflix means you're consuming commercials.

grzm 9y ago
Would you care to unpack that? The interesting thing about personal anecdotes is when they provide context as to your experience. How many commercials did you watch a year? Do you have a TV? Do you choose not to any media at all? Only movies? How do you compare your experience to others?
- dukeflukem 9y ago
  I took this as he doesn't watch TV or TV-like content at all.
- kleiba 9y ago
  The important point is the list of alternatives you provide yourself: a statement worded in this way "kids on netflix only homes are being saved from 230 hrs of commercials a year" apparently implies two alternatives -- either "netflix only" or "being exposed to 230 hrs of commercials a year". There are, however, a lot more alternatives, and you list some of them.
  - grzm 9y ago
    Please don't just drive by taking potshots at headlines that aren't written the way you want them to be. Read the article. Post something substantive. Engage. Share.
chris_wot 9y ago
That makes no sense. Kids who watch Netflix get zero ads. Kids who watch commercial television are bombarded with ads.
- kleiba 9y ago

gdilla 9y ago

If you have kids who watch netflix, it's interesting how they recoil in disgust at advertising interrupting a show. And it carries over to YouTube too - if they see pre-roll they skip as soon as possible. It'll be interesting when they're teens what kind of media related app will be the 'it' app for them

on_and_off 9y ago
Interesting. The one good thing with ads on the web is that it works as a micropayment. I wonder how a service like Youtube would work without ads ? I currently have a no-ads subscription on Youtube (packaged with a google music, so it is pretty attractive to me) but I don't think this service would work as a gated subscribe only website.
- evv 9y ago
  Brendon Eich is working on "Brave Browser", which aims to use Ethereum to enable an ideal relationship between consumers, content producers, and advertisers.
  - cyborgx7 9y ago
    A relationship that still includes advertisers is never ideal.
    - BrendanEich 9y ago
      No ads unless each user opts in, then only: 0. Consent required for any ads at all, from user and (see 2) publisher if involved. 1. User private ads, anonymously confirmed (ANONIZE2 ZKP protocol, will move on-chain when Ethereum supports it). Ad placement is signal- and cookie-free, by a machine learning agent running only on device and looking at only your on-device data (private sync uses secret key, no data in clear on any servers), matching against common per region/language ad catalog listing edge urls + keywords per ad. 2. Revenue share of 70% to inventory (ad slot) owner, i.e., to the user in (1). If publishers partner on indirect ad slots p, pub gets 70%, user gets 15%. In all cases users gets at least as much as Brave gets. So users of Brave block ads and trackers by default. If you want to contribute anonymously you can fund your user BAT wallet (we are doing initial grants). Pinned a la Patreon contributions as well as private pro data by view count and time send tokens in one transaction on chain per 30 days of uptime. But when BAT ads are up and sharing revenue to users, the you can opt into those to fill your wallet. If you want to can out, you will be able to, but only via KYC (banking “Know Your Customer) level vetting. By default your revenue will flow back to your pinned and supported sites and creators.

33degrees 9y ago

I wonder how many hours of commercials a year are watched in homes where ipads are the main source of entertainment; I’d wager it’s up there with regular television.

noam87 9y ago
considering YouTube makes me watch 25 seconds of advertising for a 40 second video... could be a lot.
- 33degrees 9y ago
  not just youtube, but all those free to play games too.
- nuclearchicken 9y ago
  uBlock Origin, Decentraleyes, Privacy Badger. You are not obligated to watch ads. Don't fall for the lie. Your computer, your rules. Google are already rich enough.
- isostatic 9y ago
  YouTube has a skip ad button after 5 seconds, and I'm not convinced there's an advert on every clip (at least on the YouTube app on phone - obviously no adverts on the desktop)

emodendroket 9y ago

I mean, I guess that's an improvement, but that's a lot of TV.

habosa 9y ago

I think I might be the only person I know that doesn't mind regular TV commercials. They're actually 100x less annoying than your average online commercial. When I'm watching casual TV (not a serious drama or a movie) I don't mind the interruption. Gives me a chance to think about something else, check my phone, talk to someone, or walk away.

megaman22 9y ago
At least with broadcast TV, you see different commercials once in a while. Streaming, I usually see the same three ads played in a row every break. It makes me actively hate and have negative associations with whatever product they are trying to push.
isostatic 9y ago
I don't get watching tv with commercials. When I watch a show it's because I'm interested in the show. I don't want to be jarred out of the narrative to think about something else, even pressing the fast forward button.

draw_down 9y ago

After spending a little time hardly ever watching or hearing ads, they seem insane. The way they are acted and written, the subject matter, all of it is just so crazy. It seems impossible to understand how they encourage people to buy whatever product is being advertised.

aviv 9y ago

Every minute a kid watches a stupid Netflix kids show is a wasted minute they can be stimulating their brain positively instead of numbing it with manufactured industrialized content. Having said that my kids do get a couple hours on the weekend and it's actually fascinating to see what happens when they put the iPad away. It's almost like they need a half hour or so to re-adjust to real life after all the stupid content they just watched. Then they go outside and do what kids do best - be kids.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
What does that readjustment period look like to you? Pure curiosity.
- aviv 9y ago
  It's like watching someone come down from a high. Technically they are doing just that. They get pretty intense, very demanding, can't handle the calmness and relatively (to the stupid show they just watched) quiet environment. And they know it too. Both my kids express that finishing watching shows on the iPad doesn't make them feel good. They're very aware of it. Now that it's nice out they would rather skip it altogether and go on a hike early in the morning, so I don't mind so much when they do opt for an iPad kind of morning once in a while.
  - l33tbro 9y ago
    How do they go with reading? Seems like a balance between stimulation and calm.
    - aviv 9y ago
      They love reading. Going to the library to return and find new books to read is one of their favorite activities.
  - manmal 9y ago
    My son is going through the exact same thing! My theory is that there’s a dopamine adaption going on, or sthg like that. For him, it’s the same with audio books or digital games btw. The longer he consumes content, the longer the cool-down phase lasts after that, though the max duration is about 15 minutes — after that he is fine. What he does differs everytime, but it ranges from swearing to crying to just poking at food with an absent look, saying nothing.

samstave 9y ago

Commercials are mental cancer. Online ads are mental cancer. Cancer pays. People like money. People are selfish. They will opt for seeking for payment from cancer when given the option. looking at you google

ciconia 9y ago

We've been a no-tv family since forever. We do have a Netflix subscription (though we do find the selection of shows and movies too small, but still...) My kids have a genuine aversion to commercials. With Netflix and YouTube, they can watch content they choose without the constant interruption and"garbage time" of TV.

jstewartmobile 9y ago

I don't watch much TV, but my wife watches a lot of these shows. The product placement is fairly blatant, and the storylines themselves seem very materialistic. What if this is not a replacement of advertisement as much as it is a more thoroughly integrated form of it? I mean, which would you rather be: The guy who pays for a blatant ad that is segregated from the content, or the guy with a slick PR rep who gets your product glowingly mentioned inside the content?

mendelbot 9y ago

Maybe kids should just stare at a screen less and go outside

skate22 9y ago

My parents would always agressivly mute commercials when i was a kid. I'm pretty glad they did.

jvandonsel 9y ago
Yeah, I also trained my kids from an early age to hit the mute button when a commercial comes on. Without that magic button we can't possibly watch live TV.

dsr_ 9y ago

Ahead of the curve here, we had TiVo and MythTV before the kids were old enough to work the remotes. From way back then: "Why can't we watch it again?" "Pause this while I go to the bathroom." "Hey, look, is that a toy?" "Dad, why do people put up with commercials?" And now that they're teenagers: "Dad, did you remember to record that show that I forgot the name of and didn't remind you to set the recording?" I guess some things don't change.

manishsharan 9y ago

On the other hand, Kids in Netflix only homes are probably not exposed to news and world events that does not come from Facebook and Twitter and other filtered media. They are probably not exposed to opposing or uncomfortable opinions and views. Those Netflix only homes should at least get PBS.

pasquinelli 9y ago
yeah, that was my first thought too. pbs only would be much better: free, not tailored for binge watching, and the cartoons actually end at some point-- on the regular pbs channel at least.
kaybe 9y ago
I'd argue that news is not for kids, unless it is specifically tailored to them (eg the German public kids TV channel has special kids news (and no ads)). It is easier to learn about the world's problems from less explicit sources. News can be worse than horror films, which are at least known to be fictional.
- manishsharan 9y ago
  I would take a more nuanced approach: I agree that Kindergardeners are probably better off without news. But maybe 2nd graders and up should be exposed to the news . Most of the images on evening newscasts are normally sanitized ; they are definitely not at par with horror films. Filtering out images of hunger, poverty and suffering will lead to a ignorance and denial about these issues when they grow up.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    Well, try explaining for a 2nd grader the concept of nuclear weapons, and why people seem afraid of NK having them.
- xxpor 9y ago
  I'm not really sure what you mean. It's actually frustrating how tame the news is, at least in the US. If they actually showed the effects of war, the public would be able to be more rational about the consequences. I actually grew up watching PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

limaoscarjuliet 9y ago

Father speaking here - kids are on youtube, being pushed way more commercials than ever before.

jopsen 9y ago
Isn't it you responsibility to push adblock in your kids? Firefox for Android can block ads... But yes, it's much harder with tablets and phones..
- limaoscarjuliet 9y ago
  Yes, I'm pushing back. My statement was a response to the article, title of which suggests that "just by switching from TV to Netflix we reduce children's exposure to commercials". This statement is incorrect, as the kids are on YouTube anyways, so little to no savings are done here.
- edgan 9y ago
  I recently setup piHole to do DNS based blocking of YouTube ads. At first I set it up for the whole network, but then my Amazon Shopping app misbehaved. So I set it up just for my Nvidia Shields that we watch YouTube on. It had a couple glitches at first, but has been working very well.

narvind 9y ago

There are 2 shows everyone seems to be talking about: Netflix and Bitcoin. I need to tell my wife to record them on the VDR.

indus 9y ago

I wish I could inject the following in the Netflix html through a proxy at home.. >> Mental Health General's Statutory Warning <<< >> Binge watching is injurious to kids health <<<

scarface74 9y ago

Cue the "I don't even own a TV crowd".... 97% of American Households own a television. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/business/media/03television.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/business/media/03televisi... Then right behind them the "I don't subscribe to cable crowd and I don't understand why people do" 75% of households still have cable or satellite. http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/24/a-stunning-number-of-americans-no-longer-have-cable-tv-says-report/ http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/24/a-stunning-number-of-ameri... And I'm one of the 25% that don't subscribe to cable but I refuse to call myself a "cord cutter" because my entertainment still comes across a cord - it's just not coax.

JohnTHaller 9y ago
I own a television but it's never used as a 'television'. It's a screen with an Xbox connected on which I have Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, and games.
- scarface74 9y ago
  So instead of watching content provided by the major networks over Coax delivered to you by one of the major ISPs, you watch content over TCP/IP brought to you by one of the major ISPs owned by the same content providers. Hulu is 30% own by Fox, Disney, and Comcast and the other 10% is owned by Time Warner. You're still watching content on your television, over a wire, brought to you by the major content providers. What's the difference again? I also subscribe to Netflix, commercial free Hulu, and commercial free CBS. But how I get my content isn't in a practical sense any different than a cable subscriber except for a lack of ads and I don't have to pay all of the extra fees. I'm also not bothered about admitting I have 6 TVs throughout my house all with Rokus.
  - JohnTHaller 9y ago
    No Commercials: I don't see them. That's one of the biggest things about 'cord cutters'. You can't reach them with TV commercials. So, advertisers have to figure out another way to 'reach' me. No Schedule: I watch what I'd like to when I'd like to. I never care what's 'on TV' or when something is scheduled. I watch things when I'm in the mood to and have the time to. The idea of specific weeknight lineups or specific programs bringing an audience to another seems silly and quaint. No Access to Cable-Only Programming: I have no access to cable-only programming. If you lock your content down to your cable TV channel and your app that requires me to login with my cable account, I can't see it. And, no, I'm not going to pay $50 a month to get cable to see your TV show. A majority of the time, if I'm sitting on the couch, I'm playing a game, watching YouTube, or watching a movie. So, yes, there's a pretty big difference between a typical TV watcher and a cord cutter in terms of advertiser reach, access to content, dollars spent, and schedule. As more folks take this approach, more of the industry has to adjust to keep pace.

mmanfrin 9y ago

I have an iPhone, an Amazon Echo, and a Google Home device. I recently had to watch live TV because I was watching a sports game, and the number of ads that targeted my listening devices was obscene. Every other ad was either for the Echo or Home, or for something unrelated but mentioning 'Hey Siri, tell me about [product being sold]'. To me, it feels like it's an effort to subvert the always-listening/always-watching tracking. If Google has now searched for some random thing being sold because of that ad, then those ads will be shown to me when I browse on my computer (since it's all part of the same profile). It's intrusive, obnoxious, and I feel zero remorse doing anything to avoid ads (such as use an ad blocker).

funnelsgun 9y ago
A friend of mine has Google Home and it just doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest! Perhaps I just don’t know how to get the most out of it, but whenever I go to his I either just ask it dumb questions or get it to change the music - to his frustration...
- mmanfrin 9y ago
  I've become a bit too used to using the echo as an alarm clock (which I can set without turning on a screen or looking at a light) and for morning/evening news briefings, which is really just a proxy to NPR/BBC podcasts, but it's useful. It is definitely something that I wish there was a 'self hosted' version of that was anywhere near as capable.
  - Fifer82 9y ago
    Really? I mean, Really???? You have an unregulated device in your home, mining away on data which... you paid for, hard cash. Not a game, not a movie, not a simulation, not an experience. And your only use is an Alarm Clock? This is gold mate, gold. You know when people say "ach, the guy is just an idiot with money"? mmanfrin is what I see.
    - rdruxn 9y ago

TheBleak13 9y ago

I can't watch normal cable TV anymore with all the commercials. I honestly think there are more commercials and they're longer these days.

alwaysnotright 9y ago

I watched a lot of TV and commercials as a young kid on Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Disney channels, commercials ranging from baby dolls, batman and Lego. I wanted a lot of the stuff they showed on TV, and I got gifted a lot, but not everything. I come from a middle class norwegian family which meant that we could afford a lot of toys and stuff, but not everything at once. I don't think it influenced me that much, but I certainly tried to influence my parents to buy the crap which I had seen on TV. In retrospective, I wish my parents had said "no" more to the crap I wanted and received, I didn't need it at all and it was all a matter of my parents saying "no" more.

wutbrodo 9y ago
One of the biggest blessings in disguise for me was not having much money as a child[1]. From the moment we left college, I've made more money than all of my close friends, and I somehow spend the least as well. We've talked pretty openly about income and budgeting as we all entered adulthood and learned our way around personal finance, and it's been fascinating to me to see how wanting to purchase unnecessary things is this vice that my friends consistently struggle with, to varying degrees. I don't have especially good willpower: I just seem to be missing that urge almost entirely. My lifestyle is far from ascetic, but the value bar for making something tempting to buy is just set way higher for me for some reason. I buy everything I feel like; I just don't tend to feel like things unless I think I'll get a lot of enjoyment/value out of them relative to their price. In retrospect, a couple years of disappointment before getting used to my mom saying "no" to most purchase requests was a pretty small price to pay for not constantly struggling against urges to spend irresponsibly.
sytelus 9y ago
It's not about ads making you want stuff, it's about ads setting a frame of reference for your kids. For example, ad for Barbie would may teach kids that looking beautiful is very important. Or ads for bazooka may teach that having and operating guns is fun. Or that simply collecting something is cool. It is not a secret how Disney has ruined lives of countless little girls by continually brainwashing them about being princess whose sole purpose is to look good and attract a prince. They have had massive contribution in turning off little girls from pursuing intellectual endeavors. Ads are teaching your kids what should be desirable and what is good for them.

zeep 9y ago

PBS Kids has done the same in our home... and it's free (just need an antenna)...

Feniks 9y ago

I've been almost entirely commercial/advertising free for years now. Not gonna lie, it isolates you from mainstream society a bit. Whether that is good or bad is debatable.

degenerate 9y ago
It's good.
cmpb 9y ago
I’ve had the same isolation experience after kicking Facebook 3ish years ago. Also, it seems to have only gotten more isolating since. My wife effectively has to operate as a proxy between most of our family/friends and me, which is not a position she enjoys, and is not a position I intended on her being in.
isostatic 9y ago
I still come out with advertising jingles from the 90s that embedded themselves in my conscious as a teenager. No idea if those jingles exist now - I did make a effort to watch the Christmas adverts, m&s, John Lewis, Tesco, bbc, Sainsbury's etc, on YouTube. I also make a conscious effort to look at movie trailers, and indeed let YouTube play past the first 5 seconds on trailers of films that I don't know about and look interesting.

superflit 9y ago

My kid has three years and because of me always watched Netflix Kids. Tried Youtube Kids but too much "infomercials" and weird videos. We went to grandmas house and once the commercials started he said: "Daddy take this out.. This take out" And I was kind surprise. He did not have the concept of Commercials and hate it. Now I think about myself, having to wait commercials and be woke up at certain time to watch my favorite cartoons. Love it, I only wish it was possible to have a password on Netflix Profiles.

sharpercoder 9y ago

Delivering ad-free content is potentially a billion-dollar business. I'd be happy to pay a flat fee and read articles online, watch TV, movies, documentaries et cetera ad-free. Off course, some content services offer this. The problem is twofold: "new" services I discover still give me ads, and I need to subscribe to many services to get ad-free content. I much rather have one service I pay to resulting in many content providers allowing me to consume ad-free content.

pteredactyl 9y ago

Who's the marketing genius at Neflix to come up with this meme?

stadeschuldt 9y ago

In Germany we have public, non-commercial television channels for kids like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KiKa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KiKa

sytelus 9y ago

This is one of the biggest advantage of not having an actual TV in the house. We watch everything on demand ad-free on YouTube, Netflix, Xfinity Streaming and Prime Video. The ads on TV even in kids specific programs are horrible. On non-kids programs it's absolutely something kids shouldn't be watching. Another huge advantage of not having actual TV in house is that we need to watch everything on PC or tablet. This adds friction in the process compared to just taking remote and press button. Also small kids typically will need parents help to watch anything instead of just starting to flip channels by themselves and exposing themselves to all commercial nastiness in very early age. Finally, once everything you want to watch is on demand, you have very different mindset. You never rush for specific time to watch TV. Time after dinner can be some activity. There is no compulsion that you must be first to watch GoT right along your friends. All that silly competition dies out. Now a days we watch many movies and TV series many years after they have been released and we absolutely don't feel as if we missed out by not watching right when they came out. Entertainment exists for us instead of other way around. I pity parents who still haven't figured this out and have actual TV sets in their houses.

deckarep 9y ago

Every time someone is like: “what? You don’t have cable you weird person you!” This is why. Got tired of paying a premium for commercials and over the years the commercial breaks got longer, and longer and longer. Hey cable subscribers...go ahead and channel surf and take some stats on how often a commercial is playing as you iterate through each channel. It’s ridiculous. Netflix is alright with me.

__david__ 9y ago
I'm a cable subscriber. I haven't watched an ad in nearly 20 years. DVRs solved the ad problem years and years go. (don't get me wrong—Netflix is great, too. And also torrents. Not even thinking about ads is better than fast forwarding through them).
- deckarep 9y ago
  I used to have a DVR and it did help of course. But I was never fond of having to pay the rental fees of the unit for this feature. True it is still better.

real-hacker 9y ago

Tubi TV takes the opposite direction, free subscription + ads. Which model do you think most people will prefer?

znpy 9y ago

Okay so here i am, jumping on the "look at me, no tv in more than five years!" train. I don't even own a tv. When i visit my parents and watch tv, quite frankly, it's 95% trash + 5% stuff i have already seen on the Internet (but badly translated in my native language).

cslarson 9y ago

Took the family to see a kids movie yesterday. There was an like 30 minutes of ads at the beginning. I don't think they realise how jarring that is and how that's not something I want my kids to experience. Will reconsider going next time.

isostatic 9y ago
Normally films are Adverts-Trailers-Film The trick is to arrive near the start of the trailers - they are adverts, but personally I think they add to the cinema experience, as does overpriced popcorn. The adverts though should be destroyed - just add 50p to the ticket, it's not going to change anyone's decision of whether to go or not.

qwerty456127 9y ago

Can't service providers just offer completely ad-free experience to those willing to pay the price that would make this kind of subscriptions commercially viable?

halamadrid 9y ago

So we checked into a hotel today and my 4 year old decided to try TV for the first time. His was initially frustrated with the time it took for him to find a channel he thought he would like (Disney Junior). He had to hop through a ton of channels and missed a few kid friendly channels as Ads were playing on them. Finally he found Disney Junior, and then the whole ad thing started. He was so frustrated with all the ad breaks, he switched off the TV. Enough said.

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dba7dba 9y ago

Someone told me a conversation he happened to overhear in a restaurant in LA. This was like 10+ years ago. He was having lunch at a restaurant and next to him were 2 gentlemen working in the TV industry. The conversation was about how the TV station/channel decided to increase ad time and this forced them to re-edit all TV shows to be shorter. One negative aspect of netflix is that my kids just endlessly scroll through show after show, but doesn't actually watch it. And when they do, they rarely finish it (meaning really enjoy or get into the show). It's like when you don't really enjoy food when you have too much of it easily accessible. So this new year, I'm even cutting netflix streaming service. Will see how that goes.

partycoder 9y ago

TV is destined to disappear. Alvin Toffler predicted it: mass produced solutions are not a thing in the post industrial age.

hendler 9y ago

The exception has been the emergence of YouTube content which is not a normal advertisement but designed to hold you or your children's attention. This six year old child is making millions of dollars: http://wgntv.com/2017/12/11/this-6-year-old-is-making-millions-reviewing-toys-on-youtube/ http://wgntv.com/2017/12/11/this-6-year-old-is-making-millio...

kccqzy 9y ago

> The average child watches 2.68 hours of television a day, or almost 980 hours a year That’s unusual. And it just reminds me of how different other people’s lives could be. When I grew up, no one in the family liked watching television. I still remember buying DVDs and watching those, but just not regular television programming.

thomastjeffery 9y ago
That's the confusing thing about averages. My experience was on the other end of the spectrum: I watched TV quite a lot more growing up. I think it would be more helpful to have a min max and mode than a mean.
- isostatic 9y ago
  Median too. On average both Bill Gates, you and I are billionaires.

alistproducer2 9y ago

My kids are netflix babies and when I gave them a toys r us catalog to look through to pick Christmas gifts out of they looked at it for 2 minutes, threw it aside and didn't ask for anything. Without commercials, they have no sense that they should even want the crap in a toy catalog. Big difference from when I was growing up.

totalZero 9y ago
Do they cry when you tell them spoilers? On a serious note, I'm not sure how you managed to pull this off as a parent. Two weeks ago I saw a young child of Asian tourist parents in the streets of Manhattan, standing in front of a major chain drugstore and excitedly flagging down the parents to bring attention to a prominently displayed colorful plastic dump truck placed in the window display, precisely at baby level. I want to figure out how to keep my future kids from doing that.
mbid 9y ago
> My kids are netflix babies The times we live in...
isostatic 9y ago
My kids are the same. They still want the various go jetters and paw patrol toys because that's the actual program.

jwatte 9y ago

Add YouTube red (free with Google play music) for the family, and some NPR presets on the radio, and the worst you'll hear are the terrible underwriting credits... It's been great!

montrose 9y ago

Our kids only watch Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube. A couple days ago, my 8 year old son asked me what Pepsi was. I consider that a good sign.

fulafel 9y ago

Quality public broadcasting solved this in Europe a while ago.

hoppelhase 9y ago

Imagine how our surroundings would look like if there were absolutely no ads.

Skye 9y ago

Meanwhile in the UK... there tends to be a lot less advertisements on TV, and when shows from the US are played, there are points where they left room for an ad-break, which isn't used. For the ultimate in no-advertising, you just watch a BBC channel. Apparently there is a limit of 9 minutes of advertising per hour according to this document from the regulator... https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-codes/code-tv-advertising/regulation-ad-minutage https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-co...

timthorn 9y ago
And on the main channels, the limit is 7 mins/hour - these are averages across the day, but there are further restrictions for children's programming, including that programmes of 30 mins or less cannot be interrupted by adverts.
pizzapill 9y ago
Afaik most countries in Europe have at least a couple of TV stations that are really restricted when it comes to commercials. Usually supported by the government and/or citizens. I remember that we could receive government funded Austrian ORF 1 in Germany. They usually showed the same movie as other German commercial TV stations at the same time but without ads. Saving around 1 hour per movie.
- Faark 9y ago
  There also is (was?) a daily limit on advertising for german stations, even commercial. Thus barely any ads at night. Some shows even had to be classified as add due to heavy product placement, so we barely got any other adds that day.
isostatic 9y ago
My kids know about three channels "Bbc" (watching "do they know" at the moment) "Amazon" "Netflix" We went to the cinema to watch Paddington last month. They had barely any idea what the adverts before the film were.
- 9y ago

juicyfroot 9y ago

People still watch TV? You got to be kidding me. It has been 15 years of no TV. Isnt it child abuse to allow your kid to watch almost 2 weeks of their waking lives in a year on ads?

TheYcMaster 9y ago

Or Kodi only

samnwa 9y ago

But of course if you are a Hulu-only home you get 2X the ads and worst quality than TV.

tzakrajs 9y ago

Too bad the kids couldn't be saved from Netflix.

popman 9y ago

Is there any foolproof way of detecting if some video or audio is a commercial or not? A TV tuner that just replaces commercials with a placeholder image and a countdown to when the break is over would make broadcast TV just about tolerable for me. (time-shift, and skipping past commercials is a better solution, but there's some things you want to see live)

AkshayD08 9y ago

Children watch 2.6 hours if TV / day ? That sounds too much!