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During the Winter Olympics, I tried to figure out what I would have paid NBC for an ad-free experience (I watched as much as I could via CBC, but sometimes I ju

by js2 9y ago

During the Winter Olympics, I tried to figure out what I would have paid NBC for an ad-free experience (I watched as much as I could via CBC, but sometimes I just wanted to watch on TV without the VPN rigeramorale). I came up with $300. I would've paid NBC $300 for two weeks of ad-free Olympics coverage.

maxerickson 9y ago
You think there are 3 or 4 million other households that would set the same price? (they had $900 million+ in ad revenue) It'd be a fun gimmick if they could figure out a way to auction ad free broadcasts to their viewers.
- js2 9y ago
  Interesting, probably not. The streaming app was almost rage inducing though. Seeing periodic commercials in and of itself wouldn't be that bad. But NBC seemed to have more ad slots than ads, because I kept seeing the same dumb 3 or 4 ads over and over, and many weren't even relevant. There was a Comcast ad that made no sense to show me. I'm not in a Comcast market. Worse, you basically couldn't forward through an event since it would stop you at an "ad point" and make you watch that ad. You could then forward to the next "ad point" and have to sit through that one. And if you skipped backwards to re-watch something to earlier than the "ad point", it would show the ads again. By contrast, CBC basically shows you 90 seconds of ads up front, then lets you watch the rest of the event including skipping around ad free. The NBC app could have used logic like, for every X minutes of program time you watch, you have to watch Y minutes of ads. That would have been okay. But no, the NBC app was basically "we're going to force you to watch these ads" like that episode of Black Mirror. And BTW, this was for the paid NBC networks as I had to pickup a Sony Vue account to watch anything not on the main network. For the main network, I recorded everything on my Tablo from OTA where I could skip around as much as I wanted.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    Comcast owns NBC so will be a common filler ad on NBC whether it makes sense or not.

by js2 9y ago

maxerickson 9y ago

You think there are 3 or 4 million other households that would set the same price? (they had $900 million+ in ad revenue) It'd be a fun gimmick if they could figure out a way to auction ad free broadcasts to their viewers.

js2 9y ago
Interesting, probably not. The streaming app was almost rage inducing though. Seeing periodic commercials in and of itself wouldn't be that bad. But NBC seemed to have more ad slots than ads, because I kept seeing the same dumb 3 or 4 ads over and over, and many weren't even relevant. There was a Comcast ad that made no sense to show me. I'm not in a Comcast market. Worse, you basically couldn't forward through an event since it would stop you at an "ad point" and make you watch that ad. You could then forward to the next "ad point" and have to sit through that one. And if you skipped backwards to re-watch something to earlier than the "ad point", it would show the ads again. By contrast, CBC basically shows you 90 seconds of ads up front, then lets you watch the rest of the event including skipping around ad free. The NBC app could have used logic like, for every X minutes of program time you watch, you have to watch Y minutes of ads. That would have been okay. But no, the NBC app was basically "we're going to force you to watch these ads" like that episode of Black Mirror. And BTW, this was for the paid NBC networks as I had to pickup a Sony Vue account to watch anything not on the main network. For the main network, I recorded everything on my Tablo from OTA where I could skip around as much as I wanted.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Comcast owns NBC so will be a common filler ad on NBC whether it makes sense or not.