5 ms·

It's really incredible how the average American home spends some $116/mo for television[1], and is still subjected to 16 minutes of advertisements per hour of e

It's really incredible how the average American home spends some $116/mo for television[1], and is still subjected to 16 minutes of advertisements per hour of entertainment. [1] https://www.doxo.com/insights/united-states-of-bill-pay-doxoinsights-cable--internet-report/ https://www.doxo.com/insights/united-states-of-bill-pay-doxo...

Covzire 5y ago
I haven't had cable for about 15 years now, and commercials are a big reason. But it's not even just the commercials, I just wasn't interested in the six hundreth special on Nostradamus or aliens on the history channel, or shows purportedly about space exploration that are 50% CGI and 49% speculation masquerading as observations or any kind of "reality shows". Yes and nothing makes me feel like my brain cells are committing suicide faster than watching commercials for cars, pills or insurance made by some of the least funny and stupidest people in the business. Then there are the travel or cooking shows which basically take 5 minutes of interesting content and smash it with a proverbial hammer into a 30 or 60 minute show.
- seanp2k2 5y ago
  Yep; either show me ads and give me the content for free, or (ideally give me the option) let me pay and don’t show ads. If product people / The MBAs at a company think that there should still be ads on the paid version, consider what those are worth. I haven’t seen anyone try it, but consider a model of three options: 1. Free with lots of ads, 2. Paid but cheap with less ads, 3. Most costly but no ads. Basically, I always want an option to pay whatever a company thinks it’s worth to remove all ads. If there’s really good content on offer, people will pay. Ads make any content look sleazy. Even the best YouTube channels shilling for random products gets lame and old real quick. Please let people who are willing to do so pay the true cost of the content to remove all ads.
  - seneca 5y ago
    > I haven’t seen anyone try it, but consider a model of three options: 1. Free with lots of ads, 2. Paid but cheap with less ads, 3. Most costly but no ads. This is essentially what Amazon does (did?) with their Fire tablets, excluding the completely free tier. There is an ad subsidized version and a more expensive ad free version of the same hardware.
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    I would guess that there's a vicious cycle at play here. The more someone is willing to pay to avoid ads, the deeper their pockets are, the more valuable they are as a consumer, the more money a company is willing to pay to advertise to them.
- likeabbas 5y ago
  I must be in the minority here, but Ancient Aliens is one of my favorite tv shows. It has some of the funniest, most outlandish, content I’ve ever seen.
- 8ytecoder 5y ago
  It used to be a uniquely American thing. The Discovery and Nat Geo channels in my home country used to be truly educational. (I don't know/think it's the case anymore, sadly.)
harpersealtako 5y ago
>$116/mo for television The link you posted says that's cable and internet, not television.
- fermentation 5y ago
  I can definitely believe that. I spend about $100 in the PNW just for gigabit Internet in my apartment (which is really only about 400mbps, thanks Wave!)
- seanp2k2 5y ago
  Some sports packages are >$50/month on their own, and lots of people love their sports.
- treesknees 5y ago
  Do you just watch DVDs and use an OTA antenna?
- rhino369 5y ago
  And at least for Comcast and Fios, the marginal cost to add a basic cable package is more like 30-40 bucks. I.e., if you went from just internet to internet and TV it only adds 30-40 bucks. That's a better reflect of what you are really paying for the TV aspect.
pizza 5y ago
It really feels like more than 16.. you know, just the other day I realized my Roku TV was analyzing the video stream of what I was watching, and adding its own ads on top of the output of my Shield. Wonder if it would be possible to jailbreak the Roku, patch the firmware so that it recognized and blocked ads instead..
- seanp2k2 5y ago
  Possible? Certainly. Worth the time? Likely not. Just get a different device that respects your privacy or one that is more open to letting you control it how you see fit.
mumblemumble 5y ago
I suppose it's the price of convenience? For my part, I pay a lot less for just Internet, borrow DVDs from the public library, and occasionally pay a la carte to stream specific shows I particularly want to watch. It's definitely less expensive in the long run, but my real motivation is that I really hate ads, enough so that I'm willing to put up with lower definition (the library doesn't do as much in the way of blu-ray), waitlists for popular shows, and having to actually plan ahead when deciding what to watch. I'm very, very aware, though, that choosing to do it this way makes me an unusual case. And I'm pretty sure it's not because I've discovered some lifehack that nobody else is clever enough to know about. No, it's because I'm grumpy and easy to irritate, and because, as someone with objectively poor taste in entertainment, I genuinely don't give a damn about keeping up with Star Wars or Game of Thrones or whatever. I'm perfectly satisfied with ancient crusty stuff like Murder, She Wrote. Ads seem to do a good job of riding a very fine line. There's no need to care about what people will gripe about; people who gripe on the Internet are just a vocal minority, and realistically, as paying customers, they aren't even a problem, in and of themselves. All they've really got to do is be ever so slightly less annoying, to the majority of people, than any of the alternatives.
- munk-a 5y ago
  I don't know if it's fair to describe cable TV as convenience. Netflix costs about a tenth as much as cable TV (though it does require Internet so if you'd otherwise not have Internet maybe bump it up to half the cost) and provides a generally better service. People are paying out of laziness.
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    The thing about Netflix is that it's become very homogenous. If you don't like the kind algorithmically-optimized stuff that the people who produce Netflix Original Series are doing, then it's good for about as much time as it takes to finish binging the first couple Star Trek series and The Great British Baking Show, and then you're just sort of done with it.
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    Live sports are still an enormous draw to cable tv and (legal) ways to get them otherwise are convoluted and still pricey anyways.
tomjen3 5y ago
It isn't just spending the money. I installed a adblocker that stops commercials on youtube and sponsorblock, which skips the sponsored segments and everything becomes so much calmer. Like I can focus on whatever the video is about, but there is also just less stress - and yes I normally skip over both segments but even that isn't close to the same. Of course we should remember that things sponsored by ads aren't free, we are expected to pay for the product advertised, the cost of the marketing campaign on both sides and it destroys the quality of the product. So in reality the ads are much more expensive.
oliwarner 5y ago
> 16 minutes of advertisements per hour of entertainment It's worse than that. It's 16 minutes per 44 minutes entertainment. And much of that is full of embedded marketing.

Covzire 5y ago

I haven't had cable for about 15 years now, and commercials are a big reason. But it's not even just the commercials, I just wasn't interested in the six hundreth special on Nostradamus or aliens on the history channel, or shows purportedly about space exploration that are 50% CGI and 49% speculation masquerading as observations or any kind of "reality shows". Yes and nothing makes me feel like my brain cells are committing suicide faster than watching commercials for cars, pills or insurance made by some of the least funny and stupidest people in the business. Then there are the travel or cooking shows which basically take 5 minutes of interesting content and smash it with a proverbial hammer into a 30 or 60 minute show.

seanp2k2 5y ago
Yep; either show me ads and give me the content for free, or (ideally give me the option) let me pay and don’t show ads. If product people / The MBAs at a company think that there should still be ads on the paid version, consider what those are worth. I haven’t seen anyone try it, but consider a model of three options: 1. Free with lots of ads, 2. Paid but cheap with less ads, 3. Most costly but no ads. Basically, I always want an option to pay whatever a company thinks it’s worth to remove all ads. If there’s really good content on offer, people will pay. Ads make any content look sleazy. Even the best YouTube channels shilling for random products gets lame and old real quick. Please let people who are willing to do so pay the true cost of the content to remove all ads.
- seneca 5y ago
  > I haven’t seen anyone try it, but consider a model of three options: 1. Free with lots of ads, 2. Paid but cheap with less ads, 3. Most costly but no ads. This is essentially what Amazon does (did?) with their Fire tablets, excluding the completely free tier. There is an ad subsidized version and a more expensive ad free version of the same hardware.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  I would guess that there's a vicious cycle at play here. The more someone is willing to pay to avoid ads, the deeper their pockets are, the more valuable they are as a consumer, the more money a company is willing to pay to advertise to them.
likeabbas 5y ago
I must be in the minority here, but Ancient Aliens is one of my favorite tv shows. It has some of the funniest, most outlandish, content I’ve ever seen.
8ytecoder 5y ago
It used to be a uniquely American thing. The Discovery and Nat Geo channels in my home country used to be truly educational. (I don't know/think it's the case anymore, sadly.)

harpersealtako 5y ago

>$116/mo for television The link you posted says that's cable and internet, not television.

fermentation 5y ago
I can definitely believe that. I spend about $100 in the PNW just for gigabit Internet in my apartment (which is really only about 400mbps, thanks Wave!)
seanp2k2 5y ago
Some sports packages are >$50/month on their own, and lots of people love their sports.
treesknees 5y ago
Do you just watch DVDs and use an OTA antenna?
rhino369 5y ago
And at least for Comcast and Fios, the marginal cost to add a basic cable package is more like 30-40 bucks. I.e., if you went from just internet to internet and TV it only adds 30-40 bucks. That's a better reflect of what you are really paying for the TV aspect.

pizza 5y ago

It really feels like more than 16.. you know, just the other day I realized my Roku TV was analyzing the video stream of what I was watching, and adding its own ads on top of the output of my Shield. Wonder if it would be possible to jailbreak the Roku, patch the firmware so that it recognized and blocked ads instead..

seanp2k2 5y ago
Possible? Certainly. Worth the time? Likely not. Just get a different device that respects your privacy or one that is more open to letting you control it how you see fit.

mumblemumble 5y ago

I suppose it's the price of convenience? For my part, I pay a lot less for just Internet, borrow DVDs from the public library, and occasionally pay a la carte to stream specific shows I particularly want to watch. It's definitely less expensive in the long run, but my real motivation is that I really hate ads, enough so that I'm willing to put up with lower definition (the library doesn't do as much in the way of blu-ray), waitlists for popular shows, and having to actually plan ahead when deciding what to watch. I'm very, very aware, though, that choosing to do it this way makes me an unusual case. And I'm pretty sure it's not because I've discovered some lifehack that nobody else is clever enough to know about. No, it's because I'm grumpy and easy to irritate, and because, as someone with objectively poor taste in entertainment, I genuinely don't give a damn about keeping up with Star Wars or Game of Thrones or whatever. I'm perfectly satisfied with ancient crusty stuff like Murder, She Wrote. Ads seem to do a good job of riding a very fine line. There's no need to care about what people will gripe about; people who gripe on the Internet are just a vocal minority, and realistically, as paying customers, they aren't even a problem, in and of themselves. All they've really got to do is be ever so slightly less annoying, to the majority of people, than any of the alternatives.

munk-a 5y ago
I don't know if it's fair to describe cable TV as convenience. Netflix costs about a tenth as much as cable TV (though it does require Internet so if you'd otherwise not have Internet maybe bump it up to half the cost) and provides a generally better service. People are paying out of laziness.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  The thing about Netflix is that it's become very homogenous. If you don't like the kind algorithmically-optimized stuff that the people who produce Netflix Original Series are doing, then it's good for about as much time as it takes to finish binging the first couple Star Trek series and The Great British Baking Show, and then you're just sort of done with it.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  Live sports are still an enormous draw to cable tv and (legal) ways to get them otherwise are convoluted and still pricey anyways.

tomjen3 5y ago

It isn't just spending the money. I installed a adblocker that stops commercials on youtube and sponsorblock, which skips the sponsored segments and everything becomes so much calmer. Like I can focus on whatever the video is about, but there is also just less stress - and yes I normally skip over both segments but even that isn't close to the same. Of course we should remember that things sponsored by ads aren't free, we are expected to pay for the product advertised, the cost of the marketing campaign on both sides and it destroys the quality of the product. So in reality the ads are much more expensive.

oliwarner 5y ago

> 16 minutes of advertisements per hour of entertainment It's worse than that. It's 16 minutes per 44 minutes entertainment. And much of that is full of embedded marketing.