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" Immediately after that I was disgusted that Bloomberg.com wanted me to watch an ad" Are you suggesting that they should have some automatic kill switch imple
by larrys 14y ago
" Immediately after that I was disgusted that Bloomberg.com wanted me to watch an ad"
Are you suggesting that they should have some automatic kill switch implemented in advance which they can hit to show sensitivity? [1] Networks also run commercials to make money it's part of how they can afford to do what they do. Of course I've seen cases where networks don't run commercials on rare occasions.
[1] And why do they need to do this? Are you willing to pay for access instead so they don't have to run any advertising?
- bmelton 14y agoNo, I'm not, and obviously they have every right to. At just seemed crass at the moment. I admit that I was just having an overly emotional response at the time and do not fault them for it whatsoever.
- joahua 14y agoI work for a large media organization and we have the ability to suspend advertising in response to crisis events. I'd assume other major outlets would have equivalent capabilities. At the end of the day advertisers don't want to be associated with certain stories, and there's a public good imperative that drives rapid, open access in these tragic situations that overrides commercial interest even if that were of concern.
- anigbrowl 14y agoThey're not running commercials on TV right now, but I agree that it's unrealistic to expect websites to just switch into non-commercial mode on the fly.
- larrys 14y agoWhat's interesting though is that events like this are in fact an advertisement for TV itself and a show of value which keep people needing to have TV access. So even if they don't run advertising they also might need to do (to keep their license at least the broadcast networks) a certain amount of public good. So they build good will as the place to go when some major event has happened and you are looking for every morsel of information or discussion about it.