R.I.P. Scout26
I figure I'm not paying YouTube for their service, they need to make money somehow, same with over the air TV. Ads pay the bills.I wonder what the real cost (to the consumer) of cable TV or streaming services would be without advertising.
I think the longest unskippable commercial I've ever run across is 30 seconds. Where are you finding these minutes-long unskippables? Could be be something in your adware blocker that's keeping the YouTube player from popping up the Skip radio button?Brad
I wonder what the real cost (to the consumer) of cable TV or streaming services would be without advertising.
I'd be curious as well. As an old guy, I remember when there was no such thing as commercials on cable, which was one of the selling points for paying for a service. If you wanted free TV, you used an antenna and lived with commercials. If you were paying for TV, that was in lieu of commercials. Now it's like $150 for an average cable or sat account, and it's nothing but commercials. As for youtube commercials. I occasionally get the "skip in 15 seconds" commercials on my phone, but I get zero commercials on my main computer. I don't know if it's adblock or what.
Here's one with three minutes of non-skip commericals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU4Q-1ai-xs The first (and longer) one was for masterclass.com, and the second was for a stock picker. I've been seeing a lot of masterclass commercials; perhaps they are following me.
My memory of cable goes back to 1981 when my parents had it for a couple years. I remember commercials on about every channel except for the premium channels like HBO. My parents for rid of cable when it went from $18 to $20 a month, said it was too expensive.
No commercials for me, went right to a short haired woman with an Italian accent.
Turner, AMC, MTV, and a host of others were commercial free when they started. Some did commercials in between shows or movies, but not commercials every 12 minutes like broadcast TV.
The first MTV commercial starts just over 10 minutes into the hour. It's for "The Bulk," a 3-ring binder. The second ad is for Superman II, "the most exciting movie event of our time." The third ad is for Dolby noise reduction. Then you'll be treated to a vintage Rod Stewart video in which he wears some very unfortunate trousers. The much-better "You Better You Bet" then puts us all in a better mood.
So there are these new services that allow you to watch TV in your home without commercials. You do have to pay for them, but they tend to be much cheaper than cable each, and you can have three or four "channels" for less then you would pay for cable, there by saving money.No commercials at all. At most there will be previews for other shows. As an added bonus there are no schedules. You can just turn on the TV and watch whatever you want, whenever you want. Even pause and rewind.You guys with cable should check them out.
Then I guess MTV did, but I sure don't remember them, so there must not have been many. 1981 article from the NYT on the subject:https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-invaded-by-commercials.htmlPlus I still insist that if I have to pay for TV, I shouldn't be bombarded by ads, at least to the point we are now. Ads between shows, like they do on all kraut TV, are okay I guess, but when I was still watching Walking Dead, I was getting pretty perturbed by commercials literally every 5 minutes on a channel I was paying for.
I remember when I was a TV engineer in '79 and '80, commercial breaks were pretty much two minutes long, with four 30 second ads. Sometimes they stretched between 2:15 and 2:30 if there was a station ID or a PSA that had to be aired. I miss those days.It's fast approaching a point where program time and ad time in a given hour will be the same.
