Current Events > How do cable packages still justify commercials?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Commercials are for free services. If I pay, I shouldnt have my program interrupted so you can try to sell me something or play an annoying song or something.

Several years ago, there was a serious political sit down about regulating the volume that commercials were allowed to play, and both sides agreed that commercials were exponentially louder than the program. They passed rules and laws regulating it and nothing changed.

You can attempt to report it to the FCC if a commercial is too loud, but the form is so meticulous that it may as well just say not to even try. You need to know the exact time and date, the exact channel, the exact program that was on, the exact network, and info on the actual commercial itself. Basically, nobody is going to remember that, and they dont have any intent on actually punishing companies who make loud advertisements.

Tubi is free and theres like three thirty second commercials for a two hour movie. On cable, a two hour movie has thirty minutes of commercials.

Capitalism.

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The loudness thing is bullshit. They got away with it by saying that the commercials are no louder than the TV shows. Which is technically true, but in such a garbage way. Say you're watching an action movie and there's an explosion that's a loudness of 10. It only lasts a second or two, then it goes back to 3 for dialogue or whatever. Commercials aren't technically louder than the loudest part of the TV shows, but they're a 10 for the entire duration of the commercial. That's how they get away with it. "People are wrong, our commercials aren't any louder.. wink."

It's crazy that it's still a huge issue when people have so many other options available. I see it starting to creep into other stuff though. I had Prime Video for a while, and not only did most of the stuff require a separate subscription service to even view, they still managed to stick unskippable ads in there.

Tubi is pretty legit. They fuck me up with ads sometimes (seems random honestly) but it's a free service so I honestly can't complain at all. It's usually only one ad per program.

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Not gonna lie, I get a little triggered every time my phone puts up some add....that isn't, at least from them.

But ya...

Cheater87 posted...

Capitalism.

The only thing this country cares about is profit.
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Cheater87 posted...

Capitalism.

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Just one of the reasons I haven't watched live TV in like a decade.

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Ultima Dragon posted...

The loudness thing is bullshit. They got away with it by saying that the commercials are no louder than the TV shows. Which is technically true, but in such a garbage way. Say you're watching an action movie and there's an explosion that's a loudness of 10. It only lasts a second or two, then it goes back to 3 for dialogue or whatever. Commercials aren't technically louder than the loudest part of the TV shows, but they're a 10 for the entire duration of the commercial. That's how they get away with it. "People are wrong, our commercials aren't any louder.. wink."

It's crazy that it's still a huge issue when people have so many other options available. I see it starting to creep into other stuff though. I had Prime Video for a while, and not only did most of the stuff require a separate subscription service to even view, they still managed to stick unskippable ads in there.

Tubi is pretty legit. They fuck me up with ads sometimes (seems random honestly) but it's a free service so I honestly can't complain at all. It's usually only one ad per program.

Amazon Prime has some good stuff, but I wouldnt pay for it solely as a streaming service. They honestly do try to make you pay for WAY too much stuff. If a free movie becomes not free in any other streaming service, Amazon will instantly make you pay for it. I actually watched a movie the other day and it was free. When the movie finished playing, the only option to watch was rent/buy (aka pay).

Tubi is one of my favorites because its completely free and doesnt even try to charge you. If there three minutes of commercials in my FREE program, then its fine. My main issue with Tubi is not marking foreign films.

kewldude475 posted...

The networks wanna get paid too, not just the cable companies, that's why commercials exist. What a strange question.

But the cable companies are paying the networks for the right to carry them. That's why every time you turn around some conglomorate like Viacom's bitching that they're going to pull their channels from a major provider because they want more money and the cable provider doesn't want to pay it.

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they experimented with it, not enough people complained, and now they're established. good luck getting rid of them now.

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kewldude475 posted...

The networks wanna get paid too, not just the cable companies, that's why commercials exist. What a strange question.

The networks are not really necessary when you think about it. Im not watching a show on History because I want to support the History Channel. Im watching it because its interesting.

Think about Top Gear on BBC. The network decided to fire one of the hosts and when the other two hosts left with him, the fans followed them to their new show on Amazon. Now the only show that BBC America has that people watch is Dr Who. The flagship show left the network and now no one watches the network.

So why are networks even important?

commercials have absolutely nothing to do with how much money you are paying your cable provider, that is more for the networks. a media company (like Disney, Viacom, etc) owns a bunch of channels, they sell a package of channels to your ISP, and then your ISP has to pay that bill. bigger ISPs will pay less because of their userbase, smaller ISPs will have to do collective bargaining to get a competitive price on cable packages, and then they have to pass this cost over to consumers.

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have you noticed premium channels like HBO, Stars, etc dont have commercials, but are also like $10+/month instead of part of your cable package?

thats why. TV is expensive to make, and the pennies that the individual networks get from your cable bill dont cover it

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Well you see as an American consumer you don't have rights so fuck you and all other consumers, looks like it's time for a commercial break.

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DVR exists. Nobody ever needs to watch commercials anymore unless they want to

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They whine to the government about streaming services

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kewldude475 posted...

Because the cable/satellite TV companies themselves are not gonna run an entire network with the servers, sattelites, databases, networks etc that the networks are comprised of.

I thought it was more about programming than logistics

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TheGoldenEel posted...

have you noticed premium channels like HBO, Stars, etc dont have commercials, but are also like $10+/month instead of part of your cable package?

thats why. TV is expensive to make, and the pennies that the individual networks get from your cable bill dont cover it

However...they're starting to sneak them in. I pay extra for NFL Redzone, which promotes itself for no commercials, and yet theres the commercials, taking up a third or half of the screen of the sometimes. That's bullshit.