In your face advertising

Like most people, I feel we’re living in the most over saturated environments (home, work, TV, magazines, movies, radio, roadside and fashion). One of the areas where American’s have gone to escape has been the TV but with the invent of the DVR we’ve all been able to knock out one of the major annoyances of TV (besides the TERRIBLE programing), the commercials. I don’t even watch TV live any more if at all, so I just record the shows of interest and pass through the commercials or delete the whole show if it’s crap.

With one of the only reality shows I’ve watched, Top Chef, the product placement every week within the show is out of control. Still and hold shots on product, announcements of product focus and even forcing the cheftestants to cook with specific products (Uncle Bens give me a fucking break).

TBS has just introduced what I had suspected would happen but worse… commercials DURING the show – Here’s and example where they actually have the character “walk” on to the screen and pause the show to pitch their product. It’s directly focused to get eyeballs on the DVR crowd and it does not make me happy.

For the first time, I’ve made a complaint to a cable network but in reality, they won’t do anything, so I’ll have to just stop watching TBS. Their loss. Check out the commercial break here:

TV is dead

Well, maybe not that extreme… but the TV as we know it is certainly dying out. Just look at the options for viewers now: OnDemand to request your content from your TV provider when you want to watch it, DVR/Tivo to watch content when ever you want, pause live tv and skip the commercials, Netflix which offers movies to your home (either by mail and now over the internet on demand) with out having to leave the house and now Sling Box so viewers can watch content at anytime of the day, in any location.

The media is changing and as more content is provided online, provided users can view this with appropriate bandwidth speeds, viewership through traditional cable providers will continue to change and dwindle. This story points this out via a survey of online video watchers and their corresponding TV habits, and shows that boob tube watching is on the decline among those that are watching videos on line.

From personal experience, it’s the networks that will kill themselves and not any underlining technology or company that will “better” the viewing experience on line. HDTV has come along at the right time to resurrect some confidence in viewing television, however, if the networks continue to produce lame and boring content, they will implode on themselves as views find new sources for entertainment.

When internet streaming video can be viewed in HD on large screen monitors, THEN we’ll see TV networks get closer to that flatline____________________________