A Year After Ban On Loud TV Commercials: Has It Worked? 288
netbuzz writes "It's been a year since the FCC implemented the CALM Act, a law that prohibits broadcasters from blasting TV commercials at volumes louder than the programming. Whether the ban has worked or not depends on who you ask. The FCC notes that formal complaints about overly loud commercials are on the decline in recent months, but those complaints have totaled more than 20,000 over the past year."
loud quiet loud quiet (Score:3, Interesting)
It says that on average they must be the same audio level as the programming.
So, they yell, then there is a pause and then someone else yells at you.
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I'm guessing it says that on average they must be the same audio level as the programming.
FTFY.
Re:loud quiet loud quiet (Score:5, Interesting)
What I'm noticing lately is that they'll mix the commercial audio "creatively" to increase its effective volume. I'll be watching a show on cable with 5.1 audio (so, mostly dialogue out of the center speaker), then have a commercial come on and pipe all its audio through both front speakers, at the "maximum" volume. The levels are probably about the same, but it still gets that "attention jolt" from the perceived increase in volume.
The other annoying trend is the use of excessive "wub wub" (bass) in ad music. Result is the same, increased distraction without "excessive" volume.
Re:loud quiet loud quiet (Score:4, Funny)
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It is, at least, original.
Tried listening to it recently, it's getting a bit ear bleeding awful.
I liked it when it had some semblance of dub still in it:
https://soundcloud.com/james-neave/dj-loki-ready-for-war [soundcloud.com]
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Whoops, that don't work no more:
https://soundcloud.com/roboj1m/dj-loki-ready-for-war [soundcloud.com]
Re:loud quiet loud quiet (Score:4, Interesting)
Another skummy thing I have seen on at least a few instances, a show will reach some climatic scene with important dialog, and before the main character's voice even trails offTOYOTA SAVING!
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During cooking competition shows, which I do find interesting, they always cut to commercials before announcing the winner. At that point I exclaim, "and the winner is... Commercial Break!".
Tell me again what I should be buying...
Re:loud quiet loud quiet (Score:4, Funny)
A DVR?
What do I win?
Re:loud quiet loud quiet (Score:4, Funny)
The problem could easily be solved by, instead of regulating the volume levels, regulating that the media companies cannot own the DVR companies.
The DVR companies would then compete on features, one of which being commercial skip. If the commercials are kind enough to make themselves easily identifiable by noticeably higher volume, the commercial skip feature of your typical DVR will be happy to use that data to accurately slice them out.
The war ends with commercials being better integrated with the content, either through product placement or through matching the style of the content they are inserted in.
That is, as long as the DVR producers are ideologically and financially separate from the companies selling the ads....
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That's totally impossible to do in reality. Making it so the media companies can't own the DVR companies would require non-corrupt government regulation, which is impossible in the USA. That's like asking for financial regulation that doesn't reward big finance companies for failure, and prevents them from gambling banking deposits on housing.
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Maybe if you spent less time making apathetic comments on /. and more time working to change things, it wouldn't be impossible anymore. The fact is that grass roots organizing works, and we've seen it work. Making cynical, apathetic comments also works, but the effect is has is to dissuade people from doing what works.
No complaints here (Score:3, Insightful)
My analog TV died just before the switch to all-digital. I never replaced it. Been CALM ever since.
Re:No complaints here (Score:5, Funny)
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This isn't OT. Pretentious and smug, yes, but not OT.
It's not even pretentious and smug any more - watching everything on a computer/tablet is pretty mainstream these days, if still a smaller group than TV-watchers.
This year's "pretentious and smug" is "I don't even have a Facebook page". Yeah, we're bad about that one here.
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I though only hipsters had Facebook accounts these days, the kids are all on Instagram.
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Replying to myself, I don't have a Facebook account, but I am still on LiveJournal. Not sure what that makes me, I suspect it's too sad to be pretentious.
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Replying to myself, I don't have a Facebook account, but I am still on LiveJournal. Not sure what that makes me...
A Luddite?
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a hipster.
by your rules either my mom is a hipster or you're a hipster. a poll would probably agree that you're the hipster given those choices.
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How's this for smug.
I've not had broadcast/cable TV access since 1992 (I did have a VCR, then a DVD, now it's just Netflix or iTunes as a last resort -- commercial free rocks, always has always will).
I don't have a facebook account (nor My Space, nor Geocities). I mean, I did have one once upon a time but never used it, forgot both my login and my password, and don't care.
TV at negative extra charge (Score:2)
I've not had broadcast/cable TV access since 1992 (I did have a VCR, then a DVD, now it's just Netflix)
How do you get Netflix without cable? I thought cable ISPs were offering TV at negative [slashdot.org] extra charge [slashdot.org].
Re:TV at negative extra charge (Score:5, Interesting)
I just get the internet without TV.
The reason I gave up any sort of connection originally was because I'd wake up on a weekend, and then mindlessly flip channels never finding anything I wanted to watch, and feeling frustrated. I wasted a lot of beautiful days in this fashion. Kind of like how a heroin addict has to give it up completely, I decided I didn't want to waste my life watching stuff that was bad to begin with, and worse, interspersed with commercials.
So anyway, yes, I pay a little more for my internet but I only watch what I actually want to watch, and I watch it on my schedule. The few extra bucks are worth it to me because like any hardcore drug addict, if I had TV I'd watch it, hate it, waste time, feel frustrated, and not be able to stop. I'm simply not able to be a casual watcher -- even when I go to friends' places, if they have the TV on, I just get totally sucked in and mesmerized by it. For people who can use it reasonably, it makes a lot of sense to save a few bucks. For me though, that would be a disaster.
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DSL is the method my household uses. Admittedly only one high-quality or HDvideo can be crammed through at a time in addition to normal web/music-streaming/etc. traffic, but that isn't a problem for my particular family like it might be for others.
The issue has moved to the Internet (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The issue has moved to the Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop using the service then. Seriously. If something is that insanely bad then just go without.
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Stop using the service then. Seriously. If something is that insanely bad then just go without.
That's the equivalent of saying "TV commercials are annoying, so stop watching TV at all." That's not a solution to the actual problem, that's just hiding from it. I love the actual service, I just find the intrusiveness of the commercials unnecessary( and counterproductive to the purpose of commercials i.e. to convince me to buy a product)
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That's the equivalent of saying "TV commercials are annoying, so stop watching TV at all."
Yes, exactly like a completely valid and rational reaction, and a wholly achievable policy.
Its true: You don't have to use other peoples services unless you choose to ('cept for that whole health insurance mandate.)
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It helps in the fact that people with infectious diseases are being treated instead of just spreading it around until their immune system kicks it and then they have to go to the ER or die.
Health insurance != health care. And people who stay away from doctors till they crawl into an ER, probably will end up on Medicaid. Who will actually provide medical care to Medicaid recipients when the payments are well below market rates? I think in the long run it'll be those ERs who can't legally refuse to serve you. That's a rather big hamster wheel.
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That's the equivalent of saying "TV commercials are annoying, so stop watching TV at all." That's not a solution to the actual problem, that's just hiding from it. I love the actual service, I just find the intrusiveness of the commercials unnecessary( and counterproductive to the purpose of commercials i.e. to convince me to buy a product)
Well, given that not using the service actually does solve the problem of listening to loud commercials, I really don't see the point. "Hiding" works here.
$500 per month for cable (Score:2)
Re:The issue has moved to the Internet (Score:5, Interesting)
Except they can take your show off the air because of poor ratings.
Here's a secret - the ratings you see for public viewing by Neilsen is one of three numbers - Live, Live+Same Day, or Live+7 Day. But NONE of these numbers are used by stations when determining if a show is worthwhile to continue or to cancel.
Stations buy the C3 numbers - Commericals Only 3 Day numbers. The huge difference is the L/L+SD/L+7 numbers average the ratings minute-by-minute of the entire program. The C+3 numbers include the minute-by-minute ratings of the commercial breaks only - the programming ratings are NOT included. Basically the ratings stations use measure only the ads - the content is there to attract eyeballs to the ads.
Now, the only correlation is that C+3 ratings are generally very close (usually within 0.1 or 0.2) of the L+SD number.
So TV execs are perfectly happy to ignore piracy - because those people never generate revenue, they have no influence (remember the programming is there to attract eyeballs to see ads). If a show is heavily pirated, it depresses the ratings down and the show either gets its budget cut, or cancelled.
Of course, sometimes the shows still sell ads - in product placement. And it's been shown that even syndicated shows that they have product placement ads inserted into the scene - advertising stuff that wasn't even available when the show originally aired.
The other way is subscriber TV - like how Netflix, Amazon, etc are having their own TV series paid for by subscription dollars.
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lower you speaker volume.
Of course, this means there may be a market for speakers that detect the gain increase and auto lower the volume in the speaker box and not in the system.
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No, turn down the volume is a reasonable idea, because you can't control if the sound engineer is using a ton of compression to ramp up apparent volume.
Already had one set of laptop speakers blown by it.
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True Libertarians don't think the government should be able to regulate the frequency spectrum either, and that anyone who wants to should be able to broadcast anything they want, on any frequency they want, using any encoding they want, even if it's incompatible with everything else or even jams someone else's broadcast.
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Anyone who says "I need the government to turn down the volume" to this issue needs to be publicly slapped up and down the main street in their town.
You'd be the first asshole to call the cops if I played a loud radio in front of your house.
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Spotify is the worst culprit, since it PAUSES the commercial if you lower your system volume.
I guess the physical knob on my speakers would be getting more of a workout then. Does it also do that in the web player [spotify.com] (which they apparently don't show the link to on Windows)?
Re:The issue has moved to the Internet (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if the advertisers realize that a commercial on streaming is not the same as a commercial on TV. That a three minute break on TV is ok. After all, if one is watching live TV one can wander around the house and still probably hear the TV, hear the commercial, and get back in time for the show, even if you have to do a live rewind. If you are watching recorded TV, most of the time you can fast forward which means that if a commercial is well made you are at least seeing the branding.
OTOH, since the ads on streaming has become more than a minute, I tend to mute and do something else, then back up the content if I miss something. I have heard TV executives screaming about how mad they are that they can only sell a fraction of advertising on streaming that they can on TV. But what is going to happen when advertisers realize that nobody is going to hand around for three minutes to watch the ads? Probably the same thing that happened to web sites when ad people realized that banner ads were being ignored.
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But what is going to happen when advertisers realize that nobody is going to hand around for three minutes to watch the ads? Probably the same thing that happened to web sites when ad people realized that banner ads were being ignored.
They'll start putting streaming ads in the middle of the page, correction songs?
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There's a technique I've noticed lately that seems aimed at defeating the fast-forward. In the middle of a string of five or six commercials, they insert a teaser for the program that's running, in the hope it will make you click "Play" and get ambushed by the next commercial.
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If I had mod points you would get one of my very few Insightful I give to ACs.
Re:The issue has moved to the Internet (Score:4, Insightful)
This is exactly the kind of issue that should be talked about. I use more than one streaming service and now know not to even bother trying Spotify. This is the market in action, make sure you tell as many people as you can.
Re: The issue has moved to the Internet (Score:2)
Well. At least I don't need to bother signing up with spotify now. Thanks.
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Adblocking and blackholing DNS names seems to work quite well. It's really rare for me to see an ad.
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The Spotify technique has always impressed me. Turning the volume too low is clearly the obvious solution to avoiding adverts, so they figured out how to reduce the number of customers who don't pay but still want to avoid the ads.
As a premium subscriber, I have managed to avoid the Spotify commercials for about two years - so it is possible to avoid them, at least in the UK. If only I had the option of paying £10 a month to cut adverts out of broadcast TV too.
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See, this is why I sit in a sound chair with analog inputs. Detect analog volume controls from input only, hah!
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Now that I torrent whatever I want to watch I don't care how much paid services suck.
Saving money by dumping cable makes me smile too.
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Spotify is the worst culprit, since it PAUSES the commercial if you lower your system volume.
What you need is audio output to a dedicated hardware amp and mixer that controls volume beyond the ability of any software running on the system to detect or interfere with it.
Probably directly proportional (Score:3)
To the amount of people now viewing broadcast TV. I woulkdfnt even consider viewing commercial TV realtime.
Cut the cord (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cut the cord (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, you're THAT GUY [theonion.com]!!
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Dude, cutting the cord is mainstream now. Well, for those that had cable (or satellite) in the first place.
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If you can't tell us, why did you reply?
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If you can't tell us, why did you reply?
Because not being able to tell us is a data point as well.
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Wrong Forum (Score:5, Insightful)
Most /.'s I image don't put up with Ads.
I sure as hell haven't noticed ad volume - of course, I gave up broadcast TV with ads since I got my first TiVo in 2003. DVRs all they way, but nowadays I don't even watch TV that's not Netflix - only the kiddos have time to watch TV in our house (how else would I have time to post on /. ?)
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Even with Tivo, it might take a few seconds to grab the remote and skip past those SOBs, and those few seconds, it can still blare at you.
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Even with Tivo, it might take a few seconds to grab the remote and skip past those SOBs, and those few seconds, it can still blare at you.
True, which is why I really like ad-free (or ad-between-shows) channels like Nick Jr. (which is pretty much the only broadcast tv that gets watched in our house - exception being the Dance reality shows). The worst is when it's an ad for some horror movie - do not like my kids being exposed to suggested gore and violence in a damn advert.
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Your still on tivo how very 90's of you. Automatic commercial skipping has been around forever now.
It's not the commercials. (Score:5, Insightful)
...it's the switch from national programming to regional or zip-code based advertising.
Program.
National commercial.
National commercial.
REGIONAL COMMERCIAL
Program.
My cable network screws this up regularly on Comedy Central. South Park goes into break, and then a BLARING LOUD commercial for a local product happens.
I skip most commercials that aren't on during live sports -- but I watch a lot of live sports, and they're guilty too.
I blame an idiot working in the Cox video operations center.
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Also, the local commercials are often SD, even on the cable company's own HD channels (which appear to be OTA-HD channels that have been transcoded, poorly, to a lower bitrate...).
Not only SD, but also they don't even deign to let my TV do the up-conversion, they've converted it for me to the "higher resolution" of HD. And often double-letterboxed, too, because apparently it's too expensive to up-convert all the way from 480 to 1080...
PRECISELY. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm an audio mixer for several of the national and regional networks. I deal almost exclusively in live sports, and I can tell you we are monitored to a ridiculous degree. We have averaging meters in our trucks (measured in LKFS), and the TOC monitors the show AND commercials (in DB on a 3s average). The TOC logs the averages with timecode and video thumbnails (for reference) and saves them, as they are the only defense they have against CALM complaints. The TOC is quick to notify us during the show if we're too loud or too quiet and the averaging is out of compliance.
The problem is, no one at home is smart enough to know the difference between a national spot, a local spot, and a spot that your cable provider inserts. So the complaint becomes "Fox Sports played a loud commercial!!1!!!1!!!one!!!" when the culprit is actually the Comcast head-end in Gary, Indiana.
Between the meters, the logging, and the constant monitoring, broadcast is jumping through a lot of hoops to be CALM compliant. But the networks don't have end-to-end control of their signal, and the end user is at the mercy of their local cable headend. Almost all of the problems you experience happen there. I can't tell you how many times we find a surround downmix where the announcers are almost inaudible, because a cable operator (and sometimes even a satellite provider) is doing an improper downmix, and the 4.1 channels are blowing out the center on the stereo feed. The networks try to QC as much as they can - most of the network offices have receivers for every cable and satellite (and FiOS, AT&T, etc) service they can get their hands on, and constantly monitor as many of them as they can - trying to find and fix the problems proactively rather than wait for the vague and usually inaccurate complaints to roll in from the FCC.
as expected (Score:2)
It didn't effect all commercial immediately. Commercial in run or already in contract and so on.
Streaming commercials are the worst (Score:2)
Crecendo (Score:4)
Here's what happens at my house at commercial breaks on Comcast: The program is fairly quiet, the beginning of the advertisement is just as quiet (CALM in effect) but in the last 10-20 seconds you sense that the volume is going up to just below a shout... then the show resumes and it's quiet again.
Yes (Score:2)
And now it's time to ban commercials featuring unrealistically beautified people.
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And now it's time to ban commercials featuring unrealistically beautified people.
How else will I find out how people can be unrealistically beautified?
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And now it's time to ban commercials featuring unrealistically beautified people.
You want to look at ugly people? Think of the hotness!
No teeth in the law (Score:4, Insightful)
The volumes haven't changed. Except it now seems like they start at a reasonable volume, then slowly increase in volume as the commercial continues. It could be that some people don't notice this. This also, no doubt, allows a commercial to still comply with the law since the ad's "average volume" can still be within the limits of the program it accompanies.
The complaint process itself is also extremely tedious. No person is going to want to key in all that information for every loud ad they have to suffer through.
In short: all the teeth were taken out of the law, so as usual we have another useless law that doesn't work and helps no one except those it is intended to control. Government by the people, my ass.
BTW, I'm seeing a lot of posts about how watching broadcast TV is "old-school", as if it is stupid to still be doing so. I would agree, except that it is still virtually impossible to watch live sporting events online. I'm not a sports nut, but I do like college football, and that means suffering through a lot of deafening ads.
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I'm seeing a lot of posts about how watching broadcast TV is...stupid...but I do like...suffering through a lot of deafening ads.
I think you've just confirmed the reasons why so many people see broadcast TV as "old-school", and those who flagellate themselves in front of it as slightly north of insane.
I don't know (Score:2)
Our experience is it depends on the station... (Score:2)
... or the network.
We've found that the Chicago CBS affiliate has an audio level that is consistently louder than any other station. And their audio levels seems to get louder late at night. Not exactly scientific evidence to be sure but the missus and kids can always tell when I'm watching Letterman instead of Leno because of the loud commercials.
Don't know, don't care (Score:2)
Oh ads... (Score:2)
Groucho's solution (Score:3)
"I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on [too loud], I go to the library and read a good book."
- Groucho
Since I'm not as much of a reader as Groucho, I just mute the television when the commercials are too loud. Beyond solving the immediate problem, there's a certain moral satisfaction in it. Heck, maybe it even constitutes some form of Pavlovian conditioning for the advertisers: after all, if they think loud commercials work, they must think that muted commercials don't.
Public libraries that keep inconvenient hours (Score:2)
"I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on [too loud], I go to the library and read a good book."
- Groucho
Good luck with that when your library is closed evenings and weekends.
Couldn't say. (Score:2)
Don't watch commercials.
The FCC is "hearing" fewer complaints... (Score:2)
The FCC is "hearing" fewer complaints... I see what you did there!
I still wonder whether this could be used (Score:2)
I mean, what do we want? We want to get rid of the commercials in our program. What is the problem? Well, identifying it, of course. If it could be auto detected, it could easily be auto removed.
And here they go and give us something to identify them.
I am unfortunately not an expert on videos and the like, but shouldn't it be possible to create something like a tool that can identify the volume of the programming and if it is beyond normal to switch to something sensible? Like, say a quick zapping through t
Needs to be expanded to Youtube (Score:2)
IMHO, the ban needs to apply to Youtube and other streaming video services.
Loophole observed (Score:2)
It's working... not 100% though (Score:2)
That said... I notice every once in a while that I encounter a commercial that isn't playing by these rules... and it's always ones by the same companies... so while i
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Yeah, I'm about sick of those right now.
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Public air ways is one of the places it does belong.
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I was in the same boat with you, but since MLB.tv offers a YEAR of games for what one month of cable or satellite costs I've cut that cord and haven't looked back. Supposedly the Xbox One will have all live streaming NFL games, but I haven't seen it in action yet. I hope more leagues go the way of MLB.tv- I gladly pay for the games I want to watch without getting all the extra channels or insane pricing for such little use.
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I hadn't heard of that -- but hopefully where they're going, other sports will follow. I'm completely uninterested in watching baseball, but at least they've got the right idea.
The situation with sports broadcasting is ridiculous. It would cost me well over $100 per month to get TV service with the additional extra "packages" to be able to watch all the games for the team that I follow. There is no chance that I will ever pay for that. If they had any halfway reasonable pricing for a streaming option, I
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Unfortunately you can't watch your local teams with MLB.tv, or any national game on ESPN or TBS, or any of FOX's Saturday games (even the ones not shown on your local FOX affilate). I subscribe to and enjoy MLB.tv, but I can't "cut the cord" until they start allowing me to watch my local teams (at least when they're on cable rather than broadcast TV).
The NHL does the same with Gamecenter.
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if you are paying it, it isn't ridiculous.
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Some of us enjoy live sports, and are willing to pay the (admittedly ridiculous) price for TV service to watch them.
Just FYI, I think you typed in the wrong address to your web browser. Probably you were going for "si" instead of "slashdot." Common mistake. :-)
Re: Want: ban on loud set-top box menu commercials (Score:2)
I used to buy on demand movies all the time. FIOS put an end to that with their horrible interface.
That, and disabling fast forward. If I accidentally hit 'stop' it always forgets where I was in a program and acts like I'm going to sit through 40 minutes of a show just to get back to where I was. Yes NBC, I was going to watch one of your shows but I'm not gonna sit through the first episode 1.8 times just to watch the last 10 mins.
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Wow.. you're such an interesting edgy hipster. What do I have to do to get you to father my children?