My memories of TV watching go back to the early '80's and I remember the amount of commercials annoyed me, even back them. Now, I wish those times would return. By the '90's, it seemed like I was seeing more and more commercials, some even to the point where they would edit out scenes from the TV program in order to make room for more commercials. And, it just keeps getting worse. I often record old TV shows and I like to pause the VCR during commercial breaks so that I can fit more episodes on a tape and not have to FF through commercials when I re-watch the tape. Here lately, the damn commercial breaks are so long that the VCR will switch from PAUSE mode to STOP. IIRC, the VCR goes to STOP after being in PAUSE for 5 minutes. These long commercial breaks seem to happen much too frequently and it's the same crappy commercials over and over. I wonder how much worse it can possibly get?

And, the station logo's and the crawlers that are constantly chopping off the top and bottom of the picture really get on my nerves.

All the more reasons to forget about broadcast and/or cable TV and buy what I want to watch on DVD. That way, I can see the unedited program without commercials or those stupid crawlers / station logo's.

Move to the UK and watch the BBC. Simples:tresbon:

I hear you and feel your pain. I generally watch two or three channels at once so I can skip back and forth during commercial breaks. It drives my wife crazy. At least the political ads have ended for now. A local car dealership in Tallahassee impressed me by buying a 30 second ad of total silence just to give the viewer a break.

I liked the not so subtle way commercials used to be worked into the radio and TV programming. In particular, Harlow Wilcox's visits to Fibber McGee and Molly are actually a funny part of the show itself. Everyone knows ole waxy is just itching to work in a plug for Johnson's Self-Polishing Glo-Coat, and Fibber and Molly ultimately make a mistake and leave him an opening for the pitch. The same goes for Don Wilson and the Sportsmen driving Jack Benny crazy with songs for Lucky Strike sung in inappropriate locales.

Today, though, I suspect they'll keep edging out the actual programming in favor of more commercials until we watch 10 minute shows and 20 minutes of ads. It's a shame that with all that ad revenue they can't put on better shows. Why do we need all this cheap to make reality programming if they're collecting more money from commercials than ever before? Doesn't seem to add up.

Its getting so I hate Tv shows too!
Thankfully I can watch old shows on a vintage Predicta and forget what time I live in!

I hear you and feel your pain. I generally watch two or three channels at once so I can skip back and forth during commercial breaks. Today, though, I suspect they'll keep edging out the actual programming in favor of more commercials until we watch 10 minute shows and 20 minutes of ads. It's a shame that with all that ad revenue they can't put on better shows. Why do we need all this cheap to make reality programming if they're collecting more money from commercials than ever before? Doesn't seem to add up.
But what is worse if you buy cable or satellite you pay them to watch the ads that also pay them.I think about the next ditsy progressive saleswoman selling insurance from a box on a shelf would cause infinite damage to a vintage set not used to emitting such crap.

But what is worse if you buy cable or satellite you pay them to watch the ads that also pay them.I think about the next ditsy progressive saleswoman selling insurance from a box on a shelf would cause infinite damage to a vintage set not used to emitting such crap.

I have ranted about that excreable strumpet, Flo, before...Just 'cause she's "Cute" most guys wanna give her a pass. I, however, would like to give her, AND the mouth-breathing nematode who dreamed the whole nauseating ad campaign up, a "Swirly"-Stick their heads in the nearest commode & flush it.I will NEVER, ever, ever buy Progressive insurance. Never. Ever. And I'd STILL like to "Kneecap" Vince, Billy Mays, the Geico Gecko, & all the rest...

The ambulance-chasing lawyers irk me as much as anything. The commercials here parade the dregs of the earth holding checks proclaiming "Ahhzzz got paid!" No doubt why, as a married homeowner without a ticket in fifteen years, I pay $1500 a year for minimum coverage on three cars.

Also, we've had an unfortunate resurgence of "hot singles" phone line commercials. :no:

But what is worse if you buy cable or satellite you pay them to watch the ads that also pay them.

That is doubly bad. Particularly when you pay a premium price to get specialized programming, like you'd expect the History Channel to show all history shows or the SciFi channel to show all science fiction, but instead, of course, what you actually get is a dozen hysteria filled shows about the apocalypse, really awful killer animal movies, ghost hunting, and a lot of other things meant to pander to a lowest common denominator audience. There may be nothing on OTA most of the time, but at least the crap I get doesn't cost me anything.

Oh, speaking of Geico. How many ad campaigns are they running now? Cavemen, money with eyeballs, the Gecko, famous people speaking on the customer's behalf, etc. I take it that must be working for them, but it seems like you'd just pick one thing and stick with it, not go with them all at once. One day there will be a spokesthing battle royale amongst them all.

I have ranted about that excreable strumpet, Flo, before...Just 'cause she's "Cute" most guys wanna give her a pass. I, however, would like to give her, AND the mouth-breathing nematode who dreamed the whole nauseating ad campaign up, a "Swirly"-Stick their heads in the nearest commode & flush it.I will NEVER, ever, ever buy Progressive insurance. Never. Ever. And I'd STILL like to "Kneecap" Vince, Billy Mays, the Geico Gecko, & all the rest...

Lol!
I destest Billy Mays!
HE WAS ALWAYS SCREAMING AT TOP VOLUME!!
Wonder who the genuis was who thought that approach up?
Let's put a loud obnoxious guy on tv to hawk our cheap crap!,that's not going to alienate viewers,right?

Whats funny was when we were mercifully relieved of his presence for good people were talking about what a great pitchman he was!

Back in the day, commercials, some of 'em at least, had CLASS...Or were witty & clever...Or were sometimes simply magnificent...But now its all screaming, shouting, vile low-class drivel.

Back in the day, commercials, some of 'em at least, had CLASS...Or were witty & clever...Or were sometimes simply magnificent...But now its all screaming, shouting, vile low-class drivel.


True,but look at society in general,they are playing to their audience.

We went from The Honeymooners,Ozzie & Harriet and the flintstones to Jerry Springer,sex and the city and family guy.

We don't have people like Stan Freberg involved in advertising anymore!

I also like the use of animation in the old commercials,they were entertaining and had catchy songs.

The car ads were really cool too!

Well, an' when was the last time you saw a commercial from a "National" brand...Like Ford, Chevy, GE, Firestone ?!? Oh, they DO have 'em, but now its mostly 2nd, 3rd tier companies hawking 3rd, 4th tier products...Car commercials are usually some fat dude wearin' a horseblanket extollin' the virtues of the local Toyosubishiata emporium..Dinah Shore & her "See the USA in a Chevrolet !" are a fond, fading memory....Sigh....

Watching old TV shows today is misery. Stuff like the original Star Trek series, when made, ran 51 minutes when new, now is whacked down to around 43 minutes, just for all the extra crap that we are forced to watch.

The worst of the recent commercials?

Mail-order catheters. Who is going to need to "cath" 200 times in a month?

-- That 'cath' word irritates me, too. My mom is an old surgical nurse, and told me that they never called it 'cath.'

Billy Mays continues to irritate us from the dead. I saw him last night on the boob tube.

We hardly watch TV anymore, and when we do it is usually PBS. Since they have a 3 week long pledge drive once a month (!) we sometimes can't find anything at all worth watching. Keep in mind, no cable or dish, the cheapskate here just has an antenna. Anyway, the other night we just sat down and watched commercials! When "how I met your mother" came on the one channel we switched over and watched ads on the other station until the news came on. Since we hadn't seen commercial TV for a while, they were mostly new to us!

It wouldn't be any better with cable. The only difference between cable and OTA is cable offers hundreds of paid channels of garbage and OTA rolls the same garbage up into a handful of free channels.

Last night, I didn't even bother to watch and record the dukes of hazzard on CMT. I'm so annoyed with the commercials that I've made up my mind to obtain the series, along with other old TV shows that I care about, on DVD (like I said earlier).

The ambulance-chasing lawyers irk me as much as anything. The commercials here parade the dregs of the earth holding checks proclaiming "Ahhzzz got paid!" No doubt why, as a married homeowner without a ticket in fifteen years, I pay $1500 a year for minimum coverage on three cars.

Also, we've had an unfortunate resurgence of "hot singles" phone line commercials. :no:

We have two lawyers who fit the "ambulance chaser" description who advertise here. One is a respectable local law firm. The other lawyer features people in his ad's that are bragging about how much money he got for them. His slogan is "one call, that's all". I'm just as irritated with them as you are.

At least I'm not seeing those stupid 1-900 psychic commercials anymore.

there is a tommy hillfiger and honda commercial that have the exact same really terrible "music", and some stations have both on one after the other. I think these companies started with the christmass "noise" commercials just as soon as the tv news began covering the first posting of christmass trees in stores. If I remember right this year it was the day after holloween. I think next year it will begin right after the trick-r-treaters go to bed for the nght. I predict pre-black friday sales starting before holloween in a few years..... You know Crazy Eddie (212-645-1196 I remember that from his endless commericals in the 80's) use to run christmass sales in July...... just fyi for you unblessed by crazy eddie.

The ambulance-chasing lawyers irk me as much as anything. The commercials here parade the dregs of the earth holding checks proclaiming "Ahhzzz got paid!" No doubt why, as a married homeowner without a ticket in fifteen years, I pay $1500 a year for minimum coverage on three cars.

Also, we've had an unfortunate resurgence of "hot singles" phone line commercials. :no:

I can't stand the lawyer commercials either!

"Are you at home,out of work and desperately in need of money,sue someone with deep pockets!,call the law offices of Cheetum & Crooke today!"

Out here Larry H. Parker is the prime offender,every five minutes "Larry Parker got me...you know the story"

Then you got the seedy ads for "male enhancement" products with busty women gossiping about "smiling Bob" and his baseball bat sized appendage!

It's truly a sad commentary on how far society has fallen since the '50's.

That is doubly bad. Particularly when you pay a premium price to get specialized programming, like you'd expect the History Channel to show all history shows or the SciFi channel to show all science fiction, but instead, of course, what you actually get is a dozen hysteria filled shows about the apocalypse, really awful killer animal movies, ghost hunting, and a lot of other things meant to pander to a lowest common denominator audience. There may be nothing on OTA most of the time, but at least the crap I get doesn't cost me anything.

Oh, speaking of Geico. How many ad campaigns are they running now? Cavemen, money with eyeballs, the Gecko, famous people speaking on the customer's behalf, etc. I take it that must be working for them, but it seems like you'd just pick one thing and stick with it, not go with them all at once. One day there will be a spokesthing battle royale amongst them all.

I agree!
When cable tv first started there were no commericals and the channels actually had great content.

I can remember watching "Nick at Night" when it first came out and they ran great shows like mr ed,the honeymooners,car 54 where are you?,Munsters,etc....all commerical free and intact!

Not anymore!

And does anyone remember when the History channel and Discovery channel actually ran shows about History and learning??
This was before it was taken over by degenerates like that tattooed piece of human refuse "Jesse James" and that loud mouth walrus/man whose constantly throwing tantrums like a 9 year old girl and berating his son for an hour because a fly landed on his chrome handle bars and left a speck of fly crap.

Seriously,what's happened to Tv or rather society,that this is the kind of crap people enjoy watching?


And speaking of tv commercials,those stupid geico ads,the caveman,money with eyes etc are all obnoxious!

Why not take the millions of dollars you morons waste on this crap and reduce your damn rates!

Or how about spending the 60 second spot showing us a clip from the three stooges, then say "this Curly moment was brought to you by the knuckleheads at Gieco.

Personally I have NEVER bought anything because of an advertisement.

I do remember when cable TV was really worth the price paid to get it...like back in the early '90s with really good shows on Discovery channel and TLC like the Secret life of machines and shows that were really about science and the Food Network had shows that were really about cooking. Also general interest channels like TBS, TNT etc. would show a big variety of shows. I can still remember watching lots of TV on the CTC-39 in my bedroom with the Oak cable converter that you slid the channel indicator side to side and it would light up the channel number.

About 2 years ago I decided to give up on DirectTV as I couldn't stand how the programming had become (at our house now we don't even have cable available).
3 things really made me mad:

1. Channels which aired what seemed like a total of about 15 programs and would run episodes of the same show back to back for hours like Nick at Nite running 4 Rosanne episodes in a night. There may be many more channels today but each of these channels seems to air a very limited selection of programs and constantly repeats them.

2. Everything seemed to be going to reality shows. Especially on channels like the Food Network and Discovery and TLC and MTV there were all these stupid competitions or other "reality" stuff rather than real programming.

The last straw was when channels starting putting commercial material inside of the programs themselves. There were colored and flashing icons which would come up inside the shows and sometimes sounds too. Also taking off the credits of programs and putting promos/commercials in them.

I don't watch much TV at all these days...most times we watch is episodes of TV shows we like on DVD's.

Yep,I don't watch modern tv anymore either it's all crap as far as the eye can see!

You're right about those pop up ads for shows coming up next as well as talking over the credits and reducing the credits to an impossible to read size so they can immeadiately start advertising the stupidity coming up next.

It's as though they think their audience has the attention span of a gnat,and they have to shake a rattle in front of you like an infant to hold your attention.

Ah the sounds of discontent! yet here I pay $75.41 a month, for back to back programming, second rate behavior from adults on TV, 3rd rate behavior from their kids on TV.Then we have a television network who says they "arent responsible for the content of the paid programming", but they always take the money anyway and sticks the idiots buying the junk with the problem, instead of saying "sell your junk at the flea markets it gives us a bad name" and it really does. I guess until we chop the wire and refuse to pay, or watch this is a reflection of what we are, or are willing tp put up with.
I look at the New VS Old Hawaii Five-0, wow we have come far as a society, eeeeeeeeks!

The other lawyer features people in his ad's that are bragging about how much money he got for them. His slogan is "one call, that's all".

God, that's the same slogan as the longest-running offender here, Morris Bart.

It’s a shame that the entertainment factor of television has disappeared. On the rare occasion I turn on TV Land or other such networks I’ve noticed the audio is sped up considerably and the video quality is full of digital artifacts thanks to the whiz bang world we live in. I’ve not tried to time how much actual program there is in a typical half hour because as has been previously mentioned the commercial content is unbearable. I agree with other posters that I’d rather buy the DVD and watch what I want unedited and annoyance free. The little story that follows might shed some light on how broadcast television made it to the sorry state it’s in.

When I worked in television in the 1980’s most of the sit-coms we aired such as MASH were already edited down from the network run version to the syndicated version which involved cutting out parts of the show to allow for three two minute breaks in a half hour show. Many other programs like I Love Lucy and other classic programs that have been aired for years were done likewise. I caught an episode of Lucy not long ago and they have been hacked yet again. The network program originally ran 26 minutes. The episode I saw ran barely 19 minutes and the scenes cut short are very noticeable by anyone who has seen the show before.

Sometime in late 1984-early 85 the station I worked for bought an analog based gizmo called a Lexicon IIRC. We ran tapes from the syndication distributor through it and made duplicate tapes that were added to our library. The first show was MASH which was one of the top ratings getters for the Chattanooga market. The Lexicon was an adjustable affair that compressed video by dropping frames. It could be adjusted so as to gain another 2-3 minutes of commercial time. Every show we aired eventually ended up compressed. A strobe effect would become very noticeable the higher the compression settings were. The audio was sped up to compensate for the missing video so no delay was noticeable.

Another nifty piece of hardware was called the Digitrol. Nothing about it was digital. Being one of the Master Control operators, the day it was installed I commented to the chief engineer and station manager that it sounded more like a laxative name than a piece of electronic equipment. Too bad it didn’t work as well as a laxative. This beast was a programmable sequencer activated by 1KC audio tones strategically placed at 7 seconds and 29 frames before the first frame of video on each commercial tape. It had to be started 8 seconds before the program segment ended and controlled 7 u-Matic ¾ inch cassette players that were used to run commercial breaks. You don’t realize how long eight seconds is until you discover that the person who timed your program wrote down the wrong segment time on the roll sheet. It was not uncommon to have from 9-14 tapes in a break. Getting a tape out of the last machine that aired and loading the next tape to play at the same time another spot was on the air was interesting. As you may have guessed tapes occasionally got into Master Control with tones misplaced or missing altogether. This would always happen in the middle of a break necessitating on the spot manual start of the first available machine and re-programming around the dead one until such time as it could be run manually.

This many years later I still occasionally wake up in Master Control sweating bullets. This was long before the lower third of the screen was filled with irritating network branding and constant “up next” promos. And manufacturers think I’m going to buy a wide screen or HD TV to watch this garbage? I don’t think so…

Neat stories, droptop! I used to dream of having that kind of job, and almost went down that path but for a lack of confidence in myself. I've often wondered about some of those especially long "dead air" or technical difficulty problems I used to see all the time. I've seen some that lasted 5 minutes or more and I'd picture some pretty rough words being used back at the station.

I worked in TV also. We had the Lexicon, too. I hate how garbled the audio would get at the higher settings.

When I started in TV in Tennessee in 1976, we ran our syndicated shows totally uncut, including I Love Lucy, which ran 26:30 on some of the prints we had... Most ran 25:30. We were still running our 16mm films uncut in 1981, when I moved to Atlanta to a station that really WHACKED their shows, and started shows at 5 minutes past the hour and half-hour. Anybody remember this station?

WTBullShip ?!? (grin)

WTBullShip ?!? (grin)

I was going to guess the same thing. How well I remember.

I know the station and remember the shows being cut up terribly. I remember our station manager wanting to be just like them.

I ended up in television quite by accident around 1980. I’d just met the chief engineer who was getting interested in antique radios. What turned out to be a mutual friend in Nashville gave him my phone number and in the course of conversation he mentioned his vocation and asked it I was looking for a part time job (which I wasn’t). I started out doing studio audio and camera work for some of the local rural preachers who wanted to preach on TV. Yes, I still have video of some of the “highlights” of such programming. Having an electronics background I quickly found my niche in Master Control and loved the technical aspect of it and spent 4 years there before being asked to move into the traffic department as they went from typewritten logs and billing to a computer based system.

The station had a deal with the film distributor to send us the cheapest prints they had. This translated to the worst condition available that hadn’t been thrown out yet. I remember one Lucy print we got in that had been rearranged. The show opening ran, then the second half of the show followed by the middle bumper and then the first segment. Absolutely nothing was pre-screened before airing. The Kodak projectors had the dual bulb carousel that could be flipped to place a new bulb in operation if one died on air. The station would only buy projector bulbs when one burned out and keeping a spare mounted in case the other went out wasn’t an option. These events were the start of not airing directly from 16 mm. It was all dubbed to ¾ inch cassettes.

After ownership and location changed newer equipment eventually began trickling in. The one thing we didn’t have was an ID or Technical Difficulty slide. Such faith was put in the aforementioned Digitrol sequencer that it was felt unnecessary. Never mind human error possibilities. To this day I haven’t figured out the logic behind that decision but it was made by people who would never find themselves in the position to have to deal with the situation- the ones who made the “big bucks” That is when trouble began at that station. And yes there was much “rough language” at that there.

Rick

I had a feeling that you guys would get it. I didn't stay there very long. I moved on over to another independent there, before leaving there soon after. The last TV job was a network station there, and it was a cushy job, until I was moved to the traffic department. They were just starting to use the BIAS system there. I didnt enjoy looking at a green screen CRT all day, and screening 2" copies of commercials in the same room. Just imagine the noise!! Left TV for good in December 1985. Went back to TV repairs, and made a business out of it for almost 20 years.

Yep, working in the traffic department made me HATE commercials years before I really started hating them around 2005 or so.

Our projectors were RCA's, mostly. TK-28 film chains, too. Unlike you, Rick, we had lots of spare parts for everything. Unlike your station, my first job, the independent, inspected EVERYthing that went on the air. 90% of programming was on film at the time, and we rarely had any film problems.