Rant.

lately I have noticed a lot of missing bits from old classics like star trek (OS) where I assume cuts have been made to stick a couple more commercials in, yuk. This was on MeTV, guess I should not complain as its the only channel worth watching.

Next Univision deporta what ever that is commercial that runs nearly every break on the new "el rey" network. I am there for X files, but geez they keep showing the same stupid over saturated soccer commercial at every break including showing it several times in a row. geez. It makes the ambulance chasers look classy.

Ayup. The name of the game is sell, Sell, SELL !!

Rant.

lately I have noticed a lot of missing bits from old classics like star trek (OS) where I assume cuts have been made to stick a couple more commercials in, yuk. This was on MeTV, guess I should not complain as its the only channel worth watching.

Next Univision deporta what ever that is commercial that runs nearly every break on the new "el rey" network. I am there for X files, but geez they keep showing the same stupid over saturated soccer commercial at every break including showing it several times in a row. geez. It makes the ambulance chasers look classy.

The clipped out a few of the classic lines from "The Munsters", that I always used to laugh at. They did this several years ago!
BTW, I never was much of a trekky . I worked second shift for several years and never followed it.

I noticed on Tvland in the mornings, they expanded The Andy Griffith Show to 38 minutes. A commercial every five minutes. Now the program and ads are pretty much equal in time. You don't know if you're watching a tv show or an infomercial interrupted by those pesky clips. I gave up watching it about two years ago after the tenth rerun of the same old crap.

Not exactly an existing show being messed with, but Garfield and Friends was one of my favorite shows as a kid; the more recent version is a bunch of freaky-looking CGI-animated crap. The damn DVDs for the original series are out of print too.

Keep in mind that, if the service is free, you (and your eyeballs) are the product.
And that their alternative to cutting out bits is to time-compress it, and deal with jerky motion and audio artifacts for the entire show.
Chip

Although always disappointing, this is very old news. At one point during Columbo's run on the CBS Late Movie, episodes that originally ran two hours in length were being edited to run in an 80-minute slot.

Rod Serling's Night Gallery anthology ran for an hour for its first two seasons, but in syndication was offered as a half hour. As a result many segments were butchered in order to run within the allotted time.

I give Metv a little credit, Im seeing some extra scenes in MASH that i havent seen since original air, but yet there is some cutting still. TVLand just needs to be flushed, Viacom has turned every channel they own to CRAP..

And they have been making it so a DVR misses the final minutes of shows all due to the overun with the added commercials...

SR

Keep in mind that, if the service is free, you (and your eyeballs) are the product.
And that their alternative to cutting out bits is to time-compress it, and deal with jerky motion and audio artifacts for the entire show.
Chip

Yep. One of the many reasons I recently cancelled cable and went OTA is because I was paying for tv and having to sit through what seemed like more and more commercials all the time. I remember some people scoffing at the idea of paying for tv when cable first came out, and the selling point was fewer or no commercials. HA!!!

Now, I'll suffer through all the mesothelioma comercials etc on METV (or get up and do something else for a few minutes til the show comes back on) knowing that I'm at least getting quality programming and not paying out of pocket.

It is a shame that they cut scenes though. Here's an idea:How about cutting credits?

Al

Has anyone noticed the speed up of the intro and outro of many programs so we can get blasted with yet more commercials??? With the advent of digital processing the tempo stays the same but lyrics and music sound like the super fast disclaimers in commercials... LOL!!!

I rarely watch OTA TV or cable TV(no longer have). I have quite a few TV shows on DVD and just watch those. I pick up a new show every so often. I have well over 100 different TV shows on DVD. Some are just one or two seasons and some are the complete series.

I wonder what the age cut off for TV viewing is. I have kids that rarely (never) turn on the set. When I was young we lived by it, had the schedule memorized, and it was a family event. All too recall the cable selling point as little to no commercials. The prob now seems to be way too much to choose from (channels) with garbage on most of it.

oh well I presume all the new gens will be able to complain about the good old days of texting on mobile devices in a few decades.

I must say I find it amusing to see young folks walking, sitting,eating,being awake, and constantly flipping there thumbs at little screens, best fun is watching as they walk into a bush or tree completely oblivious to the surroundings.

Driving is a different story, that is serious bus and I really wish all the mobile devise folk could get un hooked for the time they are behind the wheel. Oh well thats my rant for the day.

The prob now seems to be way too much to choose from (channels) with garbage on most of it.



Exactly. It is a bad time in history we are living in.
Give me 1946-1980 all day !

I honestly think if I ran into J.G. Wentworth on the street, I would find it difficult NOT to tear his head off w/my bare hands, & then Sh!t down his throat... If there even is a REAL person named "J.G. Wentworth"...

funny thing about JG, how many times I wonder did some responsible person set up a trust to dole out money in a vein attempt to protect some dope heir from blowing it, just to have that process circumvented by a JG wentworth.

This is why trustees should be used with discretion as to how to deal with estates (if you happen to be well off enough to have one that is), leaving the dope heir completely out of the loop.

Al, I think cutting credits is not allowed -- union regs, maybe? Not sure, but I'm sure it's googleable. (googliscious?) Notice how they zip thru them in a squeezed down, illegible box on some outlets? They wouldn't be doing that unless they had to.

We never watch things live any more. Record and watch later, or at least buffer enough in the DVR to skip the commercials.

Chip

I honestly think if I ran into J.G. Wentworth on the street, I would find it difficult NOT to tear his head off w/my bare hands, & then Sh!t down his throat... If there even is a REAL person named "J.G. Wentworth"...

Its his ass-whoop and he NEEDS- IT- NOW!!! :D

SR

Its his ass-whoop and he NEEDS- IT- NOW!!! :D

SR

Dammittall, you owe me a roll of Bounties to replace the ones I used cleanin' up after reading that & then SPEWING Diet Coke all over hell & half of Georgia...

Could we shove JG Wentworth's head in Fred Thompson's mouth? Please? I'd like to see Freddy try to say "Reverse Mortgage" with a kisser full Wentworth.

I watch the rebel Saturdays on metv , I have some from encore westerns back in the late 90's when they showed it commercial free and compared to the metv airings heres what I found , some episodes are time compressed or speeded up if you prefer and segments are removed here or there , the opening and ending credits are not speeded up , there was one episode where it was normal and after the half way break it came back from commercials and was speeded up from that point till the end , there isn't really any channel that's not cutting or speeding up or both unless its encore westerns or a couple other encore channels that are mainly movies but show or showed tv stuff , I often look at the line up of these channels and more then 80% of what they show is available on dvd if I don't already have it , so I don't bother to watch and get better visual quality anyway , trek on Blu-ray is amazing and you can watch it in the original mono soundtrack along with the original effects unlike the metv versions that have the new cgi, as far as andy on tv land I almost bought the whole series in a set for $100 on sale but when I saw season one will hit blu I said might as well get the blu , don't get me wrong plenty of dvds look great but when they are blu its even better , closest I've seen to actualy viewing the 35mm film itself being projected.

I honestly think if I ran into J.G. Wentworth on the street, I would find it difficult NOT to tear his head off w/my bare hands, & then Sh!t down his throat... If there even is a REAL person named "J.G. Wentworth"...

Thank you

I feel the same way

Some one should shoot him. :D

I hate the new effects on TOS

I don't understand the rationale behind running a commercial character/theme 100K a day, on all channels seemingly. Don't the Mad Men understand a concept of "Over-Saturation" ?!? Flo was a cute thing at one time, now, all I wanna do is stick her head into a commode... Same thing w/the Geico lizard.. Would LOVE to make him into a "Sail-Lizard" by running him over, backing up, & repeating as necessary... And JG Wentworth ? YOU need to meet yr end ala the Wood Chipper scene in "Fargo", sucker..

I don't understand the rationale behind running a commercial character/theme 100K a day, on all channels seemingly. Don't the Mad Men understand a concept of "Over-Saturation" ?!? Flo was a cute thing at one time, now, all I wanna do is stick her head into a commode... Same thing w/the Geico lizard.. Would LOVE to make him into a "Sail-Lizard" by running him over, backing up, & repeating as necessary... And JG Wentworth ? YOU need to meet yr end ala the Wood Chipper scene in "Fargo", sucker..

I think it's Flo, that's singing on the radio commercials.
If it is her, not a very good singer. :thumbsdn:

I noticed on Tvland in the mornings, they expanded The Andy Griffith Show to 38 minutes. A commercial every five minutes. Now the program and ads are pretty much equal in time. You don't know if you're watching a tv show or an infomercial interrupted by those pesky clips. I gave up watching it about two years ago after the tenth rerun of the same old crap.Yea the spam ads are out of control..... ITS NOT WORTH WATCHING ANYTHING ON REG TV JUST ABOUT NOW!!!

The screen is filled with crap during the show!! (Ads for other shows,etc) -- TOTALLY INSANE!

I just noticed this morning Andy Griffith is now 43 minutes with eight minute commercial breaks. The commercial breaks are longer than the programming. It isn't worth the effort to try watch it.
Seems like the lower their ratings go, the more commercials they add. A few years ago it was a decent channel with the programming rotated after one or two cycles of the series. They don't even do that anymore. It's pretty much hacked up Andy Griffith, Gunsmoke and Bonanza. TBS is the same. Seinfeld and The King of Queens over and over and over.
I have enough vhs tapes and dvd's to watch to last a couple of years. Anyway, spring is right around the corner and the tv goes back into hibernation, except for Nascar.

Is it any wonder i hate VIACOM? They buy or create these channels, and use the same cookie cutter ideas on them till theyre all the same... I wish cable/sat companies werent stuck in contracts with these channels, If they got dropped it may give them a wake up call to stop pissing off their vuewers...

SR

Remember that modest Nilsson hit from the mid-Seventies ? "Kojak, Kojak, Kojak, Colombo, tell me a new one, sell me some gumbo, Tell me a new one at least once a night, but don't turn out your Love Light..." They've finally put out the Love Light...

There is a bright spot in all this. I get an OTA channel called Movies. It's a sub channel of CW here in RI. I noticed that the movies start at odd times; 10:55, 7:35 etc. Then I figured out why. Before each movie it says that "the following movie has not been edited for time to fit more commercials"

Gotta say, I smiled when I saw that. They do mute the cursing and blurr any nudity but it appears that they show the movie in it's entirety.

I think the addy is Moviestvnetwork.net if interested.

Been seeing some good stuff on there too like Walking Tall 1 and 2 back to back.

Al

There is a bright spot in all this. I get an OTA channel called Movies. It's a sub channel of CW here in RI. I noticed that the movies start at odd times; 10:55, 7:35 etc. Then I figured out why. Before each movie it says that "the following movie has not been edited for time to fit more commercials"

Gotta say, I smiled when I saw that. They do mute the cursing and blurr any nudity but it appears that they show the movie in it's entirety.

I think the addy is Moviestvnetwork.net if interested.

Been seeing some good stuff on there too like Walking Tall 1 and 2 back to back.

Al

I thought it was quite refreshing that they were honest ! !

I really like that channel too ! !

It's on a Fox Sub here in NYC.

I'm in Lake County, Ohio, 35 miles east of Cleveland. Our cable system (Time Warner) does not carry Movies! yet, unless it is available only on a tier of service I don't have (my cable service is expanded basic).

I also notice that the cable networks are shortening the programs they carry and are running more commercials. I don't like it, but that's the way it is. I get around the problem by watching my favorite shows (mostly old ones from the '60s and '70s) on DVDs, which are uncut for the most part and, of course, have no commercials. The only use I have for the broadcast networks, 99.9 percent of the time, is for their world news broadcasts and newsmagazines.

I realize full well that OTA TV stations/networks and cable networks must run a certain number of commercials every hour to stay on the air, but I also believe these commercial breaks are getting out of hand. The broadcast networks can only run a certain number of commercials due to time constraints, but local stations and cable networks seem free to run as many of those infernal things as they deem necessary, at the expense of the programs themselves.

OTA and cable networks may be required to show a TV program's credits, but I wonder why they show them, in many cases, in small boxes and even smaller type that is nearly impossible to read unless you are only a few inches away from your TV. I guess that's how they comply with the regulations, whatever they may be. However, on programs such as the Law and Order series on USA and WGN America, the credits are shown in their entirety during the show itself, taking up about the first ten minutes of the broadcast. I just ignore them.

One other thing I've noticed is that network and cable programs are run one after another, with no commercial breaks or station breaks. OTA television stations, however, handle the hourly ID requirement by running a station identification slide during one of those commercial breaks. The reason networks and cable run programs back-to-back without interruptions may be so that people won't switch channels between programs. Television networks are concerned with ratings and with money, so every network tries their darnedest to get folks to watch that network.

The day has not yet arrived, however, when people can watch all four broadcast networks and PBS at the same time. RCA did have, in 1970, a prototype of a TV, the "Showcase 70", that could display four channels at once, with the ability to switch any of those screens to the 25-inch main screen at any time, but the set never went into production. Picture-in-picture, popular on many high-end sets of the '80s, was another attempt at showing more than one channel at the same time, but it disappeared when CRT TVs were replaced by flat screens.

BTW, one thing I've noticed with NBC's world news broadcast at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time is that they do not use a title slide, "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams", at the end of the program as they did for many years, although they do show that title slide at the beginning of the broadcast. What is shown at the end of the newscast is a slide with the logos of the social media services NBC has accounts with, as well as a disclaimer, "Copyright 2014 NBCUniversal Media." I guess since NBC is now owned and operated by Microsoft, they decided it is now more important to advertise the social media sites than the program itself at the end of the broadcast.

Jeffhs wrote: " I guess since NBC is now owned and operated by Microsoft..."

Umm, nope. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBCUniversal

Some creative programmable remote work might get you your 4-screen tracking TV, though. Except now, it would need to be about 30 screens...

Chip