I miss the days that they would talk about football between plays instead of getting in 15 seconds to promote yet another show that will only get canceled.

I think you've got the whole thing reversed. They pay so much because they CAN get the money back out of advertising. They don't set ad prices based on what they paid for it.

I understand beerme's frustration. Advertising pays his salary.

As much as I find ads annoying breaking into my 50th time watching The Shawshank Redemption, I understand I can't watch one of my fav movies again because there's no sponsorship. Yet what really gets my chicken wire tangles is it ****s up the continuity of most things I watch.

Synopsis... Watching a very intense movie, quiet then commercial. SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY!!!! Blah blah blah... SUNDAY ONLY!!!! doubling the decibels of the show I was just watching.

Again, I love that mute button it saves some sanity I still have left.

I don't think it's squabbling.. Mtv, and nick, and etc.... Lots of channels are losing a ton of ratings.. And not always for good reason. Whereas music was clearly moving to mp3 and people resisted, Internet tv will just never match the ability to watch tv live. Netflix is nice to watch back episodes of old sitcoms, but it will never be the media for new content. And we will never be able to really watch sports outside of tv in the same way. TV gets you the good video cameras, the commentators, the analysts, all these things go away if you take away cable. In this case, the the more people switch to new media to watch free videos, and the worse tv programming is going to get. I have a feeling we will reach a point where tv stations will be much to expensive to run. When that happens, the shows we enjoy today will go away.

It's like the pharmaceutical industry. To create innovative drugs you have to have drug companies who have the pockets to have a few drugs bomb. TV stations aren't much different. They have to make money to produce a lot of shows so that good ones subsidize the bad ones. You have to make money to continue to get state of the art sports camera equipment. The alternatives we are proposing only make it convenient for the tv viewer. I would rather be bothered by a few minutes of ads per hour if it meant we continued to see quality programming and superior sports coverage.

HDVR actually isn't a category killer.. Believe it or not, ad recall is still pretty strong even if you fast forward past commercials. If anything its a value add for cable.. It's a service your cable provider gives to you that Internet tv can't to the same level.

a few minutes? FEW? Each hour of TV is about 18 minutes of commercials.

Also, as far as sports goes, I don't care about all the fluff, just give me the game. I hate all the focus groups that brought us the human interest stories of athletes. The Olympics are practically unwatchable now because of that shit. Seems like you get about 15 minutes of actual sports 25 minutes of human interest and 20 minutes of commercials during the olympics.

Few minutes per hour? You ever watch a NFL game on TV?

Team A scores
(commercial break)
Team A kicks off
(commercial break)
Team B runs 2 plays, takes a time out
(commercial break)
Team B runs 1 more play and a member of Team A cramps up
(commercial break)
Team B runs two more plays and time expires in the quarter
(commercial break)
Team B punts to begin the next quarter
(commercial break)
etc etc

Well, I didn't mean it would go away completely, and like I said, for the most part I think all of the live sports options plus other channels are worth what I pay for it... but, more and more people are looking elsewhere for entertainment, and hopefully even the largest providers will eventually have to make fundamental changes to the industry. All those things you listed are great reasons to have cable, yet they're still screwing it up due to all of the money that's at stake. Kind of like the NFL.

And like other jumped on, it's not a few minutes of commercials... I can start a football game at halftime and catch up to live TV by the end of the game.

There's a lot of fluff you like that's expensive. Good commentators.. Good pregame, and half time, and post game analysis. Great camera angles and instant replay. The yellow first down marker line. During the olympics the ability to cutaway to different events quickly. March madness.... Same thing.

Sports coverage today is a lot more awesome today than it was 10 years ago. So yes, I can stand a few commercials to get that quality.

While I agree, problem is the more people watch other media, the more costly it is to cable viewers. Interesting industry in that all cable subscribers share the expense. When less people watch, and cable companies tv stations have to find new ways to make money. It's often that's in the form of price increases. It's not our fault that we are choosing new ways to watch tv.. I just don't think people realize that the more we watch any media that's free, the more cable companies and tv producers have to do to raise money to create quality programming. People here are complaining that hulu shows tv shows with ad interruption.. Seriously? Do we really think 15 dollars a month is helping to pay for the cost of creating a Lost episode?

Yet, they still manage to make a couple billion dollars per year.

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And when prices go up, more people will leave... hence, the big changes (hopefully).

With the excpetion of the yellow first down line, you just covered a bunch of things I don't like about the game today. I don't watch pregame and postgame because it is no longer about the game. It's just a bunch of former jocks and coaches yucking it up. We have always had decent camera angles. We don't need 30 camera at a game for crying out loud. Plus, instant replay needs to die in a fire.

I would say you are definitely wrong here.

They do pay so much because they can get the money back.

They do set the price depending on what they pay for it. When the new TV contract goes up I guarantee ad prices go up.
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