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this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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I'm European so I have a bias but I never understood how Americans watch a sport that stops so many times for ads. It just feels like the ads are the show and the game is the second plan.
That's actually why soccer never took off over here. The networks felt that there aren't enough breaks for commercials, so they never marketed soccer as a good sport.
I've just started binging Schitt's Creek. Couldn't work out why the episodes are only 20 minutes long, then realised why the screen goes black for a second, every 5 minutes. WTF, these are ad breaks?!? That many?!?
Even had one literally a minute before the end.
I just simply wouldn't watch a TV channel that had so many ad breaks. That shit just wouldn't fly where I live; why do people put up with it?!?
(Also, the repeating pattern for series - episode 1&2 - funny and interesting. Episodes 3 to 12 - generic 1970s sitcom that's 90% soap-opera filler rammed with ads, obviously. Episodes 13&14 - funny and interesting again to sell you the next series. Not worth watching after S03. This applies to every American series I've watched in the last 5 years )
I ask myself this all the time, and about way more than just broadcast television. I think the reality is that there are billions of people who will put up with a great deal if they think that's what they're supposed to do, and corporations have figured this out now that they have accurate data to track every change they make. They used to have to keep things in the realm that they thought was tolerable, since they didn't have a billion data points to check people's reactions. A miscalculation could be very costly in multiple ways, including brand image damage. Now that they have that data, they've seen that there are enough people that will tolerate just about anything if there's a shiny bow on it. They don't care that they've lost the people who won't tolerate it, because they're making more money this way than they've ever made before.