Wednesday, March 26, 2008

TV: Sinister Motives in On-Screen Advertising

Somewhere, sometime, a switch went on and stayed on. It's called the bug and we see it on every TV show we watch these days. And having accepted the bug, we now accept all kinds of crap covering up the screen during various shows.

Some networks, CW being the worst, have a virtual moving conveyor belt of animated semi-transparent ads running on the bottom third of the screen promoting some OTHER show on the network. That's in addition to the no longer shadowy, sometimes missing bug in the lower right-hand corner identifying the originating source of the broadcast you are watching.

Bugs began as a watermark of sorts. They used to be ghostly versions of the network logo. They'd show for ten seconds and then fade out, only to return every ten minutes or so for another run-and-fade. What they started out as, is long gone. Now they sit there in full colour obliterating the background throughout the broadcast. Usually, the station ID is right there along with it, or incorporated into it.

Having lulled the couch potatoes into complacency (now THAT'S a hard job), the broadcasters now send animations flowing over the REST of the bottom third of the screen to advertise what's coming on next, or tomorrow or later this month or ... well, you get the idea. They even, I kid you not, tell you that you are watching a new episode of the show YOU ARE WATCHING. If you need this information, technically, you have expired. Please do not get up and change the channel. Can the programming be THAT poor or so repetitive that you NEED to be told you haven't seen this before?

But, like all things that seem to have no rhyme or reason, there IS a reason to all of this inanity. Indeed, it's a financial one. And it has NOTHING to do with increasing viewership in whatever second-rate show the network has coming on after this one decent one you are watching. It's ALL about the DVD sets.

Yep, the DVD sets are already minus the commercials that interrupt the flow of the program. It's one of the reasons I've staunchly championed the purchase of sets of your favourite episodic shows. In fact, I hardly ever tune in to see even a scene of Lost or Prison Break. I wait for the DVD release and treat the show like a book.

But, here's the thing. The commercials aren't the ONLY thing you don't get in the DVD sets. You don't get those on-screen promos either. What a world of difference! No distracting green and yellow CW banners unfurling on Smallville. No Ghost Hunter promos on Stargate: Atlantis. No come-on for whatever Lifetime movie is following whatever Lifetime show I stop channel-hopping to catch a glimpse of some long-ago lusted-after actress. Nope, just the video the producers of the show intended you to see all along. Not 67 percent of the video. The WHOLE thing.

Why, it almost makes you happy to go out and plop down 40 bucks for the four disk set of the season, doesn't it?

Like I said, sinister.

No comments: