[srikanthns]

I am making the following simplistic statements:
-Before 1990 there was no cable TV and we have seen hardly 1% of the TV ads that we see now.

-Since, it seems now the cable TV is funded by Ads, if we stop Ads, Cable TV will vanish!

No is it not?

Now I come to another question.

Now that Ads in all the media (Print, internet and Lion's share in TV Ads) is there compared to even 25 years back, is the expenditure not out of our (consumer's) pocket?.

Or in other words, if we do not have Shahrukh or Amitabh endorsing so many products, would our expenditure would have gone down (minus their endorsement fee included, in the product price, where else?)?

[pratyush6]

Interesting topic.
Agree on the part where we want all TV Channels to be beamed but hardly ever watch them. I am on that same list. Recently though - after realizing I am paying close to 7k for cable, have started to cut down on the channels received.
Also, if you record those shows - I will almost do that for every show I follow, you would not notice the ads.
However wrt to news, it is absolutely disgusting. It seems as if channels are actually showing ads and news in between. I have shifted to BBC & CNN on TV and mostly internet.

[speedmiester]

Originally Posted by tilt

Where do you get to watch F1 online? F1 is the only reason I still have a TV connection!

Cheers

You can subscribe for Star Sports F1 Coverage for 550/season.

[alpha1]

Originally Posted by srikanthns

I am making the following simplistic statements:
-Before 1990 there were no cable TV and we have seen hardly 1% of the TV ads that we see now.
-Since, it seems now the cable TV is funded by Ads, if we stop Ads, Cable TV will vanish!
No is it not?
Now I come to another question.
Now that Ads in all the media (Print, internet and Lion's share in TV Ads) is there compared to even 25 years back, is the expenditure not out of our (consumer's) pocket?.
Or in other words, if we do not have Shahrukh or Amitabh endorsing so many products, would our expenditure would have gone down (minus their endorsement fee included, in the product price, where else?)?

Consumers pay for everything out of their pocket ultimately.
Advertisment cost.
Marketing costs.
Amitabh Bachhan's coldarin on the sets.
Shahrukh's exorbitant endorsement deals.

So here, you are paying it twice:
1. While watching the advert. You pay the channel subscription fees.
2. While buying the product, you pay the price.

[Guite]

I believe when cable TVs started transmitting from Hongkong it used to be governed by some Hongkong regulation on number and duration of promotions that can be aired during a 30 minute / one hour programme. Now we have 5 minute long ad breaks!

I have IPTV connection for the flexibility it gives my family to watch what we want when we want, skipping the ads. I also have DTH connection for watching HD movies. Fortunately most HD movie channels have short ad breaks.

[venuvedam]

I watch a lot of TV - and I have a Tata Sky HD connection. So let me present a different point of view here. (I also have a Chromecast and watch a lot of online/streaming content.)

I love Television. When I say Television, I mean the regular broadcast channels such as HBO, Star Movies, TV9 etc. One big advantage that broadcast TV has, over on-demand/streaming programming, is - you don't have to make a decision of what to watch. In an online/streaming world, you need to know what you want to watch and then stream it. Believe me, this decision is a very tough one to take. After a hard day's work, you come home, settle on the sofa - and all that you want to do is to watch something - and not get into an elaborate framework of deciding which show to watch.

So I love powering up my Tata Sky and flipping the channels - watching whatever is interesting at that point - and if a show is boring, switch to another channel etc.

That experience - sadly is something that I don't get with Netflix/Hulu/Youtube whatever.

Regarding the advertisements - Yes, they are a pain. But it is during those breaks that I explore the other channels.

Can't live without broadcast TV. No way.

[fine69]

Originally Posted by venuvedam

I love Television. When I say Television, I mean the regular broadcast channels such as HBO, Star Movies, TV9 etc. One big advantage that broadcast TV has, over on-demand/streaming programming, is - you don't have to make a decision of what to watch. In an online/streaming world, you need to know what you want to watch and then stream it. Believe me, this decision is a very tough one to take. After a hard day's work, you come home, settle on the sofa - and all that you want to do is to watch something - and not get into an elaborate framework of deciding which show to watch.

Excellent point there and what timing of the thread.

I broke my 26" LED around 3 weeks back and was obviously missing this experience. However, I'm not sure whether its such a bad thing after all. The one show that we used to watch at home is now being watched on the laptop and what we love about it is that we don't have to watch any ads.

My bedroom is suddenly quieter and I like that a lot. I missed the TV experience initially but with 3 weeks gone by, I don't miss it too much now.

We used to watch english movies 90% of the time and all other times it would be left playing songs on music channels. Now those movies also used to be repeat telecast because I'm one of those who'd get all english movies the moment their DVD is officially out.

On weekends, I wouldn't get out of the bed instantly and would just lay there surfing channels. I would postpone household chores because of a flick that caught my interest. I would hardly go to sleep, instead, I'd always fall asleep while watching TV, bad habit!

My wife runs a business and we discuss the finances and other things in the night. A lot of times we'd postpone that discussion to next day because we'd be watching TV but now we've been more productive of our time.

We watch a lot of movies though and the only thing I'm not liking is connecting the 2.1 system to my laptop and then watching it. So I'm getting a big LED this time (may be 50" philips) but I think I'll not renew my tatasky DTH which is due for renewal in Dec'14 (I was on the semi-annual package). Oh and yes I was paying 400 something for the Grands Sports Pack which has everything minus 4-5 channels.

So what about that tough task of deciding what to watch? Well, I think I need to figure out better ways of unwinding after a long day's work rather than turn on that idiot box! May be have a conversation with my wife on the terrace, cook something good or play games on the laptop.

Anything but that chaos now, good riddance!

[JohnyBoy]

Originally Posted by venuvedam

... After a hard day's work, you come home, settle on the sofa - and all that you want to do is to watch something - and not get into an elaborate framework of deciding which show to watch.

So I love powering up my Tata Sky and flipping the channels - watching whatever is interesting at that point - and if a show is boring, switch to another channel etc.

That experience - sadly is something that I don't get with Netflix/Hulu/Youtube whatever.

Regarding the advertisements - Yes, they are a pain. But it is during those breaks that I explore the other channels.

...

+1 to that.
Main thing is not to decide what to watch. Scroll through channels and stop wherever there is something interesting. When ad comes, either check whatsapp messages (if the program is interesting) or resume channel scrolling.
This is the way I bumped into certain programs, accidentally watched for few minutes and then liking them.
This is similar to listening to FM against listening to your own song list in a USB drive. You hear songs which you wouldn't have selected and at times you may love some of them.

[naveenroy]

Same boat. I hate the advertisements too. So I did this - removed all the movie channels from my Tata Sky HD+ connection, invested in Netflix. I share the connection with my friends so it ends up like 150 bucks a month. Good price.

The only reason I still have the Tata Sky HD+ connection is that I need my fix of sports. I watch Football, F1, MotoGP, the Tennis GPs. I am still to check if I can get a package with only sports channels. If I can do that, I will move to that.

I am tired of the advertisements every 5 minutes. Guess there was some recommendation from the broadcasting authority that ads shouldn't be played too often or something like that. But I see no difference.

[D4D]

Hell, I hate those Ads. Horrible things they are.

Originally Posted by hellmet

Ball lost? Play ad. Someone hurt? Play ad. Replacement gloves? Play ad. Baller still walking back? Roll-up/Roll-in ads. Baller running in? Digitally convert the playground into a billboard.

I can relate to this. The most irritating part: The volume of the Ad is louder than the normal cricket commentary volume. I set the Volume so that I can just about hear the commentary, the Ads really blast my eardrums.

In 2011, I watched cricket in Star Cricket HD for the first time(in tatasky HD), there were absolutely no ads. And yes, this was the cases for all HD channels at that time.

But now, even these HD channels are putting really too many ads.

Even CNN-IBN, which claims to be the best news channel in India, just plays too many ads. I have to wait for the news amongst all ads.

CNN-IBN and TOI have one thing in similar: You have to search for the news in between the ads.

Solution: Recorder in the DVR. Record your favourite program and skip the ads. For cricket matches, start watching the match like 15 minutes late, therefore being able to skip everything between overs.

[prabhu789]

Nice topic. I almost forgot when was the last time I sat before the TV. Annoyed by the commercials I hardly watch any program. I am OK as long as its reasonable. Most of the times its like you watch programs in between commercials. That makes me sick. Its very hard to recollect what really happened before the commercial. It also dilutes the whole experience of watching movies, cricket, news etc.

Thanks to internet, I enjoy watching the ad free programs at my convenience.

[mayuresh]

There are two different problems why TV looks unattractive to some, me included:

1. Advertisements

2. Mediocre contents, with very few exceptions


I kind of dealt with the first problem. I live a virtually ad-free life with both television and internet.

- Like many others mentioned, I use Tata Sky Plus video recorder. You can skip ads at 30X speed when watching. You can also schedule your recording over web and need to set recording for serial programs only once. You need not follow particular program timings, you can watch things you like at leisure such as over weekend.

(Of course, you can't help it for live programs such as sports coverage or news.)

- A related problem is of advertisements on the internet. I have set a local proxy server at my end and set patterns of URLs that fetch advertisements. The pattern collection matured over time and now I have a nearly ad free internet. Besides avoiding annoying ads, it conserves the bandwidth and improves the overall throughput.



As some others noted, IPTV based VoD solutions is the need of the hour. You pay for a program you watch and get to watch it at your convenient times without ads. You don't need to buy a bouquet of channels of which 90% you don't watch. Unfortunately nothing like that has come up despite it being talked about for years.



Now the second problem is the content itself. No idea why television makes such a mediocre content. Every producer's attention is on making something that will earn some quick attention for a short period of time so that he can get a good TRP and earn his livelihood.

An in principle fair proposition. In reality, either the TRP system is totally a mess or the audience taste has really nosedived. Don't know which one is true.


The public broadcaster (DD) is more or less free from the TRP rat race. It indeed ends up producing some of the better programs in the industry. Infotainment programs like The Maths Factor, Science Magazine, Wilderness Days, A Question of Science are really top class. Unlike the "noise hour" programs with supposedly highest TRP, the news and discussions are much more tolerable and content rich than noise rich. Overall proportion of ads is small as well.

So may be it's the TRP rat race that is killing the quality?

[Eddy]

Originally Posted by naveenroy

The only reason I still have the Tata Sky HD+ connection is that I need my fix of sports.

Hey, of all people you with your avatar cannot say that you do not watch TV or only sports

[vasoo]

It is the same case with most magazines, glossies and newspapers. Most of them are filled with Ads or "paid news" promotions and we still pay in 3 digit figures for each issue.

At least some of the channels we pay for does not come with any advertisements (HBO duos, for example). It is the same case in US as well, with most TV ads on FTA/cheaper channels are poorly made, even compared to those "toilet cleaner" ads in India. Ads generally are made to specific target audience in mind. However the nature of the telecast/distribution does not really lend well to that segmentation. Hence we end up seeing all of them ranging from disgusting to interesting during the same commercial break.

Btw, in US there is trend of "cartoonification" in ads to attract attention. I even saw an ad for a medicine which apparently helps to control your natural urges and in there the "bladder" is shown as a cartoon character! Imagine the level of "imagination" these folks have...

[saion666]

Guess what this thread made me remember we have a TV at home. Switched it on to find the Tata SKY connection has been deactivated.

The connection was in the name of my flatmate who has been to US for more than a month and nobody bothered to check the TV, such is the redundancy of the idiot box.