by Chris Black
The idea of paying for cable was that there wouldn’t be ads.
Then the ads came, but there was around five minutes of ads for an hour of content.
Then it went to ten minutes for a half hour.
In 2023, there are now ten minutes of ads for every ten minutes of content.
What was a 90 minute movie is now strung out to three hours on a channel.
If you want to watch a movie like Gladiator, you better carve out a five hour window in your day.
It really makes watching TV pointless.
The ad supported tiers of streaming services are getting the same way.
On Amazon you’ll get a seven minute block of ads. They are also the same ads every time.
Sometimes they will show the same ad three or four times in a row.
Some services that stream actual channels overwrite the ads that have already been paid to the channel to run, with their own ads.
So whoever paid History to run their ad, never actually gets that ad seen.
I really don’t even watch anything anymore because it is simply too annoying to do so, plus the content is absolutely terrible.
Almost every ad is for Big Pharma drugs or insurance.
It would actually be surprising to see an ad for something else.
Hulu, Netflix and other streaming services are turning to bundles, discounts and ad-supported plans as more Americans are canceling their subscriptions t.co/mqpWQFZI1z t.co/mqpWQFZI1z
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 3, 2024