Grumble Thread

[Serial_Apologist]

I was waiting for your analysis of ant adverts. But ...

Haven't seen any. What's the product name? Ant Agonism??

[Serial_Apologist]

....Oh yes....how else are we to know we are so happy happy - multiracile - happy happy - multiracile, happy happy - multiracile.... clean, clean, clean....new....and ready for a flutter on the dogs, horses, football, bingo, fruit machines....always ready to have a pension plan, funeral plan, and ready to take your boss to the cleaners....

....when the fun stops....stop....

Yesss!!!

Actually the one for London Insurance is quite good, showing a bloke probably in his 50s with a London accent telling a woman on a beach how good it is, then the same woman, who is Welsh and looks in her fifties, telling a black woman probably in her 50s how good it is, then the black woman telling the same message to someone who looks in his 50s and could be from Yorkshire, who in turn tells you the onlooker at this fable, who could be Muslim, bisexual, gender non-determinate, a serial apologist, even Scottish, that indeed, yes, London Insurance is good for you. A great ad for displaying national unity.

[Petrushka]

It's the endless repetition of certain ads that gets me, especially on Talking Pictures. Main culprits are the Peleton and the Alexa/Pompei ads.

[Old Grumpy]

It's the endless repetition of certain ads that gets me, especially on Talking Pictures. Main culprits are the Peleton and the Alexa/Pompei ads.

Agree - especially re Peleton - vomit-inducing (the ad) and potentially fatal!

[Richard Barrett]

My groan of the day has to be TV adverts.

Easy solution: don't watch TV. I haven't had a TV for 15 years.

[Dave2002]

My groan of the day has to be TV adverts.
....

I'm sure there must be lot more one could say about advertising.

I dislike almost all adverts with a vengeance. I particularly dislike pop up adverts on computer screens, or adverts embedded in otherwise serious text articles.

I do not believe that many adverts really "are necessary" - but we put up with them.

[cloughie]

I think most of the programmes with ads I have recorded so that when watching I fast forward through them so the only annoyance is having to do that!

[Serial_Apologist]

I dislike almost all adverts with a vengeance. I particularly dislike pop up adverts on computer screens, or adverts embedded in otherwise serious text articles.

I do not believe that many adverts really "are necessary" - but we put up with them.

The firms must think they are, otherwise why would they be pumping junk food and online gambling at pre-Watershed spectators. Mind you, the mentality level of so many of the ads these days must say as much about the people running the commissioning companies. What worries me somewhat is how supine people must be to be persuaded of the products on offer, otherwise the ads could not be afforded. If people have become so stupefied by being so patronised I don't hold out much hope for a more intelligent, informed future for the world.

[Richard Barrett]

If people have become so stupefied by being so patronised I don't hold out much hope for a more intelligent, informed future for the world.

What keeps the whole system going is compliance from those who don't know what's going on, and demoralisation from those who do.

[Nick Armstrong]

I think most of the programmes with ads I have recorded so that when watching I fast forward through them so the only annoyance is having to do that!

Absolutely: commercial channel programmes never watched live here, always recorded so the ads can be ff’d through (ditto programme sponsors - a car dealership on C4,the name of which escapes me, seems particularly repetitive & tedious).


For particularly atmospheric programmes (current example: Fargo), I take the step of going through editing out the breaks so that it can be viewed seamlessly.

The only exception is the All4 catchup service where ads are forced on you: in that case, the tv gets muted and emails & other messages checked.

Ads also pop up more and more on Twitter & Instagram & the like: I systematically block without looking.

[Bryn]

I think most of the programmes with ads I have recorded so that when watching I fast forward through them so the only annoyance is having to do that!

When it comes to ads in programmes I have recorded to hard disc for eventual burning to Blu-ray, I too fast forward through them but in my case, it's from the last frames of the pre-ad sections to the last frames of the ads. Then, having selected those sections, I deleted them, thus permitting a fairly straight run-through on full replay. Why Wfairly straight"? Because there is a very slight hiatus at each edit point during playback.

[Serial_Apologist]

The early days of recording programmes onto VHS tapes were before I had got around to putting on hold during any ad breaks. It's instructive now to re-watch those ads; I've never much liked advertisements on TV - even the Meerkat ones have become irritating now - but there is no doubt that the presentation, technology, images, and underlying tropes in those pre-Millennium adverts, were far superior to what we get today. One could be reductionist and say that one mark of "progress" is the appearance of more black and brown faces in today's efforts, but in the final analysis it's all, as MrGG would say, a matter of context.

[Nick Armstrong]

When it comes to ads in programmes I have recorded to hard disc for eventual burning to Blu-ray, I too fast forward through them but in my case, it's from the last frames of the pre-ad sections to the last frames of the ads. Then, having selected those sections, I deleted them, thus permitting a fairly straight run-through on full replay. Why Wfairly straight"? Because there is a very slight hiatus at each edit point during playback.

Ditto

[Petrushka]

I've always thought it a pity that some of the programmes I've been watching on Talking Pictures (eg Gideon's Way) don't get the full nostalgia fest treatment and come complete with ads from the time they were first broadcast.

[oddoneout]

Yet again the online schedule summary info contains a stupid mistake - "music by Beethoven, Mozart and Vikram Seth" - for this evening's concert. Interesting I thought, didn't realise Seth was more than an author. The fuller blurb gives the true picture - music by Alec Roth setting words by Vikram Seth...
If they can't put out the right info then don't put anything - just saying who the performers are would have been adequate for the headline. I suppose it's another example of the lack of knowledge about the R3 audience - it doesn't matter if the info is wrong, misleading or unhelpful because for some reason it is assumed that the listeners don't look up things on the R3 online listings.