There was a time that streaming offered a promise — under their models, commercials would be a thing of the past. However, Netflix, Disney+, Peacock, Paramount+ and Max have recently added ads in exchange for a slightly lower subscription fee, while Amazon turns commercials on by default.
Streamers had initially raced to acquire subscribers, but the issue of profit remained and Wall Street started to cool on their businesses. “Perhaps the changed viewing experience was inevitable” …
– New York Times Newsletter, 27 May 2024
Rinse and repeat.
Consider television, that priceless boon with endless possibilities for education, enlightenment, and the advancement of the human condition …
I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.
You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons.
And endlessly, commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba remembers the 1980s, when the fledgling Internet was touted as a savior, at last allowing instant and “free” communication between civilization and forsaken outposts such as the Antipodes. When a rogue advertiser showed up on a Usenet group one day and, in response to the roasting dey got from other participants in the group, snarled “How dare you interfere with commerce?” …
He remembers when YouTube videos (“This is You TV, for you, the viewer” … Firesign Theatre knew what was coming twenty years before it happened) were commercial-free … and when the slogan for YouTube’s parent company, then known as Google (now Alphabet), was “Don’t be evil”. Then the ads started showing up, which, once upon a time, the viewer could click off after a few seconds. Now? You watch the ads, all of them, for their full length, or you can fuggin’ fergit about the content you came for. Stupid sucker. Don’t be what? Consequently, YFNA will intrude upon YouTube space only when forced to, for professional reasons. And he will venture the suggestion that an entity that plonks a screaming ad for cat food in the middle of a movement of a Mozart symphony has no business being tolerated by a civilized society.
Is it worth mentioning that, according to Wikipedia, civilized society has made YouTube, ads and all, the second-most visited website on the planet, after the Google search engine?
He remembers sitting in a meeting of a company’s executive, listening to the marketing guru championing the virtues of software that records the electronic identity of machines that log on to the company website, and floods that identity with ads for the company’s products. “Wonderful sales driver!”, the guru exulted. “And, of course, you will sign on to the Zuckerscum social media empire, all of its nefarious outlets, and relentlessly like all of the company’s products and communications! Take off your shoes, for industry! Not to mention the billionaire lords to whom we bow in the name of our democracy. Jawohl?”
Rinse and repeat. We the People are presented with a Very Good Idea. Radio. Television. The Internet. Cell phones. Satellite communication networks. All for the “good of humanity”. We take the bait, pay for the dream … and then spend hours of the few precious days of our lives complaining about how all we get for our subscriptions are screaming inane commercials for Meow Mix. We blame the scammers in Nigeria, the hackers in Russia, the commies in China, the addlepated socialists, the brain-dead libertarians … everyone, in fact, except those who are truly responsible. Because We the People will not hold these Very Good Ideas to their promises, and will not jettison them when the promises prove to be no more than the latest set of bait and switch tactics. Because Commercials R Us, and We will have things no other way.
On the day before this post was written, YFNA made a phone call, responding to a message. The call was picked up, to the sound of a television blasting a commercial. Nothing could be done until the television was turned off.
The topic of the call?
Sounding Taps for the upcoming Memorial Day commemoration.