Commercial TV programming?
5Last night my family watched “Legally Blonde” on PBS. It was the 1st movie we watched as a family in 6+ weeks. My daughter & wife chuckled at appropriate parts of the movie. It was very enjoyable family entertainment.
In this time of social distanting, why aren’t major networks promoting and showing similar content? This question applies to OTA and cable broadcasters.
Please assume answers other than just money from advertisers.
- 8 comments, 25 replies
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How about the
programmingpandering to the lowest common denominator? Your movie choice was a great one, I watched it close to 2 decades ago with my mom.And as much as you want to discount advertisers @rtjhnstn, they are the reason TV networks show certain shows and cover certain news.
The networks exist as a business, the advertisers are where the money is.
@therealjrn notice what venue I watched iton.
@rtjhnstn
Yeah, Public TV has influence by advertisers as well.
@rtjhnstn @therealjrn oh don’t get me started on the fallacy of “commercial-free” television. They just put all the commercials between the shows instead of interrupting them throughout.
“Ya slobbered a bib full there, Loel.”
I run a publishing company. There are a couple newspapers in our stable. Real, actual, genuine news type newspapers. Old school broadsheets. We serve markets which would not have any source for news coverage within those specific markets without these newspapers. 100% of our operating revenue for those papers is generated by advertising.
In other words, those markets would have no source of localized news without our ad-sponsored newspapers. @therealjrn hit the nail squarely on the head.
(Yes, people do still get news from offline sources.)
Oh, and don’t forget that “reality TV” is very cheap to produce and that’s why we are awash in it.
@therealjrn Is there a term below meh for showing ambivalence?
@rtjhnstn @therealjrn Then it wouldn’t be ambivalence, would it?
Disdain?
@mike808 @rtjhnstn @therealjrn
Revulsion.
And don’t forget that the President of the United States thinks he is in a reality TV show himself, whoring himself upon the media, and his personal echo chamber, Fox “News”, gladly sucks on his “ego” 24x7 to create
a circusthis shitshow whilst Rome burns.@mike808 I haven’t forgotten about the orange skidmark and his inflated ego based, social media presence!
Commercial TV programming? What is that? We are Netflix and Amazon Prime all the way. Though we were very disappointed to find that Dr. Who has been removed from prime.
@jst1ofknd what about Hulu?
I don’t have Disney+
@rtjhnstn
Had Hulu. Liked Netflix better, cancelled Hulu. I don’t have Disney+. Can’t bring myself to get another subscription service, even though I really want to watch Star Trek Picard.
@jst1ofknd So, you have OTA antennas that receive a descent signal
@rtjhnstn
You are correct. I also live in an area where OTA comes in quite well, but I also cannot bring myself to be beholden to the network schedule.
@jst1ofknd @rtjhnstn
If you’re looking to cut the cord on being beholden to the OTA schedule, then you’ll need an OTA DVR.
Get a Silicon Dust HDHomerun Scribe Quattro or a Quattro and DVR subscription (for the guide), TiVo Roamio or Edge OTA + lifetime (for the guide), or a Tablo (+ their guide subscription). Plex lifetime comes with a DVR+guide service supporting the HDHR tuners if you already have that.
TiVo is the easiest to use, and MCEBuddy can remove commercials and transcode for later playback or your library off the recording device.
@mike808 @rtjhnstn
Now what you are saying goes against one of my core principles.
As in I’m too lazy and cheap to invest that time and money into this.
I mean the research alone might take multiples of minutes!
@jst1ofknd @rtjhnstn
Then buy a TiVo Edge OTA with lifetime guide service and be done with it in 5 minutes. It’s plug and play. Problem solved. There is no free lunch.
@mike808 @rtjhnstn
I don’t want a free lunch. If I did, then I would be a pirate, but then again that violates my laziness principle.
@jst1ofknd @mike808 @rtjhnstn I’m using MCEBuddy with my homebrew NextPVR DVR and it’s mostly great. But I really hate that it so often cuts off the pre/under credits bits of shows. Quite often there is a crucial dramatic or funny bit there (TWD, for example) that it cuts. I haven’t found a setting in MCEBuddy to control this. I’ve tried padding the recording end time, but it doesn’t always help.
@jst1ofknd @macromeh @rtjhnstn
Set your recordings to record 2 or 3 minutes after your show.
For timeshifting, we just record and watch on the TiVo, so cutting the “next episode” trailer isn’t a big deal for library/binge recording that happens on the HDHR. Also, the HDHR DVR has pre- and post- recording start/end time settings. Does the NextPVR not have that adjustment?
@mike808 Yeah, I set the recording manager to pad 1 min before and 3 min after scheduled time (and have verified that it does it), but MCEBuddy often still cuts the last commercial before the end credits as well as everything following. So I miss the last bit of the show just before (or under) the credits.
@macromeh Ask in the MCE Buddy forums on how to force including additional seconds of video at the end or to tell Comskip to not remove it.
TV broadcasters are trying to mimic the social internet. A movie is like a wall of text, and most of what is broadcast is more like a series of tweets, or a Myspace feed. IMO, broadcasters think they can get more viewers with a continuous series of tidbits as opposed to something best viewed from beginning to end.
/giphy wall of text Myspace
@rtjhnstn
If anyone has Plex Lifetime or a Plex subscription, Legally Blonde is part of the PlexPass content.
Even better, it is streamable for FREE on Pluto.TV
@mike808 @rtjhnstn
Uh…ok…I thought I did. But you didn’t like my answer because it wasn’t in lock-step with your views? How open-minded of you.
The OTA networks and cable channels don’t show that kind of content all the time because there are already channels dedicated to exclusively showing that content. Hallmark TV and TCM come to mind. Combine with the mess of exclusive and geo-restricted licensing terms, and you get the Frankenstein of OTA, cable, streaming, VPNs, DVD, BluRay, and “grey market” sources we have today.
Lazy or cheap. Pick one. There is no solution other than to acquire the content and make your own library to watch what you want when you want.
Possibly related to the need for Stay at Home viewing, I see PBS is going to start showing the Prime Suspect series, starting with S1 E1 next Thursday. If you’re on OTA and looking for something to get hooked on, there’s nothing better …
@stolicat FYI - It’s the 2017 prequel/reboot, not the original 70s Prime Suspect with Helen Mirren. It was just called “Tennison” when it aired in 2017, an it is on Amazon, but not part of Prime.
The only series that eclipses Prime Suspect, IMO, is The Closer (with Kyra Sedgewick) and the follow-up, Major Crimes. Right now Major Crimes is in syndication on OTA, and I think the Justice TV channel is running The Closer and it is streaming on Amazon Prime.
@mike808 No, it appears to be the original, according to the listing:
@stolicat Weird. My listings show the 2017 prequel and it is a 2-hr single block movie. Might be a pledge teaser.
@mike808 Actually, when I was looking it up on DirectTV’s schedule, it first showed the 2017 version, but switched to the original when I entered my zip. I’ve noticed lots of variation in PBS scheduling when chatting with people on other parts of the country.