So creatives aren’t happy. Customers aren’t happy. Broadcasters seem happy.
End-stage enshittification confirmed?
Commercials Are Streaming’s New Norm, and Creators Aren’t Happy: “It’s Almost Worse Than Broadcast”
Submitted 9 months ago by ZeroCool@slrpnk.net to moviesandtv@lemm.ee
Comments
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 9 months ago
Customers keep paying though. As long as that keeps happening they’ll keep doing it.
ME5SENGER_24@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I canceled cable service for 2 reasons: 1) commercials 2) watching 4 channels and paying for 100
Now with streaming, commercials are back and Im finding it harder and harder to locate decent things to watch.
Not sure where to turn next
space@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
You have 2 options. Buy the media on discs, or join us on the high seas.
ME5SENGER_24@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I’ve got my own Plex server but I’ve seen everything on it multiple times. Time to dust off the old eyepatch and peg leg, I guess
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Sail the seas, m’boy!
Cort@lemmy.world 9 months ago
With the writers and actors strikes this year, I think it’ll probably be slim pickens until summer or potentially autumn.
freamon@endlesstalk.org 9 months ago
It’s guaranteed to be worse: TV episodes are completely structured around whether the creators expect ads, and where in the runtime the ad will be (so they can resolve or tease a plot point before them).
The addition of ads, or having more ad breaks than the original transmitter of a show had, will break the structure.
And then of course there’s the ‘Spotify question’: are these ads genuinely supporting a subscription, or are they there to annoy you into paying for one by disrupting the flow of an episode as much as possible?
jordanlund@lemmy.world 9 months ago
What I want to know is how much money could insurance companies (cough, Liberty Mutual, cough) POSSIBLY be saving people when they are buying ads on every video on Youtube.
aelwero@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Libbity bibbity
ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I don’t know why but those Liberty Mutual commercials go in one ear and right out the other for me. I have YouTube Red so don’t know those but they sponsor live sports like crazy and one game this year, I was like, “What’s that emu about?” And my friend said, “Dude, they’ve been showing the emu commercials non-stop for like 5 years.”
I just googled it and they debuted the “LiMu Emu and Doug” campaign in 2019. So, it was 4 years before I noticed the emu. It’s good I can ignore ads but I would have definitely died in The Emu Wars.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You may have an issue with selective attention. Have you tried the test?
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
I wish I could see a liberty ad.
The only crap I see is “before you buy something on Amazon, see this” garbage.
JimmyBigSausage@lemm.ee 9 months ago
The abrupt commercial take away so much art in the craft.
xyzzy@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Welp, Paramount Plus has the Super Bowl and then Halo S2, which looks like it might be worth watching. After that it goes on the canceled pile with Netflix and “Max.”
I only have Hulu and Disney Plus at this point because they’re bundled with my phone plan, and Prime because of Amazon. I have Apple TV+ during MLS season.
But otherwise I’ll just stick to my Blu-ray collection and sign up for Netflix ad-free or whatever for two months every two years and binge everything worth watching. My backlog is long enough to last me years at this point.
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 9 months ago
We should just vote with our wallets… actually I think I need a new wallet, but right after that yeah.
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 9 months ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After a swift click on “not now,” this viewer cued up one of the more successful titles currently gracing Amazon’s roster — the second season of beefcake vigilante drama Reacher.
Interruptions, which included a spot for another series (Hudson & Rex, starring a German Shepherd detective) and a reminder from the folks at Intuit Turbotax that filling season has commenced, were indeed limited.
“We fought so hard to get rid of commercials,” says Alan Poul, executive producer and director of Max original Tokyo Vice which returns for a second season on Feb. 8.
Paramount expands its own ad-supported tier internationally later in 2024 — and though no official plans have been announced, recent hires at Apple TV+ suggest the tech behemoth will eventually introduce ads as well.
David E. Kelley, the one-time broadcast golden boy who gave audiences Picket Fences, Chicago Hope and Ally McBeal before pivoting to premiere outlets like HBO (Big Little Lies) and Netflix (The Lincoln Lawyer), seems similarly disenchanted.
Netflix, which recently cited that 40 percent of all new sign-ups opt for ads, announced the “retirement” of its least expensive commercial-free tier in the coming second quarter.
The original article contains 1,205 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city 9 months ago
Where did y'all think the extra money to comply with SAG-AFTRA and the WGA's demands' was gonna come from? Subscription revenue is not elastic relative to the content viewed, so that residual money has to come from somewhere.
ZeroCool@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
Commercial tiers on streaming services predate the terms of the new SAG-AFTRA and WGA deals.
realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city 9 months ago
Yep! Never said they didn't.
CanadianCorhen@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
yea, its not like Netflix made $33.7 billion U.S. dollars, with $5.5 billion of pure profit in 2023 alone…
realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city 9 months ago
If ten million more people stream The Crown tomorrow using ad-free Netflix plans, where is the residual money for those ten million additional streams supposed to come from?
Taleya@aussie.zone 9 months ago
Bullshiiiiiiiiiiiiit
realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city 9 months ago
ahaha
originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 9 months ago
yeah no, sorry. thats not an endorsement that people prefer ads, thats a testament to people being fucking broke. thanks for making their lives just a little but shittier though.
westyvw@lemm.ee 9 months ago
But if they are broke, why are they paying for TV? The last thing I would do is pay for streaming when money was tight…
I get your point to a degree, but come on, they are saying it simply isn’t worth it. 3 streaming services with ads is better than 1 without or something like that.
I mean there are a large number of free services with ads, so that has to be what they are thinking.
Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
People still want leisure in their life and that’s cheaper than most other forms of leisure. Just because someone’s broke doesn’t mean they will inherently not want easy access to entertainment.
navi@lemmy.tespia.org 9 months ago
It’s a money grab. Our Netflix plan price didn’t change, but they added ads. I can pay extra to get the same service I used to get.
They are just greedy for money and actively make the product worse instead of better. What better way than to encourage piracy.