TMI on TV screen

Over the past few years, I've grown more and more bothered by the amount of "stuff" I have to look at while watching broadcast television. Here's an example. While watching a favorite Sunday night show, I see the following:

At the 1:00 position: An logo for a window replacement company.

4:00 position: Station call sign and number, temperature and time.

Scrolling along the bottom: Blurb for what's going to be on the 11:00 news.

8:00 position: What's coming up next.

It wasn't like this when Ed Sullivan ruled Sunday nights. Am I the only one bothered by this constant advertising blitz?

We first gave up Cable TV. Then we gave up Satellite TV. 99 channels and none worth watching. Then we sold the big screen TV and got our lives back. We were down to a 9" kitchen TV and a USB ATSC tuner for the laptops when the digital transition obsoleted the 9" TV. We didn't buy a converter for the 9" but have the USB tuner if there's something critical on the news. Of course, we can watch a DVD (like Lynn Abram's) on the laptops.

Try life without TV. This is coming from someone who grew up watching Ed in the 50's. (Oh yeah, run AdBlock on Firefox or Safari)

Tolduonce said:

Over the past few years, I've grown more and more bothered by the amount of "stuff" I have to look at while watching broadcast television. Here's an example. While watching a favorite Sunday night show, I see the following:

At the 1:00 position: An logo for a window replacement company.

4:00 position: Station call sign and number, temperature and time.

Scrolling along the bottom: Blurb for what's going to be on the 11:00 news.

8:00 position: What's coming up next.

It wasn't like this when Ed Sullivan ruled Sunday nights. Am I the only one bothered by this constant advertising blitz?

Click to expand...

You just know that the person who implemented this at the TV station got bonus points on his/her annual review for this crap.

Moe said:

We first gave up Cable TV. Then we gave up Satellite TV. 99 channels and none worth watching. Then we sold the big screen TV and got our lives back. We were down to a 9" kitchen TV and a USB ATSC tuner for the laptops when the digital transition obsoleted the 9" TV. We didn't buy a converter for the 9" but have the USB tuner if there's something critical on the news. Of course, we can watch a DVD (like Lynn Abram's) on the laptops.

Try life without TV. This is coming from someone who grew up watching Ed in the 50's. (Oh yeah, run AdBlock on Firefox or Safari)

Click to expand...

I'm with you! Although you have a few years on me.

I got rid of television altogether, although I still watch things that I have on disc.

It wasn't just the onslaught of advertising that drove me to do this, but the overall quality of programming. When I was growing up, we had only a handful of channels, but there was usually something good to watch. Now, you have literally hundreds of channels, but they all show "filler" programming. So-called reality shows, infomercials and pseudo-news shows rule the small screen.

Now I surf the web mostly when I would have been watching TV, and watch a few programs on Hulu now and again. The advertising isn't that bad on Hulu YET.

And oh yeah, I run an adblocker but am much more inclined to use Chrome and Opera. I don't much like Firefox

We just Netflix now, with the Netflix-ready devices you can watch whatever you want just about. And there are free music channels and news that you can get as well. Satellite, cable and rabbit ears be damned.

I killed my television years ago.

Good ridden!

When we moved into the house we just didn't transfer the cable. The shows we like to watch we can still watch online.