Netflix, once a pioneer of ad-free viewing that offered a break from traditional TV norms, is now contemplating launching free ad-supported versions of its service in markets like Europe and Asia, Bloomberg reported.
The plans to offer a free ad-supported tier, albeit in select markets, suggests that pivot towards monetizing user data, in other words — making users and not the extensive library of award-winning shows a product, might be well in the pipeline.
I’ve been watching Monk recently, without ads, and it’s very interesting how television shows used to be written and edited for commercials. It’s dead obvious where the commercials used to be, and even that detracts from the overall experience.
I don’t mind those breaks… It feels like going to the next chapter in a book.
But actual ads, yea, not for a service that costs.
Though this whole thing is funny - they collect even more user data than they did with cable or broadcast, and now want to show you ads too.
Can’t wait to finish my media server setup.
Same, been watching Dead Like Me and Xena: Warrior Princess and it’s pretty distracting when it happens.
Futurama had some jokes based around the commercial break times.
The Simpsons as well.
we were not he consumers… we were the product lol…
yeah it hurts, so let’s stop allowing ads into our lives as much as possible…
the fact that netflix wants to offer it for free is telling what their core business i turning into…
Their core business is lost, IMO. Once they stopped offering movies in favor of their own content and tv shows, thats when it was game over for me.
I agree I stopped with them mid 2010s… their OG content is just low quality engagement slop. I prefer spytube for that.
I’m not streaming it, it’s on my media server, so there are no ads. I don’t pay for any services except Shudder because it’s still cheap and niche.
good, same here but we are a very small minority…
half the population still pays for cable haha
There are also shows that based jokes around the fact that they were going to or just came back from a commercial break and now you don’t have those in those shows. And now, I guess, they’ll go back to editing shows for ads.
What a weird modern landscape we’ve made for ourselves.
Every generation ever. Well, maybe since inventing the wheel
modern shows frame things differently to account for people watching on tiny phone screens and we might be bothered a few years down the line when we get holodecks or
mind controlimplantsIts painfully obvious when watching Star Trek TNG.
I don’t know if this was true in all markets, but in the Indiana market when we were kids, TNG would play a sort of mini-version of the theme when it went to break and now when a show or movie fades out or it’s an old show and goes to break, I annoy my wife by singing it.
Some shows we’ve watched spend their time “recapping” after the 'ad breaks", playing same scenes we just saw. Drives me nuts, wastes my time and feels so dated.
Monk doesn’t go that far, and it’s still obvious. “Here’s a joke before commercial!” Pause. Fade back in to a new scene. Pause. “Here’s a little cliffhanger before commercial!” Pause. Fade back in to a new scene. Pause.
That was a trope of real tv shows especially , and also a way to fill time with less filmed content i.e cost cutting. Often you’d see many shots 5-7 times throughout the show. Opening montage , before ad tease, after ad recap, thr event itself, end of show montage summary etc. Also drives me nuts. Even back when ads were between. “Yes I know what happened two minutes ago!”. And then there were so many shows you could tell the edit project file was a template and they just replaced the footage. Same exact structure every episode.
Anime was bad for this too, especially the dubbed kind and one piece.
Reality tv shows took this the farthest its so bad
One of my favorite skits for that: https://youtu.be/7MFtl2XXnUc?si=i6He7wklxdSt8gpn
Ahhh, I suffer from this with old animes!
I’m gonna be king of the recaps! 👒