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.
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.
God I’ve been watching through Bleach and it’s like this. Each 22 minute episode is really only about 12 minutes long with the rest being a 5 minute recap of the previous episode, the intro, credits, and post credit filler.
Edit: a tangent of this would be watching a sitcom with the laugh track removed. Imagine seeing the actors awkwardly standing there in silence in the middle of their dialog where the laugh track would normally be inserted.
A funny second tangent is the musicless music videos on YouTube. Definitely worth checking out for a laugh.
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.
At this point if I’m ever responsible for making a tv show it will have obvious places for commercials to go just because I don’t want them butchering it.
Good luck, if you ever watch any of the free TV apps like freevee they will just hard cut in a commercial, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. Then they have the old places where a commercial was in the OG broadcast and it just fades to black and back. It’s really jarring to watch.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
I always thought it would be a nice addition to piracy for a release group to edit a version of shows that cuts the recaps and makes a more unified episode. I would totally only ever download their releases.
Mythbusters streamlined is like that. A bit rough on some cuts imo, but overall just cuts the fluff.
Mythbusters is 50% recap, that sounds so much more enjoyable to watch. Where would I find that?
It’s on reddit going back quite a few years, with a recent tracker update:
https://www.reddit.com/r/smyths/comments/8gix4w/streamlined_mythbusters_complete_may_2018_update/
I was about to mention this example. It’s everything you love about mythbusters (doing crazy science experiments), without everything you hate about mythbusters and what made me stop watching. No more constant hopping over between the different myths per episode, or tons of recaps.
Just myths, one at a time, no bullshit.
Myth busters had to be the worst offender in that realm. “here a 2 minute recap of that things you just saw 5 minutes ago.”
My thoughts exactly when i was watching old seasons of Canadas worst drivers
My wife and I recently started watching that. Skipping the first 6 minutes of episodes because we don’t need to meet all the drivers again, skipping at every commercial break because I don’t need to see what’s coming up or what we just watched…
Great show, but binging seasons gets rough
Maybe the vid angel people can get on that.
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
I was eagerly anticipating “I’m looking for a gift for my aunt”.
Nail, head
Ahhh, I suffer from this with old animes!
I’m gonna be king of the recaps! 👒
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
Same, been watching Dead Like Me and Xena: Warrior Princess and it’s pretty distracting when it happens.
we were not the customers… 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 is turning into…
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
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.
Futurama had some jokes based around the commercial break times.
The Simpsons as well.
Its painfully obvious when watching Star Trek TNG.
music swells, fade to black
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.
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 controlimplantsI 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.
I don’t mind when it’s an obvious break followed by a new scene. I do mind when the break is in the middle of a scene and they essentially replay the last thirty seconds before continuing the story. It just feels very disjointed and dated.
Ah, yea, that seems more like something that wasn’t intended for breaks.
Definitely disruptive.
It’s even worse if you’re watching competition shows:
“Coming up: things you’re going to see in the next 5 minutes.”
“Welcome back: recap of what you’ve seen in the last 5 minutes.”