I don’t see the point of television these days, especially if you have easy access to internet. I have almost no clue of what’s happening in the world except the big global stuff, nevermind my country. We’re getting poorer, less jobs, yadayada… I bet that’s what’s going on in the news.
And I don’t watch media, I rather watch clips of movies I grew up with on YouTube.
Whenever I visit my parents the TV is on. They only have broadcast television, and ad breaks come on every 15 minutes and last 10 minutes. How can anyone watch a series episode or even worse, a movie like that is beyond me.
If you dont mind me asking, how old are you?
I grew up from 0 to mid-20s watching tv this way. As a child in the UK we had limited options, there were 4 (eventually) 5 analogue tv channels, which quite early on became something between 30 and 100 when we got “sky” tv (satellite) and that became somewhere close to 500 with some duplicates a bit later. But all of this was adverts every 10 to 15 minutes. Most programs ran in 30-minute blocks, including adverts. So either your show was 20 minutes with a break in the middle and the end to make it to 30, or it was 40 mins with a break every 10 minutes to make it to 1 hour. Breaks were about 5 mins each.
Generally this lead to channel hopping, you would watch fresh prince of bel air until the break, then swap to 5 minutes of a show that you dont need to follow like cow and chicken or a music channel and then swap back to fresh prince to catch the second half. As we got older, the breaks became a chance for talking or getting a drink or something.
Thats why i ask if you are young, because im 36 and i can remember tv being this way and not having an issue, but also feel like i couldnt go back to that way because its so much better now.
The issue is the big streaming services are all going that way and putting adverts before and even in between and in the middle of shows so soon i will be back to piracy :/ i guess.
I am older than you, but not by much. I too remember channel surfing, which I guess was the equivalent of scrolling through your phone. Frequent ad breaks were not really a thing in my country until early 2000s, when private TV stations began to take hold, and by then I had already switched to PC gaming as a primary source of entertainment. I’ve done everything I can to banish unwanted advertising from my life, the only one I cand stand is Steam sales, but only because I can get hours of etertainment for a symbolic price.