Netflix Cuts Out Over 6 Days Of Commercials From Your Life Per Year, Compared To Cable TV (businessinsider.com) 127
An anonymous reader writes: Netflix knows their customers hate ads. "We know one of the benefits of an ecosystem like Netflix is its lack of advertising," Howard Shimmel, a chief research officer at Time Warner, told Bloomberg last year. "Consumers are being trained there are places they can go to avoid ads." In response to Netflix's advertising policy, many networks have actually cut back on the amount of ads they show in an effort to lure back in the younger Netflix generation. CordCutting.com crunched some numbers and found that each Netflix subscriber saves themselves about 158.5 hours of commercials per year. Here is how they figured that out: "First, it took Netflix's recent 75 million subscriber mark. Then, it combined that with a quote from CEO Reed Hastings that said subscribers stream 125 million hours every day. That means every subscriber streams about 1 2/3 hours per day. Then it looked at Nielsen data, which showed that the typical hour of cable TV includes 15 minutes and 38 seconds of commercials. If you combine that with the Netflix subscriber data, then you get that each subscriber avoids around 158.5 hours per year of commercials -- if they were watching Netflix instead of cable TV," writes Nathan McAlone via Business Insider.
Dirty Cerebellum (Score:2)
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Interesting, a citation would be nice on the 80% number.
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I don't really care about the race or sex of the person(s) on the commercials, I try to watch as few as possible.
I have, however, been noticing trends:
1. Do people no longer marry within their race? ON SOO many new commercials, they are mixed race, usually black
product placement = ads (Score:2)
Netflix shows have a ton of product placement, just because the ads are on while the show is running doesn't mean it isn't there.
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There are only 3 news meta sites that i am aware of.
News.yahoo.com
News.google.com
News.bing.com
Yahoo has sponsored stories about every 4th story
Google seems to have left their aggregator to rot as it is now picking up all sorts of stuff in the summarys savesaved.
Bing I hate to say actually has the most bs free ui for news.
Anymore I wonder if you just printed out a copy of the onion if people could tell the diffrence from the clickbait that is all too common now.
Re:product placement = ads (Score:4, Interesting)
Product placement doesn't bother me that much as long as its not blatant https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
And I don't watch much of the netflix originals so I haven't really noticed it. However It does annoy me when I get to the end of a movie and it minimizes the credits so it can show me a full screen ad for house of cards or whatever the new original crap they are currently trying to push. I wanted to watch the dance scene at the end of the credits dang it.
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I can watch the credits full screen by arrowing to the small credits box and pressing select. Your particular button selection might be different.
Ahoy there! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Any way of configuring things so that it never does this?
Sometimes this switch to minimized is really jarring and intrudes on stuff that the film producer wants people to see. I also like to know who I've been watching, who made it, what the music was, etc. I shouldn't have to leap for my remote in order to not have that interrupted.
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If you click or select the minimized credits area, it restores them to full screen. Works with most netflix UIs I've run into... but if you are using the app built into your smart TV or something... all bets are off :)
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Uh, no. (Score:3)
Unless you have a DVR. It takes me about 30 seconds to skip past those 15 minutes of commercials on my TiVo. News is about the only thing I watch live.
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Anyone with half a brain is skipping the commercials, using that time to get some food/drink, use the toilet, yell at the kids, channel surfing, or *anything* other than staring at the commercials.
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Anyone with half a brain is skipping the commercials, using that time to get some food/drink, use the toilet, yell at the kids, channel surfing, or *anything* other than staring at the commercials.
You can't avoid commercials by surfing.... all the stations have synced their commercials so you have no choice but to surf to 'their' commercial.
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You can't avoid commercials by surfing.... all the stations have synced their commercials so you have no choice but to surf to 'their' commercial.
Right, because no one watches TV with a digital recording device that is capable of skipping ahead 10-30 seconds at a time, or skipping commercials almost automatically by pressing a single button.
Nearly a thousand dollars for a TiVo (Score:3)
Not exactly "nobody", but I imagine that the majority of TV watchers aren't willing to pay $200-$300 for a TiVo device and $600 more for a subscription to the required service. Or to which competing "digital recording device" do you refer?
If paying per month, get the cable company's DVR (Score:2)
You don't have to buy the most expensive/latest TiVo to get the benefits of their new skip capability.
But you do need to buy TiVo service, and I seem to remember a sub costing $600 even on a device that isn't "the most expensive/latest".
Also, you can get the service as a subscription model.
If you're willing to pay $150 per year (source [tivo.com]) for the use of a DVR, you might as well get the cable company's DVR, especially if you can bundle the federally mandated basic service (just locals, C-SPAN, and public access) with your existing Internet access from the same cable company. It's fewer boxes by your TV, and possibly more likely to support oddball cases such as SD
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We (my wife and I) don't watch live TV, too often. Where we can, we set the DVR and wait 15 minutes.
We then happily add skip and usually end up finishing the show live - Sometimes we end up catching up to the live stream during the final add break, but such is life.
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But they have crippled fast forward to where you see the ads.
When Dish started, you could skip 30 seconds forward by pressing the skip forward button.
You didn't "fast forward" thru the content unless you pushed the fast forward button.
Since most show are 42 minutes on DVD, they must have 18 minutes of non show / non-credit content.
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Yes, Such restrictions are coming on content recorders here also. (New Zealand)
My 1st DVD recorder (Panasonic) came with a Manual Skip functions - Automatic 30 Seconds. (preNZ Freeview)
My 1st BluRay HDD recorder (Panasonic) increased the manual skip function to 1 Minute increments (non Freeview certified) - Also allowed HD output via component cabling.
My 2nd BluRay HDD recorder (Panasonic) removed ManualSkip function altogether although we do use fastforward (FreeView Certified) Only Allows HD output via HD
MythTV Removing Ads (Score:5, Informative)
We have been using MythTV for over a decade. The automatic commercial detection is pretty good, but we usually take a minute to set cutpoints (tweaking the detected commercials), and then transcode the recording to drop the commercials. Our son *never* sees commercials. I'm sure that has saved us tons of begging for toys and whatnot.
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Our son *never* sees commercials.
Unless you homeschool your son and your son doesn't have any friend or classmate, this protection won't last long.
Commercials and the influence they wield will get to him eventually.
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To some extent, that's true. He's young enough that play with friends is still a bit managed (in large part because his friends are in different neighborhoods, so driving is involved). I expect the lack of exposure will reduce the impact they have on him when he does see them.
On the other hand, he often gets excited about seeing ads the few times it happens because they're so rare.
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We cut cable years ago. At a hotel this weekend my 3-year-old complained every time a commercial came on, because she thought I'd changed the show on her. It was hard trying to explain why hotel TV was so obnoxious.
On the other hand, even without commercials the kids never seem to run out of things to ask for, so I'm not sure it's that much of a benefit. Just not having to see/listen to the commercials is still the biggest perk, for me.
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My ad blocking is successful at blocking Youtube ads, so at least at home, he's safe there.
Re:MythTV Removing Ads (Score:4, Interesting)
We have been using MythTV for over a decade. The automatic commercial detection is pretty good, but we usually take a minute to set cutpoints (tweaking the detected commercials), and then transcode the recording to drop the commercials. Our son *never* sees commercials. I'm sure that has saved us tons of begging for toys and whatnot.
My friend does this too, it makes for great kids that don't nag, which is exactly what the billions of dollars of psychology invested in commercials is designed to create. From what I've seen (they're about 10 now) you are on the right track to producing some well balanced human beings that won't require therapy later on in life.
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Any child about 12 or under who grew up in a technology household with DVRs and streaming likely has seen a fraction of the commercials children 10 or more years old saw, even if there isn't any effort to specifically block them.
I think you might be surprised at your son's reaction had he seen them. The few commercials my son does watch, it always surprises me how he sees through so many of them. "Dad, why is it the viagra commercials always have a woman a lot younger than the man?" stands out, but it's k
Re:MythTV Removing Ads (Score:4)
Here in germany, the tv companies went another road. Now they use overlays on the movie for advertisment (additional to the breaks).
They not only place them above the bottom of the movie (instead of inside the black bars, when there are some), but they even tried to awful extensions
- Movie zoomes out. Blue border, to the left a video advertisment, to the right the movie
- A Fullscreen Overlay (with some transparent non-square border) over the full movie. In an horror movie in an thrilling scene.
Pretty desperate. Or pretty evil. Or both.
FX (Score:3)
While watching FX at my friend's place the other day, we put a stop watch on the shows.
8:30 of show, then 4:30 of commercials, repeat.
Re: FX (Score:2)
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Also, Netflix runs ads for its own content before shows and after shows.
Of course, the CEO of Netflix states categorically that these previews Netflix forces you to watch (before being able to watch your own shows, or during the rolling of the credits) are not ads, but I don't think the idiot realizes that this kind of rhetoric doesn't help.
As a customer, I can withstand ads of internal content, after all, they're not that bad, but having an asshole lie straight to my face over and over again and insult my
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Also, Netflix runs ads for its own content before shows and after shows.
On what platform? Is it recent? I have not seen that.
Re: Uh, no. (Score:2)
Also, Netflix runs ads for its own content before shows and after shows.
What do you use for watching Netflix? We use an AppleTV and I've never seen this. I just tried it out, played an episode of Daredevil (one of their original series). The episode began playing immediately, no ads. I fast-forwarded to the end. The credits minimized to the left, and on the right it showed the info for the next Daredevil episode and a countdown timer for it to auto-play (if you consider that an ad, that is being really nitpicky). To see the credits in fullscreen, just select them and click.
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30 seconds? More like a minutes or so since there are many breaks! :(
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This is why
Mute button, snacks, bathroom breaks, etc. (Score:2)
I mute the system the moment a commercial begins. I check my email real quick on my phone (just a matter of seconds), maybe get a snack, turn my head to talk to my SO, etc.
Commercials don't bother me at all. Because I simply don't pay any attention to the content they present.
Hulu has a nice feature, a little timer icon at the top left. You can tell exactly how much time remains in the commercial. I use that to get the mute button off at just the right time, and no sooner. :) But if it goes away, it's no bi
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Sure, there are those who roll their own Myth TV or somesuch, but...
the VAST MAJORITY of people with a DVR like device GET IT FROM THE CABLE OR SATELLITE company...
Thanks for letting me clear that up for you.
Myself, I don't have a DVR.
I have NF and watch that or PBS.
Occaisionally I watch the usual broadcast digital OTA channels also, which is when people mute the commercials.
Okay, let's calculate this.... (Score:1)
There are 6 TV programs per week that I regularly watch. Commercial breaks are about 3 minutes a piece, and there are typically 5 such breaks in one hour. That works out to 15 minutes per show of commercials, and six such shows makes 90 minutes of commercials. There are as many as 26 weeks throughout the year where there is actually new programming, and I don't watch shows I've already seen so that works out to a grand total of as many as 39 hours of commercial watching in an entire year. That's kin
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Commercials are the opportunity to get some bread to go with the circus.
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I sincerely do not understand the mentality of people that experience moral outrage at commercials. My son is the same way, and he can't explain it to me.... but commercials make him feel like his head is going to explode. He cannot even be in the same room as someone who is sitting quietly without even being phased by the fact that their entertainment happens to have been interrupted by a commercial.
I frankly suspect it's some sort of power trip.... because commercials may represent a lack of control
Re: Okay, let's calculate this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't exactly call my feelings "moral outrage," but commercials are actually quite annoying. I personally never noticed it until I "cut the cord" and haven't had cable for quite a few years. Once you get used to TV all the time without commercials, you realize how truly disruptive and annoying they can be. Personally, when I stay with family or whatever now and they have broadcast TV on, I usually just leave the room and go do something else. TV is already mostly a waste of time, but with commercials it has now become unbearable for me.
Imagine if you were trying to read a book or look at art in a museum or something, and every 5 minutes some annoying person would come around and shout at you or do something random and stupid to distract you... That would be really ridiculous, but most people accept it when watching TV. Once you live without those distractions for a while though, you realize how weird it is.
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I'd like to add to this that not just the concept of commercials becomes foreign to you, but even more so the actual content of them.
Once you're not used to commercials anymore, their absurdity becomes very readily apparent: Three people in big plastic balls rolling into a pool and subsequently drinking ice tea(tm). What the actual fuck?
We all understand that the main thing about commercials is standing out and getting brand recognition, but that changes nothing about how weird it is to behold them.
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For me it's the insults. Some try to tell me I'm inadequate. Some try to tell me I'm an idiot. Some just insult my intelligence by assuming I'll enjoy their nonsense. And they have the audacity to crank up my volume control, another insult. The usually have some little insults written at the bottom of the screen too, stuff like "not actual gameplay" or "terms and conditions apply". They are trying to sell me stuff, and they lie to my face hoping I won't notice?
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Once you get used to TV all the time without commercials, you realize how truly disruptive and annoying they can be.
Netflix has also made me more aware of how some shows are structured for commercial breaks, when they fade to black and then come up at the same scene, or worse, repeat or even slightly change bits of what you just saw.
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I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you haven't had kids :)
Okay, seriously.... I've watched stuff on streaming services many times. One of my grown-up sons has a Netflix subscription and the year before last, he had moved back in with us for a few months due to some unexpected circumstances at his own home. During that time, I d
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I HAVE TO mute commercials.
It would be interesting for someone to do a study, using some kind of brain wave, ecg, eeg, whatever to monitor people.
They would be watching something they enjoy, and then the commercials come on.
How do they feel?
How is their brain affected?
Heart rate, blood pressure, anxiety levels, etc
IMHO you could definitely see the negative affects of advertising.
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I threw away my mod points to relate this to you, i hate commercials that much.
When you say you don't even barely notice commercials then you have fully accepted them and let them program you completely. good job. If you noticed them at least you could make some conscious judgement about them but instead you don't even notice that the three food commercials in a row are now making you hungry, that you choice of drink is the one you've subconsciously seen more than the others.. oh wait you feel like a chang
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Average American watches about 5 hours per day. You're the weird one.
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Nothing wrong with being weird. Remember that if you vote that also makes you weird; if you read then you're weird; if you're on slashdot then you're so weird that tofurkey seems normal.
Re:Okay, let's calculate this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and commercial breaks also gives the opportunity to mentally disengage from the tv screen
You know what else does that? The pause button. We use that when we want to talk about what we're watching. Then we un-pause, and go on watching it... on our schedule.
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but the pause button is an active disengagement... you may pause in the middle of somebody saying something, for example, even without meaning to. Commercial breaks are, at least, usually actually *between* scenes... and give you the opportunity to disengage from the TV without having to concentrate over when to hit that pause button.
Huh, really? Commercials "between scenes"? I guess you've never watched any mystery series or drama or... Well pretty much anything that might ever have suspense built in. Or the news -- " Stay with us... Up next, all those parts of the news you actually want to hear about, but which we delay until later to force you to watch commercials..."
I mean, seriously do you have a clue how programming is often explicitly designed to end on a disruptive point before a commercial to ensure you're in suspense and
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True.... but the pause button is an active disengagement...
Oh noes, a passive disengagement from my active disengagement
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... so that works out to a grand total of as many as 39 hours of commercial watching in an entire year. That's kinda falling pretty short of their estimate of 6 days. That's not even 2.
You're watching 0.86 hours per day, on average (6 1-hour shows over 7 days) rather than the population average of 1.67. Basically, half the amount of TV watching per week.
Then you're only watching 26 weeks per year, so again, half of the population average.
Thus, overall you're watching about 1/4 as much as the average person. 6.6 days / 4 = 1.65 * 24 = 39.6 hours. Tada! The magic of math.
Re: Attack (Score:1)
Hey now, don't trash cable companies. They perform a useful service. They sell me a decently fast net connection so I can watch all my tv on Netflix!
You know what else will cut 6 days (Score:2)
Is TV 100 percent commercials now? (Score:1)
I don't think I have watched 6 days of of TV in the past 2-3 years combined.
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Looked at another way, 75 million subscribers * 158.5 hours per subscriber = 12 billion hours or 1.356 million years saved. Divide by the U.S. life expectancy of 78.74 years shows Netflix saved 17,234 lives.
They should get an award or something.
Satan isn't so bad (Score:3)
Not better than not watching TV at all (Score:3)
I think they did the math wrong (Score:3)
Here is how they figured that out: "First, it took Netflix's recent 75 million subscriber mark. Then, it combined that with a quote from CEO Reed Hastings that said subscribers stream 125 million hours every day.
There is not a 1:1 relationship between subscribers and viewers; husband, wife, 1.25 kids, yada. I suspect--wild ass guess--it is more on the order of ~1:3. So the hours saved per account doesn't change but hours per viewer goes down by ~third. I'm a little surprised it is so few streamed hours per subscriber.
Cable Too Greedy! (Score:2)
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My cable bill is $240 a month.
Seriously??
As someone from outside the US I don't really have a handle on how much things cost over there, but really? $240? A MONTH?
W T F ?
I hope that means you're paying for the absolute top-rated package available.
For comparison, here in the UK, Virgin Media charges £75 ($108 USD) a month for their top-spec package, which includes *all* their TV channels, 200mbps broadband and a phone line, plus a free 6-month Netflix subscription thrown in. Or I can pay £45 ($65) for the same thing minus the
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I'll chime in as another "$240?!?" voice here, because whittling that number down a bit can certainly be done. First off, you can purchase your own cable box outright [cableboxandmodem.com]. My cable company charges $20/month for a standard box, and $36/month for a DVR box. these boxes will pay for themselves in less than a year, and by law, your cable company must make a Cablecard available for you. If you're a DIY type like me, you can pick up one of these [ebay.com] and use it with either Windows 7 (it's the only OS that supports all the
When can we have a health study on commercials? (Score:2)
When I was a kid I was diagnosed with ADHD. This wasn't some huge thing, it seemed like every other kid in my generation had it. For me, the medication works so it's minor inconvenience at best. But I've noticed that in the past few years as I've switched from cable TV to Netflix and Amazon Prime that my ability to concentrate has improved an astounding amount. It's almost like my brain isn't being conditioned to rip my attention away from what it is I'm focusing on and violently change contexts every 30 se
That feeling when you anticipate a commercial (Score:3)
Perhaps something from the History Channel.
You can tell when the program is going to cut to a commercial, the music queues it up...
But then...
No commercial!
I love it!
What is interesting is sometimes I get an almost anticipatory anxiety, when I can tell it would normally go to a commercial.
But then when the ad doesn't show and the program just keeps on going, its almost blissful.
A datum for you kids (Score:2)
When cable was first coming in, late seventies and early eighties... and I am not making this up, I saw the ads... a huge part of their advertising emphasis was "buy cable, and you'll never have to watch commercials again".
And that was back when there *might* have been 10 min of commercials per hour.....
mark "they lie, like a rug"
No net savings (Score:2)
The cable model is dead.... (Score:2)
The cable companies are desperately clinging to content monopolies (ex. ESPN, etc.) to survive. I rarely watch anything live on TV anymore, other than the local news. Even sports, which I at one time swore had to be watched live, is better on the DVR. I watched the Superbowl that way last year. Zipped over all the commercials and that ridiculous time waster of a half time show. Must have cut a good hour out of it.
When I watch Netflix the thing I notice about having no commercials is not only less time to wa
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25% junk? (Score:1)
weird times (Score:1)
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It's also the reason why I put such a high value on the BBC (yes, I'm in the UK) and why I really don't mind paying the license fee.
The BBC kicks ass.
I listen to it at night sometimes driving home.