Please, PLEASE stop with the damned commercials!

A few nights ago Jezebel and I were watching an episode of the syndicated version Sex and the City (and yes, I do like the show). For those not familiar, the syndicated one has all of the best material taken out: the cursing, the comedy, and the nudity. Oh, and the end of the episodes. They don't seem to think that's as important as squeezing another commercial break in. I'm not exaggerating when I say that in a 30-minute time period, they had no less than 6 commercial breaks. Needless to say by the sixth I had vowed that we would never again let our Tivo tape the syndicated version of the show, and I would write a strongly worded letter to station complaining. The letter never got written, but I have managed to write a blog entry on my discontent.

Why in the hell are television stations increasing commercial breaks instead of spending time finding new ways to make money? With broadband penetration rates still rising and the popularity of video-enabled devices (iPods, cell phones, etc.), shouldn't the television companies start to look for new angles or production avenues to ensure that they still provide a service that we couldn't otherwise get from the Internet? I know that Internet video is sometimes littered with ads as well, but they're at least marginally smarter about it. Most of the time the ad is a single ad placed at the beginning of the video. As long as you're willing to sit through 30 seconds of advertising, you can watch the rest of the video in peace, instead of piecemeal.

Why no television station has begun to experiment with new advertising methods (single sponsors of segments, using the ticker to advertise instead of cutting to commercial, etc.) is beyond me. It's seems like its a method that continues to make just enough money for them that they're unwilling to experiment, something that is openly embraced on the Internet, often with great success.

DVRs and the like have made it abundantly clear that television viewers are sick and tired of commercials, particularly when an hour-long show has over 20 minutes of them interspersed among the program. Why not experiment with new models that people might not actually skip? How about making commercials 5 minutes long at the end of a program, and interactive? DVRs are usually hooked up to some kind of information distribution service, meaning there are ways to make the commercials interactive. Tivo has done this to some extent with their "Thumbs up for more!" crap; though I think that was a bad attempt, I give them some points for at least making an attempt.

Sadly all the television companies are content to do is come up with new ways to restrict what we can record, force us to watch ever more commercials, and sell ad space to companies that have made absolutely horrible ads. The few commercials that are good never get the repeated airplay of the utterly horrible ones. Case in point: Nationwide Insurance played a bunch of commercials during the Superbowl, including one with a woman on an airplane, and another with Fabio. Which one continues to get airplay, and which one was never shown again? If you saw both of those commercials, then you already know the answer. I hate Fabio, and he's not even pretty, he's just scary. Terrifying even. I think the bird that broke his nose some years back was just trying to do a public service.

So the moral of this post: be afraid of Fabio. Very, VERY afraid.