Nancy, that’s a common strategy I think. I have a good friend that just turns the mute on and reads a few pages in a book while the ads are on. Most people sit there on their phones/ipads and do something similar (in the process, of course, getting bombarded with yet more online ads), and “when they come back” to the show, there are invariably pop-up ads superimposed on the actual program to thwart the multi-taskers.
My question to all you multi-taskers, how long would it take for you to notice if the program never actually came back on? 10 minutes? 15? 20? An hour? LOL
Sadly, we’re all slowly being eaten alive by all of this. We frogs are getting cooked in the ever-warmer pot of water and never thinking to just “jump out”. (although what that means, in this analogy, I’m not sure)
The other day I ran across a DVD of The Ed Sullivan Show with the complete program when The Beatles first played in 1964. The interesting thing was it was the ENTIRE program, commercials and all. And what stunned me most was how few commercials there were. It really threw me. I kept expecting that next break to come every 5-7 minutes or whatever it is now, and I believe there were only 4 breaks in an entire 60 minute program, and only for maybe 3 minutes of ads in each. It really threw my bladder for a loop!
I think there is a Black Mirror episode on Netflix about a dystopian future where people are forced to watch ads to earn credits. Maybe something like that is the solution. Advertisers serve up ads with a quiz at the end, and after you’ve achieved a passing score of whatever their message was, they’ll let the program continue? Or maybe you can bank enough credits to get an entire movie uninterrupted?
I have had Hulu offer me a choice of what commercial I wanted to watch, claiming that it would be shorter if I did that. I tried it a few times, but didn’t notice anything shorter happening than if I just ignored it completely and let it do it’s thing.
And for PBS, don’t even get me started on their relentless pledge drives… :{