I suspect regular programming isn't getting dumber, the alternatives are just getting smarter.

When I look at the crap I watched as a kid in the 80s (which included a good amount of 70s reruns), basically all broadcast TV today is far superior. But the competition for broadcast TV isn't "no competition" now, it's the Internet, and computer games, and Netflix. The entertainment industry has been blown wide open by the Internet and computers, and so now they have to compete with thousands of alternatives instead of just having 3 channels to choose from. Naturally, quality goes up.

When I was a kid, the "rots your brain" videogame that my parents would only let me play at friends' houses was Super Mario Brothers. Now, my "rots your brain" pastime is Factorio, which is a game where people are literally designing chips in:

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/2vqzlx/8_bit_alu_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/4aijlw/here_is_my...

One thing that is certain is that there are more commercials now. If you watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory sans commercials, you will notice that it is only 17 minutes long! And that includes the 60 second intro. So 13 minutes of commercials for 16 minutes of actual content. No chance I'll be going back to regular TV.

To be fair, the commercials are the best part of watching The Big Bang Theory. Much better to spend a few minutes imagining how cool I would be if I just owned Product X rather than see a nerd minstrel show with an annoying laugh track.

Thanks that’s such a great way to put it! I couldn’t have said it better myself. Watching shows like BBT about “nerds” is really depressing. I mean compare how math was depicted in 1952 vs today: https://imgur.com/a/Mvwgt. Look, it’s math, sort of. Today it’s nothing but a minstrel show that makes science seem even more inaccessible than it was portrayed just 20 years ago.

Not to mention the downright offensive portrayal of aspergers and autism in general. And also, "LOL look at Penny, she's so stupid in comparison to these genius nerds, hahaha, oh awww but she's so sweet and pretty, oh haha there goes Sheldorp with more of his antics, what a loveable hateful genius, wow I wonder when I'm gonna learn my next Physics Fact. Geez I wish I weren't so stupid, I'll never be as smart as these guys..."

Tried it. Hated it. The same way I hated South Park. Cheap laughs. Punching down vs punching up. Mean spirited.

Definitely reconsider watching Southpark. The last few seasons are the sharpest social and political satire on television.

South Park Seasons 18 and 19 are almost like a different series as compared to the previous seasons.

Thanks for the replies. I'll reconsider.

I still haven't forgiven Parker & Stone for telling people that voting didn't matter. If they've grown up, with some kind of mea culpa, I'll be happy to welcome them back to civil society.

This is not the image I have of SP. Okay with cheap laughs, but I believe they (mostly) punch up.

Reconsider. Watch South Park "Grounded Vindaloop" episode.

For those who took the bait, I'm thinking they're missing something. For what it is worth, I've met quite a few young people who credit their interest in studying medicine and biology to shows like CSI (which I personally loathe).

Anyone have an anecdote of young BBT fans being drawn to physics or math?

Sure, it's a comedy, but it's not like there's a watchable Star Trek turning a new generation towards STEM. Mr. Robot, probably just breeding more anarchists.

Orville. Check it out.

…really? "Nerd minstrel show?" Ah yes, we poor nerds, overcoming centuries of repressive awkwardness and desk jobs.

Maybe an analogy in poor taste, but the premise of BBT is basically “look how many negative stereotypes of scientists and engineers we can get our audience to point and laugh at, if we take our lazy awkward mean-spirited writing and put a laugh track over the top”.

Try searching for versions with laugh track removed to get a better sense of the writing per se without the extra emotional manipulation.

Compare with Silicon Valley, a comedy show which also mercilessly skewers nerds, but more for the sake of social commentary than just piling on insults, and which treats even the most caricatured characters with some dignity and humanity.

I find this sentiment interesting. I find BBT hilarious and identify with the characters. I often drag my wife to watch a specific BBT episode to get her to understand the way I think or understand the way I was in the past before I met her. I don't find it demeaning at all. I often find it hilarious and say, "yeah, that's me right there!" I see myself in Sheldon, Leonard, and Howard all of them. Raj, not so much. I haven't watched enough of The IT Crowd that people here on HN cite as being a better show to know what I think of it. The few clips I've seen on YouTube, I've only seen the IT Crowd characters being bullied more than I ever saw BBT characters get bullied. It's probably a biased sample, maybe those clips are at the top of the list because people like to watch nerds get bullied? I don't know. All I know is that I don't get all the hate towards BBT.

It’s for those of us who aren’t able to express ourselves using the characters. My family, friends, and outsiders use the stereotypes to label me or describe me in ways I find incorrect. It’s not a knock against those it does, I’m just incorrectly placed and it’s frustrating. In some ways, yes, it’s hating the symptom and not the root, but I’m only human despite my steadfast nihilism.

I like IT Crowd, but I agree, it is just some funny, derpy IT guys that nothing every goes right for. But BBT guys have a lot of the stereotypes but generally come out triumphant over the bullies and thugs of the world. If anything, BBT celebrates "nerds" more than any other show in recent memory.

I never really watched much of it, but this PA comic[1] from a few years back clued me into this. I can't say I disagree (even if I've known plenty of nerds that like Big Bang Theory). Sterotypes often have some truth to them, to lesser and greater degrees, but that doesn't mean playing them up to an extreme degree for laughs is something we should necessarily encourage.

1: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/01/21/royalty

Someone made a series out of Revenge of the Nerds?

I stole this from someone else, but I can’t remember who. BBT is what stupid people think smart people are like.

I think Big Bang Theory is terrible but I don't think the people who like it are dumb. Just a different taste in humor. I've heard a similar observation but contrasting Big Bang Theory with Arrested Development (or Community or Rick and Morty, whichever someone wants to say is smart, I guess) that I think is more accurate: "The Big Bang Theory is a dumb show about smart people. Arrested Development is a smart show about dumb people."

I think "dumb show" reflects more about the style of humor than the type of people who like it. Some people prefer clever, subtle humor. Some people want goofy and slapstick humor. Some people love awkward situational humor. There is no account for taste.

But yeah, it's an awful show.

> I don't think the people who like it are dumb

I don't think that's quite what the parent was saying. It's not that BBT is a show for a dumb audience. Rather, BBT is a show about supposedly smart characters, with a writing staff that doesn't have anyone sufficiently-smart-enough on it to be able to accurately depict the thinking process of genuinely smart characters.

You can't, as someone with an average IQ, really write the internal monologue of someone with a much higher IQ. You can probably capture their personality, but you can't solve problems the way they solve problems (or write characters who do so) without, at least temporarily, actually being that smart.

This is an often-discussed aspect of writing military fiction: it's basically impossible to come up with the sort of strategic masterstrokes that a famous general would come up with, without yourself being a famous general. You can bring together ten lesser strategists and ask them to knock their heads together, and you still won't get a brilliancy† out.

† https://www.chess.com/article/view/how-to-play-a-brilliancy

Most people who write master strategists in fiction end up just doing one of a few main things:

• they crib all the "clever moves" from well-known historical battles. This limits you to just, essentially, writing history over again wearing a new coat.

• they get an actual master-ish strategist to consult. You see this in, for example, sports anime about chess or Go—the author usually relied on input from a high-level professional (but not master) player.

• they just make the characters' abilities entirely informed, rather than explicit. This is your Sherlock Holmes story: you can see what they came up with in the end, but you don't get any insight into how they went about putting it together. The author just decided what the solution was, worked backward to what sorts of clues would lead one to that solution, and then decided by fiat that the protagonist would notice those clues.

The whole "rational fiction" movement is basically about avoiding doing any of the above.

Exactly, the only people I know who like it are non-technical (e.g. my mother-in-law) who like it because "lol, nerds" (disclaimer: I'm not saying there aren't technical people out there who like BBT). For me, it's in the same awful category as 2-and-a-half men of shows with huge audiences that I can't watch for any length of time.

same creator as Two and a Half Men and some of those other shows you’re probably thinking of so that’s an apt comparison

I'm going to go out on a limb and say minstrel shows were disgusting and mean-spirited enough that the historical context that contained them was overpowered by its own characterizing foulness. Would be a pretty stomach churning thing to see today even without knowledge of the history. Definitely a coherent metaphor, in the same way 'grammar nazi' is -- conflating style but not magnitude.

Jim Parsons has won four Emmy awards and a long list of others for his portrayal of Sheldon Cooper. You may hate the character and the actor, but he’s objectively not a terrible actor.

If only the Emmys meant anything else besides what's popular this season first and foremost...

As if a group can complain against discrimination only if their pain is as big as another groups?

BBT as a minstrel show -- which is a way of mocking another group -- is an apt simile, regardless of whether blacks suffered worse fate or not.

Which is not even relevant anyway: what blacks suffered had little to do with minstrel shows, those were the least of their troubles. If parent had compared BBT to slavery, you'd have a point. But he made a much more precise argument.

Just a technicality - Chuck Lorre productions, including The Big Bang Theory, do not use laugh tracks [0].

But yes the live audience laughs moronically on cue and I totally agree with your assessment of the show.

[0] http://www.chucklorre.com/index-bbt.php?p=537

> nerd minstrel show

Do we have to go through this every time BBT is mentioned on the internet. We all know the show sucks and why, and adding this descriptor only starts the same stupid fight that appears on every BBT thread and is never resolved and just makes everyone angry.

Why would it need to be resolved? What thread ever gets resolved when there are > 1 opinions to begin with?

> One thing that is certain is that there are more commercials now. If you watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory sans commercials, you will notice that it is only 17 minutes long! And that includes the 60 second intro. So 13 minutes of commercials for 16 minutes of actual content. No chance I'll be going back to regular TV.

I get my episodes of BBT from iTunes. You’re correct that BBT episodes are shorter than most other mainstream shows (at least in my own library). They are often only about 18-19m, other episodes reach 21-22m as well. I don’t see any below 18m in the past four seasons and stopped searching beyond that. Alternatively, most of the half-hour shows I watch are consistently about 20-21m, so BBT is definitely providing less content overall.

As for the assertion of 1m intros with BBT, that's 3x longer than reality. I scripted simple controls for controlling iTunes via my phone so that I wouldn’t need to reach for my kbd or trackpad. I set the FWD time to 30 seconds and the BACK time to 10 seconds. Jumping ahead by 30s is appropriate for most shows that I watch, whereas BBT requires me to also jump back by 10s (it has a 20s intro).

Few sitcoms still have 1m or longer intros. New Girl is about 5s, down from around 30s when it started. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia dropped from 1m to 30s. The Sarah Silverman Program dropped from 22s to 17s in 2010. I see the overall trend for typical broadcasts as gradually reducing intros (excluding shows on HBO, etc; those still have very long intros but also no commercials).

The Simpsons has some intros that push up to and sometimes over two minutes in length. Sure, they're often clever and do take time and money to create, but it's still time taken from the actual show.

Supernatural or Lost are good examples of how an intro should be. Literally just the name of the show on the screen for a few seconds, no theme music that gets annoying halfway through the season, no montage of the characters tromping around a fountain, just skip to the show.

Many people would consider the simpsons intros part of the show not a traditional intro. Seeing what Bart writes on the chalkboard was my favorite part of the show as a kid.

An intro they only use once is part of the "actual show".

Netflix is just skipping intro for you.

No intro to skip in Lost (it's just 5-10 seconds of the show title against a black screen).

That's been the trend for dramas basically ever since-- Lost was among the first to adopt the minimal intro that's popular now. Stargate even made a joke out of it in one of their later episodes.

Really? Weird. Usually if it skips the intro it plays the entire intro the first time you play it after not playing it for a while. It never does that for me.

At any rate... the Netflix skipped intro is how it should be done. Thank god for Netflix.

If you're watching it in syndication it's probably either cut or sped up (or both) to squeeze in even more commercials. The intro and credits combined are about a minute on that show as most 30 minute shows are.

I don't complain about the speeding too much as I watch most shows are 1.5x and cut out the commercials so a show with 18 minutes of content takes 12 minutes.

I could see speeding up shows to 1.5x if I was a reviewer and was watching them for work. But speeding up your entertainment seems strange to me. It'd be like ordering French Laundry to go.

For those with a level of cultural awareness like mine, French Laundry seems to be a flash restaurant in Napa valley, California.

This made me laugh. French Laundry is like a cultural institution in California cuisine and is actually located in Yountville. I have never been there though. Have a tough time dumping $1000 on single dinner

It's an AMAZING restaurant in Napa -- Thomas Keller's the chef and it's the culinary equivalent of an orgasm.

Is it really $310 per head?

Yeah, but just the tip is more.

(I'm sorry.)

The entertainment density is often very low.

It doesn't work this way for content that tries to communicate a specific mood, but for slapstick humor chains like BBT, more jokes is just funnier than less jokes per minute.

Is this a recent change?

IIRC the standard is:

22 minutes for 30 min shows

44 minutes for hour long shows

You can go to RARBG and check the MediaInfo for any show.

So you get 16 min of ads every hour. So a quarter of each hour is ads.

Is that all that different from what it was before? My recollection of 80s sitcoms & children's programs is that they had 3 commercials of 3 minutes apiece, plus a 3 minute break between programs. That's 12 minutes.

Actually, I can test this...I've got some old My Little Pony episodes lying around on a hard disk. They're 9 minutes apiece. IIRC they ran 2 to a timeslot, so that's 18 minutes of show per 30 minute timeslot, and 12 minutes of commercials.

I don't know about kids cartoons, but I just watched the original Star Trek episodes from the late 60's and they are 50 minutes each (for a 1 hour time slot) so that's 10 minutes of commercials. Hour long episodes are now about 40 to 41 minutes in length, so the number of commercials has doubled since then.

Its gonna differ per country. I remember in the 90s 3 commercial breaks in a movie here in NL was default. I was shocked and annoyed when I learned in early 00s it was every 20 min. I don't know what it is now, I avoid commercial TV like the plague. Though public broadcasting also still has them. As a kid and young adult I used to be able to sometimes laugh at commercials. Nowadays, some commercials appeal more to me due to age diff, but many don't because they use youth language. On top of that I find practically all commercials are condescending, stupid, and annoying. Their attempts to deceive and manipulate are laughable, ineffective, a waste of my time, and a waste of my mood. Nothing good comes out of me watching commercials. Not for the advertiser, nor for me. I cannot remember the last time it stimulated me to buy something I otherwise wouldn't. That is, from TV commercials and ads on the Internet. Product placement, embedded marketing, marketing buzz works fine. I suspect there's so many TV commercials because it is ineffective. If less people watch than before, its more expensive to buy the rights, so they gotta advertise more. Or perhaps its corporate greed.

SciFi channel once aired the original uncut TOS episodes. Each episode took an hour and fifteen minute time slot. Shows how much commercials have increased since than...

Taking a look specifically at the Big Bang Theory, up until Season 10, most episodes were around 21 minutes. Season 10 had episodes around 20-21 minutes, and the current season (11) hovers around the 19-20 minute mark.

When I was in High School, our English teacher actually wrote and produced a TV show and was telling us about her experience and some of the things she had to do to cut episodes in the right amount of time for commercials. At the time (mid 2000s), the average was 23 minutes of show per 30 minute episode.

Looking across my library at recent shows, it seems to average about 21 minutes nowadays.

Not to mention networks like TBS have been caught speeding up shows like Seinfeld so that they can squeeze more commercials into the timeslot.

Certainly US TV has way more adverts than TV in the UK, but even UK TV has more adverts.

I stopped watching normal TV 2 years ago and before that used to record all my shows so I could fast forward through the adverts. Stuck at the in-laws for Christmas and I actually can't watch their TV due to the adverts now.

I think the current "rots your brain" videogame thing today is more along the lines of watching let's plays of minecraft; in fact I have a couple younger cousins who don't even play minecraft, they just watch the let's plays.

I have feeling the bottom of the barrel has gotten a lot worse than it used to be.

I recently started doing half hour(-ish) Minecraft let's plays[0] mostly for my own edification as I got back into playing it. Not many viewers yet but one bit of funny feedback stuck out - "my kid really, really likes just listening to you, it's weird." He's like 5.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmH4bXt23LHAg-INoizVY...

If you step back a bit from that game you realize it's tickling the same mental circuits you use in programming. If I had kids I'd definitely try to get them interested.

SpaceChem even more so.

This unfortunately makes Zachtronics games a non-starter for me. Software development and Zachtronics games is a fast track to burnout. Their last two involve literal programming.

For some reason, Opus Magnum didn't cause the "I do this all day already" reaction yet for me, despite clearly being a programming game. Maybe it's the theme and presentation of it? Or maybe it's just the relaxation of the bugs at least being obvious.

I think these games seem like fun (despite being similar to _work_) as they are free of consequences... the player can mess up and walk away without it impacting their daily life, that likely takes a lot of stress away from the activity.

Yeah, I think a lot of things that are stressful about work go away when you aren't afraid of the consequences of fucking up. It turns out that you can be both extremely productive and quite relaxed at work if you don't care about getting fired.

Interesting. Looking back at the toys I played with growing up, and how quickly I want to move onto new software development problems, I'm inclined to agree, but I wonder if there is some balance. Perhaps variety is the key. KSP is good for rocketry and light physics. Anything good for Chemistry?

I never got that feeling about Factorio (though I don't do EE), but I did with SpaceChem

Likewise; I think that's because (my interaction with) Factorio is much simpler; it's scratching the "build and organize" itch. I find this game to be relaxing after a hard day at work. (I'm sure this would change if I was trying to build and debug a complex circuit network).

As others have mentioned, Zachlikes are basically programming, and in particular the debugging / pipeline optimization parts can quickly drain my enthusiasm if I've been doing a lot of hard coding at work.

Yeah, that's true. I enjoy a bit of SpaceChem, but I think it would be better for non-programmers and for discovering kids who had the aptitude.

Regular programming may not be getting dumber, but the commercials most definitely are.

I haven't had a TV in 10 years and when I'm at someones house who does, the difference is immediately apparent, especially during the late night segments.

The average early AM commercial now (at least in my area) is literally so bad that it feels like advertisers just assume that their average viewer is mentally challenged or emotionally unstable in some way. It's almost like watching a SNL skit or a fake commercial within a really bad B-grade movie.

Cool to learn about this factorio game, but pretty sure its not as popular as super mario bros was back in the day.

You become smarter until roughly age 25. Naturally, your brain needs more of a challenge then.

Is Factorio popular among kids?

except that smart games like factorio only accounts a super tiny amount of gamers, most of which are actually playing games like league of legends, call of duty, cs go, dota 2, hearthstone and overwatch. they're all really fun games don't get me wrong.

Those games still definitely involve much more than muscle memory and I'd argue that they are indeed smarter as well.

they are life destroyingly addictive though. I myself have skipped classes or doing assignments to play that kind of game, which is one of the reasons why I don't game anymore

I used be like that when I was at school. I was addicted to Modern Warfare and later Modern Warfare 2 to the extent where I almost got kicked out of school because I was getting such poor grades.

I’m now a functioning adult and find it hard to get into video games, not because I fear I’ll get addicted but I just don’t get the same dopamine hit from games like I used to. I drive on race tracks to get that hit now.

Yeah, same here. I used to be "addicted" to videogames but nowadays I don't play at all. I fly planes and going to start racing next year.

People are designing circuits in Minecraft, and have been for years. That's an extreme example, but even my 8 year old son plays with redstone circuits and watches youtube howtos on how to do interesting setups in Minecraft on the Wii U.

In February of this year Minecraft apparently had 55 million players (with 122 million copies sold).[1]

1: http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/02/27/minecraft-has-55-mill...

Yeah! Minecraft is really cool, I agree. Makes me miss my legos.

I agree on quality, but I am surprised that the TV industry hasn't evolved yet beyond typical 30 second commercial spots. Maybe we haven't hit critical mass of people ditching cable TV - the likely culprit being sports.

With YouTube we see people not relying on direct ad revenue, but rather embedding sponsors into their content. And doing things like recommending products and using Amazon referrals to generate revenue from their channels. I guess the problem with broadcast TV is that commercials still work just as well as they did, they just have a smaller audience.

>When I look at the crap I watched as a kid in the 80s (which included a good amount of 70s reruns), basically all broadcast TV today is far superior.

Depends. Talk shows in the 70s (Dick Cavett and such) were far better than the BS today (from Fallon and Kimmel to Letterman). M.A.S.H would stand up there with anything today. And the original talent on something like the Ed Sullivan show or the Soul Train or Johny Cash show. Or the Groucho Marx game show I've been watching on YouTube (all the above were beyond my time, and I've only caught MASH on re-runs).

>I've only caught MASH on re-runs

I have a feeling that MASH somehow breaks the normal chain of time and causality in that the only time anyone ever caught it was on re-runs. Same with "A Charlie Brown Christmas". These are shows that were born in the big bang and civilisations occasionally drift into their broadcast space for a few decades before moving on. We're still in the MASH nebula, and have been since 1972.

To be fair, how niche is Factorio compared with, say, Candy Crush, or Call of Duty Ultimate Warfare 7, or stuff like that.

Just in case anyone still (or ever liked) BBT, check this video on how the show perpetuates misogyny. I was a fan, but after watching this it totally changed my perspective on the show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3-hOigoxHs

Every year when I go home for Christmas I watch TV with my parents and I'm always astounded that they pay more money than me to get access to worse content, and it has ads. It's really astounding that folks put up with it.

I think TV remains popular with certain people largely out of ease of use. You can just turn it on and you don't have to make a decision about what to watch. It's always there.

Also, changing would require learning something new. People genuinely find learning to have a level of discomfort so they avoid it.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/03/learning-hurts-your-...

I wonder why Netflix doesn't add a "random content" button. That's one of the appeals of TV versus Netflix that could be replicated very easily.

Something more akin to changing channels like "random cartoon" or "random comedy" would remove one last obstacle in the way of converting cable subscribers.

If I were king of netflix...

There'd be a "cable-style-menu" option to mimic the way cable / satellite menus have looked since the late 90's. Maybe 50 or so channels of similar programming running on a time schedule, where you have the option of catching the last 30 minutes of "Terminator 2 - Judgement Day" or watching from the beginning.

Its mindless, but I think that style of consumption is what a lot of people want. It to do the hard work for them.

I think you're really onto something, but I would offer a slight modification. The value of watching something live is knowing it's an experience you are sharing with other people. Have a single live channel, where the purpose of the channel is that it's the live one that people across the country can be watching at the same time.

You could do multiple channels, but I think if you really, really want to capture the "I'm watching this with the rest of the country" feeling, a single live channel would be the safest bet.

It also may have value strategically, because there are some shows that "work" more as a live show, and there are some TV series that have better cultural impact if they are released in a serialized way. For instance I suspect Game Of Thrones has been more successful at permeating culture by releasing one episode a week than it would have been had the whole season been dumped at once.

Personally, I totally hate it but a lot of people basically turn on the TV when they walk into a room.

Financially though, it's not clear this would work for Netflix. Now, depending upon how they pay for a given piece of content, they're paying for a lot of programming being used as background noise. You'd have to get enough people buying Netflix subscriptions because of this added option to offset the higher costs.

I really like this idea. I still have cable, but mostly for background noise. When I’m doing something else, I don’t want to have to pick something specific on the TV.

I usually go for long old shows I love and start them from S1E1

My wife and I do that with The Office. You never have to pay attention, but you can have it as background and catch jokes here and there.

That seems like the sort of thing they'd totally do for one of their hackaton projects.

This is the approach some of the apps are taking these days, e.g Pluto TV.

The swedish national television streaming service had a big push for that a few years back. They launched a completely separate streaming service to mimic the linear experience, very much like what you describe. It didn't catch on at all.

I work in the streaming industry, and offering the same "background noise" quality is something that still eludes us. I personally believe that as soon as you introduce any sort of possibility of explicit input from the user (skip, pause), or even implicit (by the way, all of this is also available on demand in our catalogue) the experience is tainted. Subconsciously we know that we are needlessly watching something we should be tailoring ourselves.

The power of the linear channels is that they are so severely limited. Streaming services has long tauted that they are superior because they aren't. Tough problem.

The 'random' button would interfere with their aggregate viewership tracking and recommendation algorithms. When the viewer appears to select a particular show to watch, you can have reasonable faith in the viewership numbers.

If the platform were to offer a random choice, the fact that the resulting view was not organic would need to be tracked separately. Conversely, you'd want a better way of figuring out whether the viewer was satisfied with the content after all. These problems require nontrivial effort.

Right now, things are much easier. The viewer always makes a choice, ostensibly a conscious choice, and all views factor into aggregate numbers that correlate with show popularity.

I'm sure they have Referrer metrics, and could add a "from Random" flag.

The UI could even continue doing separate random programs, but allow the watcher to say "Keep Watching this", locking in their choice and making it a "discovered" show.

They should seriously consider "channels" whereby something random is always playing by genre.

Not even random. They could generate channels based on their observations of what you "switch channel" from.

>If the platform were to offer a random choice, the fact that the resulting view was not organic would need to be tracked separately

So just track it separately and don't interpret it the same way as deliberately chosen shows. I don't see the problem.

They could even sell a "pseudo DVR" box, with themed channels, scheduled movies, in addition to all the usual streaming features.

Seems like a problem that could be solved with an addon for Chrome and FF, at least...

> You can just turn it on and you don't have to make a decision about what to watch.

That...doesn't jive with the limited exposure I've had to cable television. Hundreds of channels and very little good on, I suspect people waste a lot of time flipping through.

I oversimplified for brevity. What I mean is, it doesn't require making an informed decision. You just flip it on and start making yes/no decisions. It has a lower barrier to entry in the same way that Tinder has a lower barrier to entry than other dating sites.

Trust me, having grown up in a broadcast and then cable TV household, there's a habituality to TV consumption that isn't there in streaming.

Though streaming has its own habituality in the form of bingeing.

Yep. Visiting relatives frequently involves me watching them flip channels until I can't take it anymore and go read.

Having never owned a TV myself, I'm actually considering buying one now. The fact that shows are actually getting better, combined with how easy it is to wait for other people to be a filter, combined with no ads makes TV actually attractive to me for the first time since I was like 5.

But still zero reason to pay for cable.

When the digital transition took place, my TV sat idle for about a year until a line of severe storms rolled through and I decided making it usable again made some sense.

Went out, bought a nice directional antenna, bought a converter box from a friend, turned it on.

5 minutes later I realized I had zero tolerance for ads shouting at me, boxed everything up, and eventually took the TV to recycling. (It also nearly put me in the hospital, big CRTs are big.)

My iPad and Netflix/iTunes are all I need. Someday maybe I'll get a 13" iPad Pro and stick it on a wall, but I doubt it.

get a tv, a small computer, plex, and a wireless media keyboard

its amazing

TV and Plex yes. But, after having tried all sorts of permutations connecting TVs to media servers and controlling them with keyboards, I find that Chromecast plus a tablet and/or a laptop over WiFi is a far better approach to getting content onto a TV.

That’s sort of where I am. Most of it is garbage but there are some channels that during some times of day have some decent stuff on. It’s just random what episode it is.

One thing I’d kind of like on Netflix and their ilk would be a way to choose a series and say “play me a random episode“. Some shows work well that way. I don’t want to have to go choose through six seasons to find something that appeals to me, I’ll just take an episode. Surprise me.

that's what i do with Plex. i use my legally obtained library of shows i like (updated on the regular), i open one up, and press shuffle.

I use radio for that. It's good for when you're doing something else that's not too absorbing (programming is out of question for me). Since you have something else to do, you by definition don't have time to sift through potentially interesting stuff.

I have the same experience. I visit my parents about once every other month and usually end up watching a show or two with them. The programs are amazingly childish junk, the kind of stuff that disturbed me most about high school enshrined as sport. And the advertisements just never stop. If anyone has any doubt what the goal for Comcast will be now that net neutrality is gone, it will be to make Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc cost more than the Comcast On Demand stuff (which has ads you can't fast-forward through, a tiny selection, etc). So once it costs you $12 to watch 2 movies on Netflix instead of $12 to watch movies all month long, then they will feel that the playing field is 'fair'.

I haven't watched cable since ~2009 and no longer subscribe. Not only are the shows just bad, but the image quality is terrible. If ISPs drag down the streaming video services then I hope Netflix returns to a robust DVD distribution model. IF not then I'll just buy DVD box sets before I support extortion.

There's a feedback loop in play:

Smarter people stop watching TV > TV adapts to the new demographics to fight over dwindling ratings > TV becomes dumber > Even more smarter people stop watching TV

So, is TV the Nigerian Prince of media now, because only the less mentally/technically able fall for its low brow offerings?

Try surfing without your adblocker for a moment (or if you don't use one: try surfing with one for a moment). You'll see a whole different WWW than what you're used to. Including websites like YouTube and news sites being referred to from HN.

With Netflix, you pay for an all you can eat sub without commercials. Newssites and newspapers should do the same. It allows for two viable ways to pay for content: either paying directly, or paying via advertisement/your time.

The old model of e.g. cable TV is akin to having one's cake and eat it too. Its outdated, and superseded. The only reason it still exists is because the legacy is being used due to habit ie. people who don't know yet about on-demand services like Netflix. Probably tons of babyboomers + elder. If we want to put the nails in the coffin, we gotta 1) unsub to cable TV as much as we can 2) not use it as much as we can 3) stimulate and help these lagging groups to get on with the program.

There's a shitload of product placement in Netflix and (particularly) Amazon original content. They're still telling you what to buy, you just don't notice it as much.

I still prefer to watch Frank Underwood telling me how good Monument Valley is than having my show stop and sit in front of old fashioned ads.

I really wondered about his political acumen and general well-being when he insisted that PS Vita had "all the games."

At least ads are honest and you can tune out.

Product Placement is like a landmine, I'm watching the show when they spring an ad out of the blue and kill any semblance of suspension of disbelief.

Anytime I notice an overtly blatant product placement (e.g. 3 second shot of a logo), I feel like I discovered a mole (as in double agent).

There's a certain feeling of "Gotcha! I still got it. Can't full me, Diet Coke".

Also good shows and movies do not do this. Never once noticed product placement in The Wire or Breaking Bad, Pontiac Aztec notwithstanding.

Depends a lot on implementation. My example: Netflix at the beginning of shows sometimes says something to the tune of "contains product placement". Several times now once gotten to the end and notice that it didn't stand out to me. It makes me suspicious, was it there all along and I just got advertised to without noticing it? Was it not there this episode? Am I becoming complacent and not noticing product placement as much as I used to?

Although that example wasn't actually an ad. It was the writer's idea to put that in.

Details: https://www.polygon.com/2015/3/13/8210581/monument-valley-ho...

This might be true but I much prefer product placement which doesn't interfere with the show than having the show be interrupted to see an ad.

True that. I'm considering cutting off netflix and going back to torrenting as the "no ads" mantra only means "no explicit ads" it seems.

i.e : Gypsy first episode was filled with Channel perfume branding. NO -f'ing- GO

>I was amazed at how much ... dumber it has become

I had the same reaction this Thanksgiving when I was at my Dad's. I don't think it actually has become dumber, we're just not used to it anymore. I felt like I was watching commercials with a bit of content sprinkled in. I cut the cord about six years ago.

It's amazing how many channels do "in show" advertising as well.

It started with station logo water marks and now its amazing to see how much of the lower right hand corner of the screen is seen by networks as acceptable to use for advertising another show while the current show or sporting event is running.

This happened to me as well. I stayed in a hotel last week for a night, and watched a movie on TV. I watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith on some channel, maybe MTV or FX. Literally every seven to nine minutes of movie, there were five minutes of commercials. It wasn't even enough time to really get into the movie before a commercial appeared. It was really a let down. Makes me happy I haven't paid for cable in many years.

TV really is dumb now. Maybe it always was, and we're just now realizing how dumb it is. That is, maybe we're getting smarter and are getting used to better tools. TV is a one-way channel, meant to be consumed. Desktops, laptops and mobiles are all two way channels, meant to be interacted with; superior to the TV model in every way.

When all you have is TV, though, you can acclimate yourself to all kinds of rubbish. I'm sure in the future when we have a superior protocol or way or doing something, we'll look back and wonder why we thought X was ever a good idea.

I think the “Frosty the Snowman” special on live TV ran almost 90 minutes... the commercials were agonizing.

Also, kids are consuming a lot of highly effective YouTube ads.

What ads? I block everything for my family. While I do have cable for certain things, my wife and I DVR everything and FF through the ads. I find advertising distasteful and I don't suffer through it. I will likely go straight Internet in 2018.

I can get straight unlimited 1GB connection Internet for $99 month. I pay another $45 for the cable. It's difficult to get BBC and BBC America without cable or satellite, and I watch both all the time.

BBC America is part of Sling's core package - $20 a month. It's also on Direct TV Now and Playststion Vue.

Good to know; thank you.

Getting rid of adverts on yt for all family is $10/mo, which I'm thinking is not that crazy. It's also a part of Google music family subscription for $15/mo - you get YouTube Red included.

uBlock Origin and similar other add-ons, plus some hostfile entries largely mean I don't see any ads anywhere. I also block them on my router for extra diligence. They simply don't get called. The way it's supposed to be.

How do you block them on your router? I'm using Pi-hole but I still get Youtube ads through my Chromecast.

Look at Ad Free Time. You have to have certain routers. I don't use a Chromecast or any other device like a Roku, so dealing with them is an unknown for me.

DD-WRT firmware (done via hosts file).

You can also runs pixelserv that will return a 1 pixel image so you don't get any errors.

Ublock doesn't cover mobile devices though. And even if you block it on the router, once you leave the house it's only available via vpn. And if you're going that far and making it available for your whole family and are on the hook for support... Maybe it's easier to just pay a few bucks a month. (Unless you're really enjoying doing it by hand, I guess)

> Ublock doesn't cover mobile devices though

It does on FF for Android!

The context here is youtube. When you're watching a youtube video on android, it's either in the youtube app, in a webview, or in the browser. The first two are not covered by ublock and the last one is the least likely to happen. (in my experience anyway)

Why use the YouTube app? The browser is Good Enough.

If you want a more "native" player there's always SkyTube and other similar apps for longform content.

I always use Firefox, although admittedly I don't watch that many videos. Same goes for Facebook, Twitter, etc.

There's a few apps for which I think native is important, but I'm generally happy with mobile websites. uBlock Origin really makes mobile web not suck.

NewPipe on Android. Superior to the Youtube app in every way.

As JetSpiegal said, I usually just watch it in the browser and it plays fine.

I've had Google Play Music for a lot longer than YT Red was bundled with it. When they introduced it, I mostly shrugged: pre-roll ads don't really bother me, especially skippable ones.

But it turns out YouTube was the last source of dynamic (i.e., not image/text) ads in my life, and now when on the rare occasion that I accidentally open YouTube in my work Chrome profile, I'm surprised at how averse I've become to dealing with even the tiny load lag + few-second wait for a pre-roll. I've considered switching to Spotify, since Google Play Music seems to be one of those life-support products that PMs within Google make their promotions off of through useless UI churn instead of fixing longstanding issues, but at this point, YT Red is what stops me from doing so.

I don't think TV was actually less stupid in the past, but boy do I get sick of watching the same commercials fifty times watching a football game.

It might not have been, but the comparison makes it more evident.

I don't follow, but I think what's more likely at work here is nostalgia glasses.

I can't be the only one who finds it far more disturbing that the average child watches nearly 3 hours of TV per day.

It's that same feeling you get when you go to the internet on a computer without adblock. How do people stand it?

Nicholas Negroponte joked that there's a “brightness” setting on the television, but it doesn't work.

That type of advertising is fairly ineffective at "convincing" someone to make a purchase. Compared to more modern advertising techniques (like Facebook or Google) and their advertising resulted in me making a 100k purchase of software. The TV cannot market particular seminars, or blog posts that I might find relevant to what i'm doing right now, but google and FB can.

It's scary and interesting.

Ok, I have to ask - what kind of software was that?

Monitoring software (elastic, splunk, etc..). That stuff is expensive!

What I am having trouble with is how to argue the switch for people like my parents who are not interested in any fictional content. Netflix and Amazon have still very little (talk, game, political) shows, the reporting is mostly not day-to-day and so on. They would probably watch five documentaries that are relevant to their interest, a few classical concerts but then what?

I only started watching west wing least year.

I was shocked that network tv could produce something so smart, balanced, thoughtful, albeit 20 years ago.

There have been some astonishingly good television programs to come out of broadcast television. West Wing, MASH...

Wait, I'm sure there have been more. Right?

Yeah, never mind.

Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Star Trek. I mean, for certain values of "astonishingly".

Star Trek gave us a few excellent episodes. I don't think any of the series have been excellent overall, although I'm probably in the minority opinion in that.

I think that's probably a majority opinion. Star Trek's reach always exceeded its grasp. There are excellent episodes and very good seasons (mostly of TNG and DS9) but I don't think I know anyone who'd go to the mat for any of them as consistently excellent.

Simpsons, at least the first several seasons.

Scrubs.

Frasier

Didn't Frasier have a laugh track? I can't watch anything with a laugh track.

Yes. I tried watching it after moving to Seattle (cliché, I know), but couldn't bear it because of the laugh track.

Granted, but it was still a very good TV show. Actually liked it better than Cheers.

These guys take apart The West Wing. Sad that it's only the teaser, the full episode is excellent.

https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-101-teaser-a...

Absolutely: I cut the cable a couple of years ago. I refuse to watch commercials. When I do stumble on regular broadcast TV, it feels like the commercials take up 50% of the time.

Note that I don't mind smart or funny commercials. I will actually seek out reruns of the old "Hi I'm a Mac/PC" and watch them with delight. (And I'm a PC user :o).

I know what you mean. I watched a show the other day that was actually made to air on network tv. I'd forgotten about tv reality. Most shows being made nowadays don't feel like they're set in tv reality any more. It was weird to watch something so firmly made for primetime television as opposed to Netflix or something else. I can't remember the last time I watched an actual 'television' show. It gave me this odd nostalgia and made me realize just how much things have changed. I also got this weird unrelated sense of relief that i'd never have to watch a movie on TBS ever again. I don't know why this thought came up but all these memories of watching butchered movies as a kid came back as I watched the happy go lucky, fcc friendly 'tv' programming.

Broadcast has to cater to the largest possible audience while streaming services can create content for niche groups. There's no competition for time slots.

Is that still true? My parents must have over a hundred channels.

for some perspective, Youtube has an estimated 46,000,000 channels.

there are over 7,000,000,000 people in the world

100 channels is not even close to enough, especially when they're all funneled through the same 2 or 3 providers

I actually had this conversation with my partner's mother a few weeks ago. She likes to watch cooking competitions in the kitchen while baking. Not having watched television for a few years, I was amazed at the audacity of commercial programming-- firstly, how can anyone be so stupid as to not boycott a product after seeing such mindless, assuming shit, but secondly and most importantly, how can advertisers be so arrogant as to assume the general populace is stupid enough to buy into their crap with these awful commercials.

The mother then informed that it's always been this way, so I looked up a few old ad compilations from the 90's and early 2000's. She was right.

I'm not sure about the television programming itself-- drama, "real-life" shows have always been a hit. I remember when I did watch television, I did so hoping to numb out whatever responsibility I had to do at the time with something non-thinking enough to be calming, but dramatic enough that it wouldn't bore me. The result is the crap they've been airing for years. And I realized again that advertising is all about subconscious influence. Doesn't matter how fucking stupid the commercials are, it matters that you've seen it. Television is mindless in the way that it lulls you-- you'll soon forget what happened, because nothing much happened, and you weren't really paying attention because the programs don't allow you to process everything consciously (in fact, that's because there's nothing to process-- afterall, all of it is laid out to you clear as day. This is what happens next, susie does this for this reason, the resolution you are about to see is expected under the paradigm we've constructed, etc). If you watch the same rehashed concepts everyday, the same commercials, it will stick in the subconscious, and some time later you'll be shopping in the supermarket and pick up a pack of Charmin toilet paper for no goddamn reason even though they market their flushable rainforest corpses with bears who complain that the paper is sticking to their assholes. You make that decision to buy in a split second because you hate grocery shopping and you don't have a lot of time to debate over prices because you still have a dozen other items to pick up. How do you choose? Those bears are cute, something tells me this toilet paper is extra soft and clearly that's something I should want out of a decent quality toilet paper... idk throw it in the cart.

We're actually in a golden age of good TV now...but it's also true that there's plenty of garbage on.

Sturgeon's law at work...

It's important to remember that the percentage of time devoted to commercials has been increasing over time.

1950s: 13% Pre-cable: 18% Pre-web: 22% Pre-Youtube: 24% Now: 30%

As alternative forms of media have become available, the value per viewer hour has decreased, so the total amount of time devoted to commercials has increased.

>where we sit there watching a box telling us what to buy

This is no different from YouTube or Facebook. Except those services follow your personally and make shadow profiles of your preferences and sell them to other companies. Is that really better?

Yes, yes it is. I’m astounded your conflate broadcaster cable TV ads with the stuff we see on, say, YouTube. They seem very different to me

Probably depends on your usage pattern. When you see Youtube ads on a newly setup machine (pre ad-block install...) or something else which won't have a good tracking profile, it seems a lot like TV ads: soda, cat food, body lotion or deodorants or something of that nature, video games.

YouTube ads don’t tell you what to buy? Or, they aren’t displayed on something box shaped?

If you mean the ads are better quality, then that’s even worse. Better ads mean you’re being told what to buy... more effectively.

> If you mean the ads are better quality, then that’s even worse. Better ads mean you’re being told what to buy... more effectively.

I suppose it depends what you mean by "better quality".

I have seen ads which were effective in making me think something was a good product only to discover that it's not upon further research.

On the other hand, I have seen ads which were really good in the sense that they showed me something that I would not have otherwise found and that I genuinely like.

If it matters to anyone I work for Google (Cloud) so maybe I'm biased in my stance on ads. That being said, I am guilty of using ublock origin so I like to think I hate annoying ads as much as anyone else.

Out of curiosity, how many of your co-workers use adblocking plugins/extensions? Also do you use it at work and do you whitelist Google?

More that there's approximately 5 seconds of ad per hour of video, and they're fairly simple to filter out.

I'm going to send your comment to the NFL (on be half of all the anti Kaeperick morons who blame him for the lower ratings). Even the British PL (football aka soccer) has a small # of adverts.

Well, this is true for most of the netflix series and must content out there (youtube etc). They just pump out show after show tailored for binge watching. The whole thing is just dumb.

Yeah, but you never have to watch what you don’t want, including ads.

If you believe you are not watching ads when you watch Netflix, you need to look into the product placement in their shows. Drinks, watches, cars, clothes, all brands and even quite a few locations... it is all paid for, to entice you to buy.

I was about to suggest that this would be hard in fantasy shows, like Game of Thrones. But on review, there's not much of that on Netflix. It's all contemporary. Interesting...

https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/best-netflix-...

Product placement and ads both serve the purpose of promoting something, but they're not really the same thing at all. I mean, both cars and bikes serve the purpose of transportation, but I don't think many people would argue that driving a car is basically riding a bike.

The line gets fuzzy when scenes are added to the show purely for product placement. In my mind that's an ad.

I do not recommend watching Transformers (the movies) for you.

The last (and final) one I watched (just to see how bad it was) had a 30 second (I am not shitting you) beer commercial complete with the signature Michael Bay 360 degree shot.

And not to mention the Chinese - "we must call central government" - pandering.

I saw the Age of Extinction, and it was probably the worst movie I've watched all the way through. It was just astonishingly bad, and the blatant product placement made it even worse.

Sure, and it makes me squirm a bit, but I can’t stop PP. even better reduces how much time I spend thinking critically about how I’m being manipulated, which is just a relief.

Except for product placement, and I suppose billboards, I just don’t see ads anymore. I don’t hear them in my music, they only exist as product placement in my television and movies, I don’t see them online. I’ll take that reduction any day, and just accept the total elimination is unlikely.

TV is not getting dumber, it's just your brain recovering from the abuse ;)