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Notice more TV ads lately? You're not imagining it.
The amount of commercial time on cable TV keeps increasing as networks try to make up for shrinking audiences by stuffing more ads into every hour of television. That's despite years of promises to cut back on ads.
Last quarter, commercial time rose 1%, according to Michael Nathanson, an analyst at MoffettNathanson LLC. After declining in 2017, the volume of ads increased every quarter last year and expanded again in the first half of 2019, he said. Fox was the only major cable network group to lower its ads last quarter, cutting them by 2%, Nathanson said.
As TV viewership declines and more consumers jump to streaming services like Netflix, media companies have only a couple of options to generate the advertising revenue that Wall Street expects: They can raise prices, run more commercials or do a little of both.
"Look at the decline in ratings," Nathanson said. "Everyone's got pressure to make their quarterly numbers. Long-term, it's a very bad decision, but you don't want to miss your numbers and have your stock go down."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @10:10PM (1 child)
I remember the early 80s and glorious commercial free cable TV. It was their main selling point! Then a few 'here and there to keep the bill down'. Fast forward to now and it is a total shit show.
We wanted unbundled and basically streaming. Netflix had it about right for awhile, but not so much anymore.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Saturday August 03 2019, @07:40PM
I have said it on SN multiple times before that advertising destroys every form of media that it ever touches.
Newspaper. Radio. TV. Cable TV. Magazines. DVDs. The Web.
Let's not even get into the parasites like email spam or snail mail spam, telemarketing, and robo call scams.
The people who rely on government handouts and refuse to work should be kicked out of congress.