Why do Networks do this? Why do they destroy our sense of closure? I quite frankly have had enough of this!
I enjoy watching television. I need it some nights. After a long day of work, I like to come home, lie down on the couch and relax. I love watching hour-long drama series and actually getting into the stories. My beef with television stations is that it seems to have become common practice now to run a commercial before the show is even over.
I know that you have seen this. You are watching a show and really enjoying it. It comes to an end and you want to sit there for a moment and just take it all in. You need to have a sense of closure. You watch the credits roll and just think about the show you had just seen. It is a much needed moment sometimes. But what happens, more often than not now? The credits get squished all up so that they take up only half of the screen while we are subjected to a commercial of another show that the network in pushing.
This interruption of my favourite programs is really annoying. My other pet peeve about network television is that they will run commercials during the show. Usually when show gets back from commercial, we see an animated flurry at the bottom right of the screen. It may tell us what show we are watching now and then the image will flip to tell us what comes on next. You know what? I don’t care and I don’t want to see this commercial. I want to see the show.
I also don’t need to see the station identification in the corner of the screen for the entire episode either. Is there anything we can do about this? I know that most of the times I can just ignore these extraneous stimuli. I can focus on the program and not the advertisements thrown at me. Although, sometimes these ads have come at crucial moments and have obscured an important clue on the screen. I have missed foreign language translations that were written in captions on the screen because of this practice. I have missed small details that were crucial to the mystery I had been watching.
All of the practices interrupt my viewing pleasure. I think it is time for networks to realize that most people do not appreciate these practices. It is time for a change. I might also add that it is easy enough for anyone to change the channel and you may lose a viewer.
2 responses to “Destroying Our Sense of Closure”
I have a very good news article by the late Norman Mailer who actually suggests that commercials need to go away for the good of society.
He was serious. He suggests — and Mr. Mailer was not a stupid man or a tinfoil hat wearer — that the constant interruption of concentration by such commercials is at least in part responsible for a generation of youth who are chronically distracted, with microscopic attention spans.
I agree. Commercials often portray characters acting in socially unacceptable ways. I think the behavior modeled in some commercials is absolutely reprehensible. I have written about this here before.
Perhaps with the changing face of television and program delivery, commercials may just fall by the way side. That would be a nice thing to see.