DON'T GIVE ME A BREAK

Adverts, commercials, messages from sponsors. Call them what you like they all add up to the same thing as far as I am concerned: A unwanted intrusion on my viewing of a television program.

I appreciate why they exist and how necessary they are for many broadcasters to be able to broadcast, but it does not mean that they are welcome or liked. Many try to be clever, some entertaining, but the bottom line is this. No one in their right mind sits down to watch the television just to watch the commercials.

This was really bought into focus when I was watching the Super Bowl. It seemed that every two or three minutes there was a commercial break. It got to the point whereby I actually became convinced that the NFL has deliberately organized it's sport to tailor the television advertising revenue. If that is the case, then how sad is that?

Sport is one thing, when I am watching a film or television program then that is something else altogether.

I don't watch an awful lot of television. I find most of the shows on there mindless drivel that is agenda driven, catering for the brain dead or stuff that I simply have no interest in whatsoever. Occasionally a program might appear that I want to watch or a film and this where the adverts always seem to raise their ugly heads. Just as you start to get into the film, along comes a three minute ad break. Break is an appropriate word. It breaks your concentration and enjoyment of the movie. When I watch a film I like to be drawn into the world that the writer and the director are trying to depict. I find that very hard to do when, with little warning, some annoying idiot pops up on the television trying to sell me car insurance.

There are some channels which don't break up the broadcast of films etc with commercials but these are either found on Sky or other subscription services or the BBC. It seems that most of the time, the programs I want to watch just so happen to be on those channels that like to maximize their advertising revenue.

As I have already said, I understand that television channels need to generate income from advertisers but I would rather there be a larger gap between programs for more adverts to be broadcast then and allow the programs to be shown without interruption.

Perhaps this is a vain hope but at least with the advent of digital recorders it is now possible to record programs then fast forward through the breaks. A small mercy, I suppose.