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Opening Arguments

Pop-ups for plop-downs

If you thought nothing could be more annoying than Internet pop-up ads:

TAMPA - That hallmark of Internet life - the pop-up ad - may be coming to a TV screen near you.

Cable and satellite TV companies serving the Tampa Bay area have begun experimenting with onscreen features and advertising that are more interactive and, they argue, helpful for TV viewers and clients.

"More interactive?" That means you will have to click something on your remote to get rid of the things. "Helpful" for TV viewers? No, you've just been using TiVo to skip the ads, and that can't be tolerated. Love this:

Still, not all cable companies are sold on pop-up ads.

"We tried this in test markets and, frankly, it was not well-received," said Michael Thompson, director of marketing for Knology Inc. cable systems, which provides cable in parts of Pinellas County.

Now, there's a shock. I see this never-ending struggle in our future. We keep figuring out how to avoid annoying, intrusive ads in every area of our lives, and they keep coming up with ever more clever ways of bombarding us with them.

Posted in: Television

Comments

Bob G.
Mon, 06/26/2006 - 5:55am

I dunno...I look at any "pop-up" like the old WHACK-A-MOLE game...

If it pops up....you either whack it (or shoot it)...in essence...get RID of it as expeditiously as possible (and maybe have some fun along the way if you can).

The same goes for insurgents, junk mailers, spammers, people wanting to "save" me, and all those salespeople that "want to help me" when I KNOW what I came in the store for in the first place!

But hey, I'm still a "people" guy....LOL!

B.G.

Sue
Mon, 06/26/2006 - 8:44am

Dear Mr. Comcast:

In case you were wondering what a focus group in Fort Wayne might say, I'm willing to go out on a limb and as a representative of your Fort Wayne subscriber base say:

NO WAY!

Sincerely,
A Customer

Steve Towsley
Tue, 06/27/2006 - 9:47pm

These people's business plan is anti-customer-satisfaction in nature. Too many enterprises these days are trying to sell products designed as if they were freeware. Consumer satisfaction plays no part in such cynical schemes.

When you download a freeware program to your PC, you know you're getting free software that may be ad supported. That's the trade-off until you pay for the pro version unencumbered by ads. Nobody is dumb enough to try to ask money for software with the ads left in; at least, nobody I'd buy from.

Personally, when I spend several hundred dollars for new product, I strip the ad stickers and tags off when I get home and enjoy what I paid for, no strings attached. When I take out a mortgage, I don't have to leave the bank's or broker's sign in the yard until it's paid off, or drive a car painted with ads until the title is mine.

I have no interest in lowering my expectations now. It's bad enough that cable has ceased to be subscription supported and now takes profits from both subscriptions AND a slew of advertisers. It's the best reason of all for more competition, and for a la carte channels. I'd take TCM but dump AMC, for instance.

Companies trying to build more ads into their retail products should be pulled up short and ordered to make a choice whose money they want -- ours, or commercial advertisers.' Pick one. Enough riled consumers could do it eventually by buying somebody else's feed. But we become so inured to things over time that one wonders if most people can still perceive the constant interruptions on pay TV as a problem, even with commercial breaks running over five minutes since de-regulation.

I'm in the process of weeding out commercial-infested, subscription dependent purchases from my life. If I can't find a decent alternative, I just won't buy. In the case of television, I'm quite willing and able to unplug the TV and catch up on all the books I mean to read and the music I mean to listen to, and maybe take some night classes too.

Eventually I'll plug in the TV again, but use it only as a home theater for my commercial-free DVD movie collection, and as a monitor for occasional over-the-air commercial broadcasts from local stations -- which have been free since I started watching back in the '50s.

Consumer-adversarial companies (the kind that fight do-not-call lists, sue their competition, and look for new ways to pack lucrative spam into their retail products) can take a long walk off a short pier.

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