I no longer think it’s okay that my TV is your billboard
About two months ago I freed myself from the clutches from Comcast cable subscription service and have lived with iTunes and Netflix via my Apple TV. As a person who doesn’t watch many sports and reads news online more than I ever watched it on TV I didn’t feel like I was missing anything when I cut the cord. Unfortunately this wasn’t exactly true.
What I was missing wasn’t the thing you’d quite expect like a recent episode of some show or a news event. It was commercials. Let’s be clear — When I say “missing” I mean that literally. I had no nostalgic longing for being force fed ads every 7 minutes or so like traditional television, it was just something that was stitched into everyday television watching I didn’t realize was gone until I decided to add Hulu Plus into my cable-free bliss.
I was excited to add Hulu Plus into my line of services. Ideally, iTunes would be my Pay-Per-View, Netflix would be my a la carte source for TV and support old couch potato habits during weekends of binge-watching, and Hulu Plus would keep me current on latest episodes and almost act like a DVR.
Unfortunately, that DVR came with commercials.
Despite the fact I could finally watch Community, SNL, Family Guy, The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and other programs just a day after they aired I was completely put off by Hulu’s ads. For nearly two months the one sanctuary I had from ads was my TV and I hadn’t realized it until Hulu threw them back in my face. It was like I had been sitting in low light and someone just flashed bright lights into my eyes — It literally hurt.
Long story short, at this point of me writing this article it has only been 72 hours since I have had Hulu Plus and I’m already thinking about canceling the service. I miss the zen-like TV watching I had just days ago that was ad free, and I may be willing to sacrifice instant gratification of having the shows I want now in efforts to have a relatively ad-free home.
Ads are everywhere even on two and a half minute video clips on the internet. Think about that for a minute — You now get 15 to 30 second ads on something that’s about 2 to 5 minutes long. Percentage wise that’s a huge waste of time. In a world where we are constantly hit with advertisements as soon as we open an app, a webpage, walk outside, or listen to radio, it was nice to have a sanctuary in the form of my TV.
All in all I think the experience of not being harassed by advertisers via your TV outweighs the ability of watching all of your favorite shows. If you don’t believe me, go about 6 weeks with only Netflix and/or iTunes and come back to ad-saturated television watching and you’ll see what I mean.
Inspired by “Why we canceled Hulu Plus” via Speed of Creativity
