Sneaky TV ads

REWahoo

REWahoo

Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give
Joined
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Let me start this by saying yes, I'm fully aware there are ways of avoiding annoying TV commercials, including not having a TV, having one but not turning it on, using a Tivo, etc. I'm not seeking recommendations of how to avoid commercials, merely ranting. I realize that some who respond will ignore this qualifier and offer the alternatives mentioned above plus others, but it makes me feel good to point this out to those of you who actually pay attention.

To those of you who don't have a clue about anything, please be sure to suggest I get a Tivo.... :)

rant on/

I've noticed an annoying audio track running in the background on some TV commercials. One example is an AARP ad for Hartford Insurance aired on CNN. A periodic electronic "beep" plays throughout the commercial, the sound of a timer or electronic alarm going off. It is at low volume, but loud enough to make you take notice and ask yourself "what's that noise?" and listen to see if it is coming from the TV or somewhere else.

Very sleazy...

/rant off
 
Last edited:
Have you considered getting a TiVo?
 
Have you read the tinnitus thread?

(Hey, I saw your response to the other poster and just missed being able to quote it by microseconds...)
 
Since I am able to skip over the commercials... I do not listen to them... (I still have to 'view' them but at a higher speed)...

But... what gets me is how much more product placement is in the shows and the commercials that use the actors for ads.. I wish I had an example in mind... but say I am watching show A... I am flying through the commercials and see my actor pop up.. so I hit 'play'... and we are in the middle of a commercial about some car that actor is driving in the show... and you can go online and play some game etc. etc. etc... and I can not fast forward again because the real show is juuuuusssstttt right after this commercial and I will not be able to pick it out from the commercial...


Seems to me they have found a way to get your attention... sneeky of them...
 
Let me get this straight, you sit through up to 10 minutes of commercials that interrupt your show, for things that you don't want or need, such as insurance, and you're annoyed by occasional beeps within those commercials?

Assuming I've got that right, how do you know that that beeping isn't just a technical glitch, and not attempted mind control?
 
Think your smoke detector battery is dying.

My current peeve is using the actors of whatever show we're watching - and a plausible bit of dialog so the commercial could be a part of the show. I catch a glimpse and think I'm passing the re-start point as I click the 30 second jump button while DVR speeding past the commercial break. So then I stop, back up 10 seconds at a time, and sonsabitches - they tricked me into watching a chunk of Subway sandwich ad!

Don't think I've heard the beeping though, other than from the a fore mentioned smoke detector or the microwave. Is your coffee reheated?

Oh - what Texas Proud said better.
 
Seems to me they have found a way to get your attention... sneeky of them...
Click to expand...

As more people get Tivos (are you listening REW?), this is only going to get worse.

Something I really like about the Tivo is the "jump ahead one minute" button. For shows that I watch regularly, I know exactly how many minutes to skip. For example, On Craig Ferguson, it is exactly seven minutes between the first segment and the second. It's usually an additional 2 minutes for the opening song plus the time it takes the audience to stop clapping. So, nine presses, and I'm at the start of the main monologue. Next two commercial breaks are exactly 8 minutes long.
 
TromboneAl said:
Let me get this straight, you sit through up to 10 minutes of commercials that interrupt your show, for things that you don't want or need, such as insurance, and you're annoyed by occasional beeps within those commercials?
Click to expand...
No Al, you've got it all wrong.

I'm sitting here at my desk attempting to entertain and enlighten the Intertube reading public while CNN chatters in the background. Suddenly I'm interrupted by [-]voices in my head[/-] an annoying beep. [-]Thousands[/-] [-]Hundreds[/-] [-]A dozen[/-] One lonely snowbound forum reader is deprived of all that wit and wisdom while I investigate the source of the sound, then rant and rave about it.

Got it?
 
Just relax and enjoy a nice Burpsi Cola (tm). Life goes better with Burpsi.
 
I can't say I have noticed those sneaky TV ads, but my brains tends to shut out whatever is annoying or irrelevant to me... beep but if you had a beep TIVO beep surely it wouldn't beep happen beep*... Now that congress has outlawed "loud commercials", I guess advertisers have to resort to other tricks to get our attention.





*I don't have a TIVO.:)
 
REWPepsi.jpg
 
I know exactly what you mean. AARP doesn't get my attention, but there is another commercial that has a phone-like chirp running in the background, at about the same space as a telephone ring. Don't hear it so much any more, but when it first started playing it drove me nuts. I checked the phones, smoke detector, and anything else that might have a low battery signal (chirp). Finally, I narrowed it down to the TV commercial. Ranted to DH about it...no response, he didn't hear it...high pitch noises are a no-go for him. I was so thoroughly irritated by the ad that I determined to ignore it. Still don't know what the ad was for...successful ignoring! BTW, this always happened while I was doing something else...TV on in the background. Gee, I think I can rant as well as REWahooo.

I don't TIVO either...if it isn't important enough for me to watch when it comes on, it isn't important enough to TIVO either. I only have a few programs that I routinely watch and I'm pretty fickle about those. TV is usually on some business channel all day...sort of like white noise.
 
Actually Rewahoo missed the point of the beeping. The next commercial is for hearing aids, swiftly followed by the ENT services.
 
Maybe it's really a Tivo ad that is being subsidized by Hartford's competition. You get mad at Hartford, buy different insurance and decide to buy a Tivo so you don't have to listen to the commercial. Meanwhile Tivo uses special software that creates subliminal messages when you speed through commercials that command you to spread the word that everyone should buy a Tivo to avoid annoying commercials.
 
Actually a TiVo makes it really easy to determine if the beeping is coming from the TV programming or from elsewhere.
 
If I'm watching a DVRed show I just fast forward through the commercial. No sound. If I'm watching live pre-recorded TV I hit the mute button during commercials, because 1) despite recent congressional action the commercials are still 50% louder than the show, and 2) even at lower levels the inane babbling of commercials (especially the mandated high speed "small print" at the end of many of them) drives me nuts. I firmly believe that my decades of not watching commercials contributed significantly to my LBYM, since I didn't expose myself to their subtle (screaming) demands that I need this, that, or the other. I used to avoid them by changing the channel and watching a 3-4 minute burst of a different show. America's Funniest Home Videos is good for that. But I determined that was not good for my longevity when DW informed me that if I didn't quit she was going to kill me. So now I just mute.
 
ReW, you can do what I do and just get all my news and entertainment right here on e-r.org. It's brought to you by folks you can trust, and the only warning buzzers come from the mods...:LOL:
 
I'm not sure why you (and the NY Times) think that the point is to get you to listen more closely to the commercial. That seems like quite a leap of logic.

I haven't heard one of these, but I would think that the second I notice a beep, I'm going to stop listening to the commercial, and work on finding out what is beeping.

As Rustward does, whenever I hear a weird noise, I say "Was that on the TV?," back up with the Tivo back 20 seconds button, and listen again.
 
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