
The Price Is Right: What Advertising Does to TV - samclemens
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/12/the-price-is-right-emily-nussbaum
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justaman
What I got out of this article: Advertising has become so deeply entrenched
into the medium(not just commercials) that it has become almost required to
invoke a sense of commonality between the characters and the viewer. You are
what you eat, in a sense. If its The Mindy Project and Tinder, or Mr. Robot
and Starbucks it likely doesnt matter anymore as long as the logo finds its
way into your eye sockets. In an effort to ease the process, the act of
bashing the product in satire has become increasingly common. To put in other
words, Colbert lied to you openly to get you thinking about a product.

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massysett
"At this point, the model seems to morph every six months."

I stopped reading here. The model is ads and subscription revenue. Ads have
been around forever. Subscription revenue has been around for at least twenty
years. For instance HBO is decades old and they have even been producing
original shows for over fifteen years. You also have some other revenue
sources, like iTunes downloads. No huge change there. Cable operators have
been selling pay-per-view for decades.

How is that "morphing every six months"?

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dalke
What you got to what a set up for why that view ("seems") was wrong.

You wrote "Ads have been around forever"

A few paragraph later, which you didn't get to, the author says:

> This is both a new crisis and an old one. When television began, it was a
> live medium. Replicating radio, it was not merely supported by admen; it was
> run by them. In TV’s early years, there were no showrunners: the person with
> ultimate authority was the product representative, the guy from Lysol or
> Lucky Strike. Beneath that man (always a man) was a network exec. ...

> Advertisements shaped everything about early television programs, including
> their length and structure, with clear acts to provide logical inlets for
> ads to appear."

ending up with:

> This sponsor-down model held until the late fifties, around the time that
> the quiz-show scandals traumatized viewers: producers, in their quest to
> please ad reps, had cheated. Both economic pressures and the public mood
> contributed to increased creative control by networks, as the old one-
> sponsor model dissolved.

You write: "Subscription revenue has been around for at least twenty years."

The author's starting point is from before pay cable. ("Then came pay cable,
the VCR, the DVD, the DVR, and the Internet".) As
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_States)
point out, that was nominally the late 1940s, but 'Original programming over
cable came in 1972 with deregulation of the industry.'

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rasz_pl
And this is why I only watch content with access to fast froward button. No TV
for me.

~~~
ascagnel_
And yet, many movies and TV shows (including premium TV that features no
commercials) feature some level of placements from advertisers, be it subtle
or obvious. And everything falls victim; even The Martian has a plug for Under
Armour.

