This is a question that I feel needs to be asked.....did the entire Continent of North America all suddenly suffer amnesia at the same time or is it a case of collective Attention Deficit Disorder? Or maybe it's just the TV people think that you all have these issues I don't know.
Why do I ask I hear you ask?
I shall tell you!
I've suspected for some time that the attention span in Northern America & Canada may be shorter than say Europe or anywhere else in the world based on the fact that you find a 90 minute game of Football (or
soccer as you choose to call it) too long to hold your attention and your "American Football" has to be split into 4 quarters and have half time entertainment and cheerleaders to keep you interested.
This is something that I noticed began to seep over into TV shows.
I download a lot of TV as I can't be bothered to wait months and months for the UK to catch up, but over here, by law, a half hour TV show can only have 1 ad break, usually around the 10 minute mark and a 1 hour show has 3, usually around the 10 minute mark, the 30 minute mark and the 50 minute mark.
When I watch TV shows direct from the US I notice usually double that amount of ad breaks.
Then lately I've noticed that every time a show returns from an ad break they feel the need to cover about a quarter of the screen with a message reminding you of which show it is you're watching, just in case you had forgotten..
I mean
Do they really believe that in to 3-4 minutes they were trying to sell you stuff that you forgot what show it was you were watching?
I know both of those examples are from Sci-Fi but it's the same with Criminal Minds and Jericho and other shows on other networks.
Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, they feel the need to tell you about all the other shows that are coming up....
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that i think our North American cousins are slow or anything, but the US Networks by doing this are certainly presenting that image to the rest of the viewing world.
The reason I find it so irritating is that, with most things unfortunately, what the US does, the rest of the world follows suit and more and more UK channels are doing the same.
Most of the shows I watch on Sky TV now have ads for shows before and after the actual ad breaks themselves, then when they return from ad breaks they need to tell you what it is that you're watching, which as you're already watching it you would assume that you would know what the show is...BECAUSE YOU'RE ALREADY WATCHING IT!!!!
Then when the end credits roll, they feel the need to shrink them to a size that a scientist with a microscope would struggle to see while they tell you about all the other shows that are coming up....why??
It's 2008.
We have on screen TV guides, DVR, Tivo, Sky Plus, TV Listings magazines and so on and so on, do we really need a constant bombardment of ads on the shows we're watching telling us what it is we're already watching and then what we can watch??
Do the dickheads that run TV really think that we are so damn stupid that we can't find the shows that we want to watch without them ramming it home to us at regular 10 minute intervals??
In case you hadn't guessed this is something that irritates me and I just needed to vent.
Rant over.....for now.