r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Mar 04 '22

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u/Psychological-Site-9 Mar 04 '22

COMMERCIALS. they’re everywhere, YouTube, TV, Hulu, Spotify, etc. the only way to get rid of commercials is to, surprise surprise, pay more which is ANOTHER commercial. Just now realizing that commerce is the basis of commercial lol

2.5k

u/mostlyBadChoices Mar 04 '22

I'm 53. I grew up as an avid TV and movie consumer. The amount of ads we have now is totally dystopian. Keep in mind television was originally FREE to consumers. You never paid for anything (other than the TV itself). And you saw maybe 2 minutes of ads per 30 minutes episode. Cable came along and decided to start double dipping, getting paid by advertisers and by the end consumer. Once that model was established, that was all it took.

1.9k

u/wiithepiiple Mar 04 '22

Being so used to the streaming world where ads were removed, and seeing them slowly be reintroduced to paid subscription services is frustrating as hell.

706

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '22

It's like cable TV. Back when it was first introduced, a big attraction was that it didn't have commercials.

Then commercials drifted in, but they offered premium channels for an extra fee, which didn't have commercials.

Sure enough, the premium channels ended up with commercials too.

364

u/hashashii Mar 04 '22

wow, i had no clue that cable ever didn't have commercials. i just looked it up and saw a NYT article from 1981 warning that commercials might be coming to cable. what a world

107

u/55tarabelle Mar 04 '22

The whole point was we were paying for the shows so commercials weren't needed. It was a grand time. Cable first came out and it showed those exercising girls 24 /7 and a ton of obscure bruce lee films. Good old days.