TV Screen Clutter
The clutter on your TV screen is getting worse.
Kyra Sedgwick, star of “The Closer” on TNT, walks under a police tape and scans the screen with her flashlight. And every time she does, she makes Gretchen Corbin, a technical writer in Berkeley, Calif., irate.
The promotional ads for “The Closer” run in the bottom right of the screen during other TNT programs — a graphic called a snipe. But for Ms. Corbin, who sometimes watches movies that have subtitles, the tiny images block the dialogue.
“Some ad just took over the entire bottom of the screen so I missed what the characters said to each other,” said Ms. Corbin, describing a recent experience. “And it’s TV, so you can’t rewind.”
Snipes are just the latest effort by network executives to cram promotions onto television screens in the age of channel surfing, ad skipping and screen-based multitasking. At first, viewers may feel a slight jolt of pleasure at the sight of a new visual effect, they say, but over time the intrusions contribute to the sense that the screen is far more cluttered — not just with ads, but with news crawls and other streams of information.
Not just “snipes” but full blown, full-color, moving ads that take away from the current show, sometimes obscuring it. This really is way too much.
This ranks right down there with a feature on news channels that appeared after 9/11: The Scroller(tm). On a day when terrorism hit the US, keeping up with more news than just what was being covered at the moment was very useful. But when The Scroller is noting who’s won a local mustache and beard contest, it’s usefulness has long, long been outlived. Give me some of my screen back, guys
Technorati Tags: television, snipe, Gretchen Corbin, advertisements
Filed under: Media • Television
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I believe these “snipes” need to be outlawed by the FCC, since they are properly advertisements that supersede content. I also believe that with some concerted political pressure that consumers can make this happen thru the government that is supposed to regulate television industry practices.
I am ready to start helping with a political movement to this end. Can you help me with this?
I hardly think government intervention is necessary, as much as I dislike the ads. Actually, I’m surprised that Hollywood hasn’t already cried foul over the obscuring of their work.
Well, since I am not a part of the Hollywood elite, I cannot speak for their willingness to act. So let’s just say we ignore the government and Hollywood and take on one channel at a time with consumer pressure to remove their snipes. Can we start with a smaller channel while we build up momentum?