I totally agree Mark. I only watch French TV, but the commercials are driving me insane! The publicity periods seem to be getting longer and longer. I seem to be able to mow the grass, hoover the house and prepare a meal during these periods. Some ads are quite well done and some are quite amusing, but normally they are just embarrassing and make me cringe.
Go with you there. We knew somebody involved in Torchwood and occasionally Dr Who when we lived in Wales up until five years ago. The cost of production is breathtaking, so the repeats are no surprise. French TV is the pits, but try Italian! German is boring but for a few good crimis, including some repeats of good series. Spanish is not worth putting on really. However, and I know it is the best part of a decade since I went, the USA offers little as well bar eternal soaps repeats. If you like Dallas, Friends, Knots Landing, plus an endless stream of the 38th season ofs and repeats of earlier series then it is great. Personally, I don't give a monkeys any longer.
Many years ago i stood at a check out in a shop behind a couple who looked as though they hadn't got two halfpennies to rub together but they had £30 of lottery tickeys but then there was more booze in their trolley than food so its how you choose to live i suppose
Back to the advertisements - the ones with those meercats and any programme with dogs barking cause the greatest problems with out two young border collies - they have to attack the screen.
To a certain extent I often moan there's nothing on tv, but I feel really sorry for all those people south of the Bordeaux to Lyon line who are no longer able to receive ANY Freesat channels.
I tend to record the progs I want to watch and then speed through the ads
Well i must confess we haven't bothered to replace the satellite dish since we lost mainstream tv last February and found we haven't missed it. Occasionally finding a half decent film on one of the obscure channels we can receive but out with friends, its the winter months that will find us bored so no doubt a new dish will appear before then
I so agree with you! Another thing about adverts that really gets my goat is the way they use songs from the 1960s and 1970s (you, know, when music was original and great), or classical music, to advertise run-of-the-mill products. I know it's because they can't come up with anything original themselves, but it's still annoying. I also hate the way adverts make men look stupid. I'm a woman, but it still annoys me! I also find many adverts patronising, as though they are dealing with children not adults, and I hate with a vengeance singing and dancing fruit and vegetables. Who do the advertisers think they are supposed to be aiming their adverts at?
The charity appeal adverts, in my opinion, should only be shown after the watershed. Most of them are too emotional for children to handle; they probably make them feel sad and helpless. There are ways of appealing for money for the needy, but this is not the way. As a friend remarked, such adverts make you feel guilty for being alive. The Brits are the most generous people in the world when it comes to giving to charity and donating money when disasters strike around the world, so there is no need to treat them this way. There is one other thing that annoys me about many adverts, but I can't mention that because it will be policitally incorrect.
If you live in France then why don't you watch French TV? It's mostly free and numerous channels have films in the original language (Arte, D8, le 4 etc). Arte do not do advertising at all and their programmes are lively and interesting. If you are nostalgic for your former country then buy a few dozen DvDs through Amazon of your favourite shows: Dad's Army, Monty Python and so on.
I would have thought that the best way of integrating into a new environment would be to - at least - read the local newspapers and watch the local TV!
Yes Simon your right. That is the only way to watch TV these days!
As someone who used to make Hamlet cigar commercials way back when, I share your concern about the dullness of today's advertising.
I think the truth about your other point about repeats and cheap tv is the fact that the good television is so expensive to make and not just because the talent is expensive, though it is. it's more to do with the fact that high definition TV demands a far greater degree of accuracy in presentation whether its a costume drama or a murder mystery. Some of us remember the old Doctor Who series when the flappy scenery was just about good enough for those of us watching on old fllickering B&W sets but they wouldn't pass muster today. And the costs have escalated accordingly.
When I left the BBC and that was over 15 years ago costume drama already cost over £1m an hour so it's understandable that daytime tv for example (which has never had much of a budget) should be full of easy and cheap to make programming good, bad or mostly indifferent.
The BBC in particular is under constant attack from the Murdoch press and although it has certainly produced its fair share of idiot behaviour in the past few years, it still manages to provide incredibly good value for money compared with the pay channels as well as always being in the vanguard of technical innovation.
I always find it interesting that criticism of the licence fee in the UK is fairly widespread whereas here in France (where the compulsory licence fee is not much lower and where the licence fee funded channels carry extensive product advertising for much of the day) you hardly ever hear a voice raised in dissent. And this despite the fact that French TV constantly airs subtitled programmes from elsewhere in prime time, still plays a sixties Zorro series in the early weekeday evening in pasty sixties colour and constantly recycles the same forty or so journalists and presenters on each others chat show programmes made to a near identical formula with an audience on three sides clapping where directed to do so. In my view there are about six programmes across all French public channels that are worth watching and the smugness with which the rest of the formulaic stuff is made is breathtaking. But no one complains.
Sign up for a VPN, then Amazon Prime and view your choice... no adds... :)
Actually, at present it seems to be cars. All pointing out how each is different, better than all others, blah, blah, blah and then they mention the price, mind you always starting at €X... Zzzzzzzz!
Television advertising these days, appears to be aimed at children, or persons of little intellect. They are patronising, to say the least. I suspect most of them put off prospective customers, rather than attract them.
There is little wit employed, and anything that involves silly dancing around and chanting and singing, is a turn off, as is anything which is "clinically proven". Uggh. Awful, awful, awful. Very few amuse me, most I try and ignore, and none, thus far, have convinced me to buy anything.
I could not garee with you more! I briefly refused to watch the ITV channels because of the offt too repeated advertisements. But I was driven back to them by the blandness of some of the BBC channels.
C est la vie!
Yeah ! I must confess to a certain empathy there ;-)
It's just about now Mark, as I did, when I realised that "Grumpy Old Men" was my favourite programme!
do what I do buy a freesat+ box record every programme you want to watch then start your viewing 15 minutes after the original start
With you there. Slogans and campaign themes are not infinite in their range and diversity, so the Hamlet cigar motif is lost. The ultimate slogan is probably:
1934, from the Hat Council, is the calibre of corniness that is simply brilliant. The 'aluminium' one is simply trite. However, we watch German, Italian and Spanish TV as well occasionally and French often and quite honestly it would be worth starting an ad equivalent of the Olympics to see who produces the most banal, the most pointless, most annoying and perhaps even add the best print and TV campaigns. Sometimes one needs things that are so droll the effect is soporific and helps us sleep that bit easier ;-)
I enjoy watching channel 8 on Freeview but, is there any chance that the repeated adverts can be changed they drive me mad