Many TV stations put a banner ad in the picture these days

_number8_@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 135 points –

(ignore the old TV)

an ESPN+ exclusive fight has literally nothing to do with the football

61

I hate to be the guy to tell you, man. But, they’ve been doing this shit for like, 30 years man.

I can't ignore the old TV.

I'm honestly impressed there are still functional, floor-model rear-projection TVs.

I clean out houses for a living, you'd be very shocked how many functional rear projection and CRTs are in use and get thrown out "because old".

Heart wrenching and entirely understandable. Those things are both magnificent and inconvenient these days

And the picture quality is terrible by modern standards. Give me OLED any day.

It is terrible for modern media, but for legacy media give me analog signal any day

Agreed, though I'll take a Trinitron over an RPTV any day

It's too heavy to ever get replaced. It'll still be there after the house is long gone.

This is a weird take. That ticker telling you about scores and schedules for a whole bunch of different sports has been on ESPN forever.

While I understand their point, it's like going to the channel with the stock market banner on the bottom and complaining it is taking up part of the screen, where I would almost say the other 90% of the screen is the ads.

So many hours spent watching that as a child. It was either that channel or Bob Barker when I was on summer break

I am not going to ignore the old TV. That's rad as hell and I am jealous.

That rear projection beast was the best darn television for tests years until Pioneer made plasmas. I miss ours deeply and wish we’d had the space to keep it (especially for retro gaming and the yearly playing of the Star Wars laser disk).

What kind of tests?

My bad. Must have made a slip up on the swipe keyboard. I meant “years”. I’ve edited my post to correct.

Isn't the whole point of sports to be able to advertise?

Is it? I thought it was to get more points than the other team. I've been playing wrong this whole time?

Definitely playing wrong. It’s about money, Gatorade, and getting enough CTE to justify killing your wife. /s

I thought sports was about wealthy, unscrupulous white men fighting each other over the right to have the most-talented black men go to work in their fields.

Nah, that is to keep potential clients interested.

They keep adding rules to the sport to make it more "TV viewing friendly", meaning more breaks to show ads. I mean, the superbowl is just ads with sport attached.

Look at the sports with systemic ad presence vs sports where it's all "grass roots." (The grass roots ones are mostly gone.)

Most top sports are incredibly expensive to keep running and the ones that become infested with ads are the ones that stick around for us to enjoy. If you follow less popular sports you'll consider yourself lucky to bring in ads and sponsors.

Honestly I would take the little banner if it meant there was not comerical breaks. The fact that they do this on top of all the ads they also play at breaks is so over the top. I have been getting into European football and I find it so refreshing that they play 45 mins half straight through. It's way faster games and there is not the disruption of comericals. In those games they have the banner, but I don't mind it as much

That TV looks killer for retro consoles...

What's the refresh rate on these? Since they're back projected

Most of those rear-projection TV were 60 Hz, with the high-end ones often having 120 Hz.

That's pretty good. The viewing angles were trash but it got you a big TV easier.

Was never allowed to play games on ours because it could cause screen burn in.

Gonna put on MSNBC 24/7 instead. Ah, someone already did that for me!

I actually struggled to identify what part of the screen was an ad, and I'm less able to be outraged about a TV channel displaying what content they will be broadcasting later than ads for unrelated products. Similar to how I'm okay with or even want to see movie previews before a movie, but I better not see a commercial for insurance or consumer electronics.

Your TV is awesome, and I'd would absolutely love to play some Metal Gear Solid on that bastard.

I hate the mid-game ads that take up 2/3 of the screen

That's fucking irritating.

I love your tv tho and cant ignore it. My dad had one of these beasts when I was young it had to be over 300 pounds easy. Thing never moved once it was there.

Damn that TV must have very good sounds compared to nowadays TV

That’s actually called a “bug”—not the software error kind, though. In sports broadcasts, we get the classic “score bug,” always been there, usually small and tucked in a corner to keep things low-key. But what you’re seeing here, this whole bottom-of-the-screen takeover, is way more like those old-school news channel bugs from back in the ‘90s or early 2000s. You know, the ones that would stretch across the screen with stock prices, news updates, whatever they wanted to throw at you, right underneath the main action. It’s more intrusive for sure, but not anything wild—it’s actually been around for decades.

I thought the strip across the bottom was called a chyron? Not heard it referred to as a bug before (not saying you're wrong though).

Maybe in news it is. 🤷‍♂️ My knowledge comes from working with a 3rd party for ESPN. I know ESPN refers to this as the bug. There are "bug operators", and boy howdy does the producer yell at them when they're not on their toes.

I've completely given up on watching broadcast TV. Recently they made a change in Germany, where you have to pay extra for cable TV. Which I won't do so now I don't have cable any more. I haven't even noticed the difference.

Have you watched a game of Association Football (or real football) lately? They digitally alter the ads on physical LED banners for different broadcast regions.

I noticed it on an NHL broadcast recently. I guess it's cool they can do that now, but it removes the local flavor of the team hosting the event.

Yeah they started putting ads on the dasher boards a few years ago. There are also ads digitally inserted on the ice.

The tech is pretty cool. When they first started doing it, it would sometimes cut off players, but they seemed to get it settled down within a few months.

I know the /r/hockey sub was really upset about it when it was first implemented, and I was annoyed at first because of the glitches. But now, it's like...well, now I see these ads instead of those ads...what's the difference?

This was already common practice to promote other shows during broadcasts way back when I last watched broadcast TV over a decade and a half ago.

That's good. It should serve as a reminder that you need to abandon a dinosaur push media. It's a subtle way to punish normies who haven't caught on yet.

programs with tickers often have something on a portion of it, especially sporting events. at least it's only a program promo and not a flashy animated thing for a prescription drug or something.

who still watches broadcast TV?

ah sports... adults investing billions into children's games. not surprised.

I think I prefer “children's games” to organized crime and wars. Keeps competitve people busy.

Yeah, I don't sports, but one shouldn't be ignorant to the fact games are fun. Sports are wildly popular all around the world for a reason. But hey, some of us nerds need to feel superior one way or another.

games are fun

Games ARE fun. Adults wasting these kinds of resources so rich men can get richer is fucking disgusting and you know it even if you won't admit it.

It's a terrible waste of resources, it's a perversion of athletics, and it doesn't take a nerd to feel superior to that kind of petty bullshit.

If it's any consolation I feel the same way about NASCAR and F1. Petty, climate wrecking childish bullshit.

Bet you're a fan of that garbage too.

Hey, I didn't see it that way, you got good points, you won me over. You're a fucking asshole, though, good luck winning others over with your childish bullshit.

The only reason why I'm agreeing with you is because I already have left leaning beliefs and a little bit of an education to know capitalism bad, you're preaching to the choir. By the way, no, I don't consume sports of any kind, stop being a butthead.

Hey, I didn’t see it that way, you got good points, you won me over. You’re a fucking asshole, though, good luck winning others over with your childish bullshit.

Sure thing sporto.

yeah that's what we've got, a binary decision between sports (panem et circenses) or outright war.

Couldn't possibly be some bits in between.

Cute.

Sorry it's not as exciting as 90 day fiance for you.

what the fuck is even that?

also, it's gold that you don't even try to argue that you're an adult who's enthralled by watching billionaires pay millionaires to play a child's game.

lolol