This space for rent!
- The Million Dollar Homepage - Own a piece of internet history!
The marvellous, hilarious thing is that along there with all the (sigh) p*ker and c*sino and other completely stupid things is The Times. Ho yes. But this page is like America squeezed into a little space on your screen, all at once. All the crapulousness, all at once, all the time. Any change it could just stay there? (See also American Copywriter’s misery at the sight - including a comment from someone who saw it when it had 2 pixels bought up.) - MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | How Lost viewers lose out to the ad breaks
Short-changed fans of the mysterious Channel 4 show Lost have been given the answer to at least one nagging question as Ofcom revealed that each 65-minute episode contained just 36 minutes of new footage owing to the onslaught of advertisements.
This is how the creeping advert culture is eating up your time. Half an hour of ads to see a half-hour program? No wonder PVRs and DVD-recorders are getting so popular.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- iCame, iSaw, iPodded (again); and HDTV comes gradually to the UK (15 August 2005; score: 39.22%)
- Eudora "Not enough disk space for that" answer, and Postfix woes (28 February 2005; score: 28.64%)
- "We should be on Mars by now" - but it's a good thing we aren't (5 October 2004; score: 24.41%)
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November 24th, 2005 at 6:26 am
Lost: I knew it.
I notice the ad saturation when I finished watching an episode and saw that the next one was about to start on E4. An ad break started up a few minutes in (how like America, I thought), then another one came along about 9 minutes later, then another, then another.
The contrast in viewing experience was marked to say the least. The ad-drenched episode felt like hard work. Hard. Work. Not want you want from lightweight Sunday night entertainment.
Shame on you Channel 4, I say. Shame.
November 24th, 2005 at 6:28 am
Addendum: should say - watched the first episode on a PVR - hence ad-free.
November 24th, 2005 at 10:32 am
What the Guardian appears to have missed is that Ofcom were unable to uphold most of the complaints because C4 scheduled Lost in a 65-minute slot (despite there being at most 40 minutes of programme content. Because the schedule was longer than an hour, they were able to schedule more breaks than if they had stuck to a 60-minute slot.
I haven’t watched it since the first double episode, so I’m not bothered, but I do think Ofcom missed an opportunity to say something about C4’s circumvention of the spirit of the rules.
November 24th, 2005 at 10:48 am
I thought the Guardian did point out about its being a 65-minute schedule?
But yes, that’s a very clear circumvention of rules. And what’s ironic is that it was only 65 minutes because they stuffed so much advertising into it. On that basis, you could inflate the length of the programme so you had an “hour’s” worth of TV programme (the 36 minutes of actual new stuff; be grateful the title sequence isn’t longer) crossing the 60-miinute barrier and going up to, who knows, 36 + 20 ads + 20 ads = 76 minutes, more than half of which would be ads. Wow.
Anyway, PVR is definitely the way to go. Although we’re having building work that puts our Sky+ out of action. But also puts our TV out of action.
E4 is definitely the place to watch, or tape, it, though.
November 24th, 2005 at 11:09 pm
This weeks’ episode came in at 39 minutes of action, in a 54 minute slot - from start of program to end … leaving 11 minutes of ads before/after.
I’m grateful to the FF button.
April 14th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
I think that the concept of the million dollar page was great. Everybody is thinking “How couldn’t I think of that?”, I find myself wondering that also. Well now days there are thousands of people trying to do the same. But only those that really take time on their website will succed. I have a million dollar website www.p3millionpixel.com, I spend a lot of time advertising and working on it, and I’m hoping to make money with that site.