I remember when there was a controversy about whether skipping commercials on TiVo etc. was somehow “stealing” from the networks, because the whole system assumes people have to sit through the ads. And one of the cable execs said “if we got rid of commercials your cable bill would go up by $50 a month” or something…

That’s supposed to be true, but it’s not.

One of the nice things about network shows is that they are made for commercials and the commercial are played during those spots. I’ve tried watching a couple of ad-supported streamers like Roku TV and there’s no telling you’re about to go to a commercial, it just happens. But of course hiring people to time these…

Honestly, if this extra three bucks meant I could watch everything on Freevee without ads too, it might be worth it. There’s a lot of good stuff on there, but the ads make it outright painful to watch.

Yeah that’s the thing that gets me. I don’t really mind the idea of commercials that much most of the time, I mean 90% of the time if I have the TV on it’s for background noise or to half-watch while I work or clean the apartment or whatever and it’s only when I’m watching a show with someone else that I get annoyed…

People tease me for keeping shelves of blu-rays near my TV, but about half the time it’s easier than trying to stream something. 

While I was reading this article about how shitty it is that everything has ads now and they’re a huge nuisance, the part of the page I was reading suddenly jumped away from me to make way for a video. 

For us it’s more like 95%. We refuse to tolerate ads, so if the pricing becomes absurd for the shows we watch, we’re not going to spend less and deal with ads; we’re going to dust off the VPN and go back to the early 2010s.

i just hope they have more than five ads in rotation. hulu, im looking at you.

You were only willing to pay that $100/month because it was the only game in town though, there were no comparable products besides satellite, which was not really cheaper and comes with a whole load of other issues.

I would resent this a lot less if they were actually funneling this cash to the creatives instead of passive income queens like shareholders and executives. 

I wonder what else AV Club has to say about free ad-supported content. So easy to navigate!

Freevee already has ads, so how would adding commercials “change” Freevee?  Your comment is nonsensical. 

Just one more reason to sail the high seas I suppose...

i sign up for a free monthly trial of amazon prime around black friday every year, do my christmas shopping, catch up on the grand tour and then unsubscribe.

I still have spools of DVDs that I haven’t touched in probably 10 years...

Maybe the long game on this is getting us all to buy DVD’s again to get away from the commercials we’ve grown accustomed to not watching. 

I’m pretty sure that most of us predicted that streaming would end up just like cable back before the whole fad started.