Ben Bleikamp's blog about technology and college

Commercials suck.

I have been watching the PGA Championship since Thursday. The first two days the tournament was broadcast on TNT from 2pm-8pm. I felt like was bombarded with advertisements. It seemed like they would rotate between 10 minutes of golf and 3 minutes of commercials. No big deal, I’m used to that.

But TNT did something extra - when they came back from a commercial break they would play a mini commercial before I could watch anymore golf. They sneak an extra 15-30 seconds of commercials in by showing me a picture of the golf course with a commercial playing on the bottom left hand side of the screen. They have their obnoxious graphics, they hijack the sound, and show me one extra commercial.

Come on.

I already watched 3 minutes, why do you feel the need to trick your viewers into believing that you came back from a commercial break only to cram more advertisements into the mix? We are already seeing every golf brand name in the world on the course, the announcers are dropping product names every once in a while, and your logo is in the bottom right hand side. The leaderboard is sponsored, the blimp is sponsored - we’re seeing so many brand names that we couldn’t possible remember them all. And TNT decides to show one more advertisement by hijacking the screen for 30 seconds.

Come on.

I know the TV networks need to make money, but they should have a little respect for the viewers. I want to watch golf, I put up with the commercials, but at some point I’ll stop watching and I’ll start getting updates from the internet.