On-Screen Promos, Banners and Graphics

T

topher

New member
Watching Chuck last night & I notice that City puts a black banner across the bottom of the screen advertising upcoming programs. I like to read guest actors, writers & directors' names, but the banner blocks them.
I wish they'd get rid of it or at least wait until later in the show.
 
This is becoming common practice, just like the "bug" became common before that.

Someday, I bet we can expect to start seeing product commericals there instead of just advertising for other shows.
 
These "up and coming" programme banners are beginning to be a pain and we need to complain to the stations that do this. It is advertizing and perhaps a note to the CRTC, which still regulates the amount of advertizing, is in order, since I doubt the time that the banner is displayed is counted in their advertizing minutes.

I really hate the ones that are moving and do all kinds of swirls and things - very distracting when trying to watch a programme. CBC has them in red.

I rarely watch commercial TV and they are driving me away even more.
 
This has been a long-used ploy in sports programming too... home team down by one in the bottom of the ninth of game 7 and the play-by-play announcer winces as he's forced to pleasantly spout out the plot of an upcoming "very special, heartwarming Grey's Anatomy Thursday at 9"... complete with full screen graphics.

Bleccccchhhhh!

That stuff should go right into advertising minutes for sure, 57!
 
It isn't classed as advertising, it's a promo. Promos do not go towards advertising minutes. There are/were slight deviations with regards to how many American themed promos that can/could be run. Log-wise, there is a different class for both. If stations could, they would run one or two 30 second promos an hour and fill the rest with paid for commercial content.

However, and I wish to be clear on this, stations promoting their own programming is not commercial content. Not even a smidgen. There are ways around commercial content rules that have been bent with Closed Captioning Billboards and the weather bugs some stations run. There was a grey area and it was exploited. Promos? Nope.

American stations do this as well, so it isn't some coy plan by the Canadian networks to somehow get more money by circumventing outmoded revenue models.
 
My biggest issue with the promo banners is when they eclipse essential content. Specifically, I can recall being annoyed on more than one occasion when the on-screen dialogue is in a foreign language and the English translation is captioned and the promo eclipses the words.
 
So, basically they seem to be abusing a privilege.

There are some new programmes on these days and I was surfing through late last night just to see what some people on this forum are talking about with regard to network programmes. I believe it was NBC running a promo for the programme after the one I was looking at. The promo was almost in the middle of the screen and it was huge on my (61") TV.

I am one customer that they will not have, and I will complain to any channels that I do watch (like CBC) that obstruct my enjoyment of a programme.
 
Krydor, I think you misunderstood the tone of this thread. We know what promos are, and we object to the way promos are done. We believe that they ruin programming and should not be allowed in their present form since they are, in fact, advertising. Since they are advertising, they should go towards the quotas. At the very least, they must be stopped from ruining programming.
 
NBC is among the worst. They have local news affiliate promos during a show. The Detroit graphic takes up a third of the screen! They also have frequent graphics about upcoming shows, complete with annoying animated peacock feather flying about the screen. And they wonder why fewer people watch TV these days... :rolleyes:
 
I saw a great one on the Comedy Network. It was for the season premiere of Drawn Together. They'd have a banner at the bottom of the screen advertising Bill Mahar's show coming up next (at least, I think it was his show). One of the characters in the Drawn Together show would then look down at the banner and interrupt whoever was talking with the idle murmur, "Oooh, I like that Bill Mahar. I'll have to check it out!"

Okay, it was part of the episode, but it was a nice little swipe at the irritating banner ads.

cheers,
supervij
 
I don't know if this oversteps or not, but banner promos are not in any way advertising by any CRTC classification of which I am aware.
 
Our point is that they should be. They are, after all, advertizing an upcoming programme, or a programme on another channel, etc.

They are actually worse than a regular advert because they ruin a portion of the programme. They are even worse than product placements.
 
As I said, Krydor, we know exactly what the present situation is, and that is the point of this thread. Promos cross the line into advertising, and are found by many to be offensive in the way that advertisements are. There is really no differentiating them other than in the CRTC's definitions, which we challenge.

I don't know if this is the case with you in particular, but it troubles me that there might be a notion that members at DHC are not savvy in the ways of broadcasting in Canada. This is especially sore since many of us have been working in the industry in a wide variety of roles for many years. ;)
 
We can expect more of this (along with product placement ads) as advertisers and TV stations try to counter the growing PVR numbers. Programs will soon become unwatchable as the battle for viewers' attention escalates.
 
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