Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Not So Special Broadcasting Service

To borrow a line from Dave Hughes:

"I'm angry."

Why? Ads on SBS. Thought I'd try to have a relaxing watching of tv last night and to my surprise, SBS decided to put ads in everything. Started with mythbusters. Took a while for me to work out what was going on. There were ads and then the show continued. Took a while for me to realise that they were actually continually advertising through the programme.

So when did this all start? I found a media release from SBS in microsoft .doc format dated 1st June 2006 which said things like they were going to raise an extra $10m from this, using it to make more news (1 hour programme) and fund local drama and documentaries. There are a few excuses given, but to be honest it made it really hard to watch. I'm just not used to ads in the middle of SBS programming. There was a couple of shows I wanted to watch but I just couldn't in the end. I had to switch it off. It became irritating.

There's a reasonably good discussion about it on Lateline.

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