Can I just say something? No?
Tough – I’m going to say it anyway. Here it is:
I am bloody sick of adverts.
There – I’ve said it.
Back in the day when I was just a kid, I didn’t mind adverts too much. Some of them were funny, some of them were interesting and I regarded them as having a purpose other than just trying to sell stuff. As I grew older, I started to hate them but I know that they served a purpose for me, though this wasn’t the purpose that the marketers intended.
Basically, when the adverts came on, I could take a break, go to the loo, make a cup of tea, etc. without missing my favourite TV programmes. With the advent of video recorders I could record TV programmes and watch them later at my own leisure and just skip the adverts.
That made me happy.
These days I can download TV programmes and movies to watch and I can stream them on a variety of streaming platforms. Initially I paid good money for this and as a result I got unblemished TV content that was commercial free.
That made me extremely happy.
Recently, though, things have become really annoying. Streaming services have upped their game and started offering cheaper tariffs – but with a catch. That catch is that you are once again bombarded with commercials. In order to remove commercials I have to fork out a lot of money and this is on top of paying for my satellite/cable service and paying the mandatory TV Licence we have in the UK.
What is the TV Licence? In the UK the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) is free of commercials because we the public have to pay an annual fee to watch it. Perhaps it was the first TV service of its kind. Even though I don’t watch the BBC as much as I used to, I still have to pay it. If you don’t pay for your TV licence, the powers that be, the TV police, can came along and either fine you £1000 (at the time of writing) or be further prosecuted. We have no choice. The money goes to the BBC who spend it on content.
Now, if I watch something on Disney+ or Netflix with the cheaper subscription rate, I have to suffer mandatory commercials. You can’t skip them at all. Effectively I am paying to watch adverts and in order to remove them I am expected to pay a fortune. Given the number of streaming platforms, that can add up to a lot of money.
However, these days adverts aren’t restricted to television. They are everywhere.
ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE!
And I can’t get rid of them without paying a premium. Here are some examples:
They appear in the cinema before the movie you have paid to watch. You can avoid many of these by turning up later and hopefully missing all the adverts.
They appear on the radio. I rarely listen to radio these days but when I do I choose BBC Radio 4, which is a news channel effectively but has no adverts. The reason I don’t listen to other stations is that most radio stations have a melange of three things that make my blood boil. First, the DJ’s are usually the kind of shiny happy people that seem to think all the listeners want to listen to their inane bullshit as they talk over records. Second, the music is not my kind of music and if by a miracle it is, the songs are spoiled and interrupted by jingles and bullshit from the DJ’s. Finally, the adverts on radio are the worst and are awful.
I watch You Tube a lot for free but this means that I have to endure adverts every couple of minutes. I like progressive rock music, which typically has longer songs and if I choose to watch, say, a Dream Theater video on You Tube that lasts 10 minutes, it is interrupted at least once with adverts. One time, I tried to use a You Tube mindfulness video to relax into to go to sleep and I was just nodding off when a bloody advert tried to persuade me to buy a new smart watch thus rendering useless the previous calming five minutes of relaxing music and guaranteeing that I was now wide awake and ranting like a banshee, which resulted in waking up Mrs PM and the cats and all the chaos that ensues when I am foolhardy enough to do that.
I am using Duolingo to help me to learn French, Spanish and German. The problem is that I spend more time watching terrible adverts for Temu and other useless apps than I do learning a new language.
I am on Spotify and have paid for the full subscription to avoid commercials while listening to music. I am afraid that having my music interrupted by commercials is something I cannot endure.
Other apps that I use also swamp me with terrible adverts.
This infuriates me.
I think we are all left with a choice. We either spend a fortune to avoid adverts or we suck it up and endure them.
At this moment in my life, when I am a happy retired gentleman I have to learn to find the power within myself to endure these dreadful commercials because there is absolutely no way I am going to give any more of my hard-earned cash to corporations who seem to love creating the worst adverts to defecate onto my TV screen or smartphone.
I have started making a cup of tea when the adverts come on streamed TV programmes. I have started looking at Spanish, French and German books in the minutes that are wasted by Duolingo’s adverts.
I have found soothing commercial-free music on Spotify to help me on the way to sleep should I need to.
I will get there but in the meantime there may be some rants along the way.
Actually, as a final word, I can cope with spoof adverts. If there were more of these it would be much better. I’ll leave you with a couple:
