Channels & viewing

[TimRinkerman]

Most of the programs that Roku puts ads in are available without ads on another app...Britbox,acorn,Prime...look and you can avoid the Roku channel altogether.

[makaiguy]

Yes, if you wish to PAY for some ad-free premium subscriptions you may avoid ads seen in some free ad-suported channels.

[maverickwhites]

To avoid Roku Channel ads, consider using alternative apps like Britbox, Acorn, or Prime, which offer ad-free viewing options and a variety of content without interruptions.

[TimRinkerman]

Uh, yea...that's what I just said. Are you a bot?

[TimRinkerman]

I have no problem paying a nominal amount to watch programming without advertising. The Roku channel is not free, and you have to pay to subscribe to some of the channels within the Roku channel...so why should I have to be subjected to advertising on a channel I am already paying to watch?  Avoiding ads is the biggest reason I cut the cable to begin with. I'm old enough to remember when cable tv started with no advertising ..(shock!) but over the years they got greedy and advertising slowly creeped in like a cancer. If you don't mind having goods and services rammed down your throat that you have no interest in, or need of to watch tv for "free", go for it. 

[Strega2]

We got cable TV in the 70s and nearly all channels (except PBS and public access) had commercials.  I just browsed a Wikipedia page and it says even earlier cable systems had commercials, since like ours, early cable was mostly some big antennas on a mountain that picked up broadcast stations and distributed them to homes that couldn’t receive them otherwise.  Of course, even back in 1970, there were premium channels on cable, but we didn’t pay for any. As I recall, adding HBO added about 60% of the cost of “basic cable” itself.

However, in 1999, DVRs came out and we stopped watching commercials.  Currently we have a Dish Network Hopper DVR, so called because it will “hop” over commercials automatically if we want it to.  (If we find pressing the skip button on the remote to be too onerous. 😀)

Of course, it’s not too surprising that the value of ads went down when DVRs became common, and content providers wanted to make that up with higher fees.  However, I have to say I just plugged our early 70s cable bill into an inflation calculator and the price came out just a bit below our current Dish Network bill.  (And the Dish network sub includes the commercial-skipping DVR, HD, way more channels, and doesn’t require you to get up to change channels on the old mechanical cable box.)

Today we have streaming in the mix, but I just read an industry article that said that most streaming services are currently losing money.  So, I expect streaming to keep changing over the next decade.

In any case, we still don’t watch commercials.  (Skipped/hopped on Dish, and Prime, Netflix, and Paramount+ on Roku.)  I suspect everyone knows there is nothing overly special about The Roku Channel, but many people don’t want to pay for TV so TRC works well for them.

It is amusing to read all the various complaint threads on commercials though.  Too many commercials, repetitive commercials, “inappropriate” commercials, commercials in the “wrong” language (to me that would seem like the best kind of commercial!) etc…  I get especially amused when people talk of being “forced” to watch them.  Reminds me of “A Clockwork Orange”. 😀

[TimRinkerman]

Yes, early cable systems had commercials..on the local channels that they had to provide (free of charge)so as not to be monopolizing the local viewing area. However, you still had the option of watching commercial free programming..HBO,ESPN,TBS and several others were commercial free in the early days.many others started including ads later on, History,Discovery,HGTV..too many to remember. I welcome the opportunity to be able to pay for commercial free viewing of popular and current programming. Your "Hopper" is still getting the commercial content being sent to you..whether or not you actually viewed the channel doesn't matter..they care about what demographic tuned into that channel at that time...that's the info the PR firms get paid to deliver to the channel management. 

 Why should it be such a stretch to be able to watch something without having a completely irrelevant sales pitch forced on you every (insert number here)minutes?  Just sayin'...peace!

[Strega2]

Yes, HBO was around then and is still around and commercial-free.  Based on something I googled, TBS was just a rebroadcast of WTBS which had commercials all along. (Which is how I remember it as well.) 

Some time around 1990 I became aware of the modern internet-era business model which was:

1) Give service away below cost or, even better, free.
2) Capture eyeballs.  (Drive potential competitors out?)
3) Monetize

Step 3 usually ends up being some combination of ads and fees.  Some companies seem very successful but then drop dead at step 3.

By the way, the idea of TV and radio as a means of advertising, predates the actual invention of TV and radio.  Nikola Tesla sold investors on that idea when they asked him how they were going to get paid for something sent through the air.  So ads are not an inherent requirement (as the BBC has long shown with their TV license fees) but the ad business model has been there right from (before!) the start.

Oh and it does matter that people with DVRs skip ads!  The advertisers are not idiots and track that carefully. The percentage of the demo that doesn't see ads is useless to them.