Betty by Gary Delainey and Gerry Rasmussen for January 22, 2024

Is that like trying to become immune to poison?

If enough people cancel the app because they don’t want to see commercials they’ll have to stop running them. I am so tired of stupid ads popping up all the time!

That happened in the eighties when lots of people switched to cable. Paying to see advertising. They also started buying clothes with the corporate labels on them. It became stylish to be walking billboards. Look at the swoosh for example.

Cory Doctrow’s article on enshittification ("Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. ") is a bit basic, but he’s not wrong.

AMC channel started out commercial free, then added them. TCM still remains commercial free so far. I don’t buy streaming service.

Next they’ll probably go back to paying for each screen.

Remember cable TV…

You get a lot of programs that aren’t available on broadcast TV.

Netflix is really poor, guys; they really need more of our money.

This was the last straw at Amazon for me. My paid membership expires next month and I’m letting go of it. They had already stopped providing 2-day delivery, I’m at the end of the route so the driver cuts me off till the next day or three, delivery isn’t really free anymore because now they just increase the price to cover it and now commercials on a paid service unless I want to pay $36.00 more a year. I’m done.

Remember when an evening at the movies was just movies? Then they started adding trailers. Then all sorts of ads. {s} Of course, if you pay to get in, they don’t show ads. {/s}

My wife subscribes to some services. I don’t know which ones or how much they cost.

I have an antenna for the local channels — the digital ones have split into as many as seven channels (16.1, 16.2 etc) so there’s lots of choice. But I pay $6.00 a month for Peacock, since I can get shows from NBC that I’ve missed, as well as good movies. And PBS Passport, available for supporting one’s local station, is a great source for British mysteries, documentaries, etc.

We’re all looking at you Prime Video that starts adding commercials this month

We’re going back to shadow puppets.

I’m thinking of getting a Kobo, downloading all the library books in series’ that I missed on account of the fact that I couldn’t find them and then reading them in their proper order, or better yet, get them in audio so I can work with my hands while I ‘read’.

Yeah, Amazon just started doing that.

We just cancelled our streaming service. We grew tired of their predatory practices.

Another form of shrinkflation

We switched to streaming to get away from Cox Cable’s prices. Our 3 streaming services (3 majors) are cheaper than Cox. Commercials were on Cox, so having them on streaming is no big deal. Also – there are hundreds more shows and movies available.

T’was only a matter of time. The shareholders demand a return on their investment and if there is an opportunity to squeeze out a few more dollars, why not. Capitalism, charge what the market will bear.

Amazon Prime! We pay for Prime and now we can pay $2.99 a month more to avoid commercials!

Netflix started out and grew quite fast. Other media companies caught on and started their own streams. Revenue and profits grew quite rapidly. Unfortunately for these financial geniuses, they never heard of market saturation. It means the easy times are over and now they have to go to ads to be as wealthy as they think they should be.

You pay more to be free of ads, for things you can’t afford.