> Games are now roughly as long as they were in the early ’80s, so the powers at MLB have cut about four decades of fat from the game. And they did it without reducing the number of commercials, because they’d never do that.
The commercialization of baseball is really ruining the game for me at times.
Company billboards and logos are in almost every square inch of empty space inside the stadiums now, making them look like giant versions of race cars with way too many tacky sponsor stickers. And just like race car drivers, these sponsor logos are creeping into the players' uniforms more and more each year, now placed prominently on one of the shoulders. If they made it into the jerseys I guess the hats are next to get ruined.
One of the worst examples are the led ad screens behind the batter, which sometimes in the tv broadcast they digitally overlay a different advertiser than what the folks in the stadium see, and it creates this messed up outline around the batter/catcher/ump that makes it look like the entire game is fake.
Then there are the tv announcers who are now required to attribute the replay on every exciting play to a different sponsor, like "this homerun replay is brought to you by Hefty! ... blah blah blah". They do it for homeruns, doubles, stolen bases, great catches, pitcher changes, even manager challenges!
But probably the most insidious practice is during an active game mid-inning, sometimes after a strikeout before the next batter gets to the plate, the tv broadcast will shrink the game down into one corner of the screen and play a regular, albeit shortened, commercial on most of the screen. No more announcer analysis about who is coming up to bat, or any other talking points relevant to the moment. Instead it's garbage commercial audio all the way up to the moment the pitcher is about to release the next pitch.
It's almost like they're trying to ruin the integrity of the sport. But I know the truth is simple corporate greed.
> But probably the most insidious practice is during an active game mid-inning, sometimes after a strikeout before the next batter gets to the plate, the tv broadcast will shrink the game down into one corner of the screen and play a regular, albeit shortened, commercial on most of the screen.
It's common for curling broadcasts to do this for lead stones (so a quarter of stones thrown). Rage-inducing.
> Company billboards and logos are in almost every square inch of empty space
This isn't new. Have you ever seen pictures of stadiums 100 years ago? I can recall people being upset a while back that the Green Monster was starting to be covered by ads. And yet one can find photos from way back when of it pretty much full of billboards.
For the record, I have managed to limit advertising for tykes to near 0. Young enough where control over electronics is viable.
As soon as a game pops up, the only unfiltered ad exposure basically, and it’s glue. The bright colors, the subconscious techniques, the hidden waveforms, whatever magic sauce they use to steal attention WORKS.
It’s like seeing a fairy tapping kids on the head and stealing all of their attention as they become droolingly attentive zombies to whatever drivel reserves the sales screen real estate for that time slice.
It is concerningly effective, and I can bet most everyone grew up saturated with it. Bordering on harassment/abuse since it can not be entirely avoided.
This is why I didn’t keep my child away from ads. Kids have extremely plastic brains and I wanted to get that neural plasticity to protect my kid for the future. The ad industry spends more money figuring kids out than the education industry - hiding ads makes ads exciting.
I view advertising as a toxin you can’t build natural immunity to vs a venom that can be acclimated to. Lead, not capsaicin.
Advertising is profitable due to subconscious connections manifesting to conscious judgements shifting. You can never be protected from this influence.
It’s still diffusing into growing neural nets, even if mind-numbing filters are being used to glancingly minimize the potential ill-effects. An analogy is a sapling oak growing on an angle for 10 years, then correcting. Sure it’s still a tree and fine, maybe even some character. The tree that grew straight, never having to avoid an obstacle is taller and sturdier against the elements, less likely to get eaten by short animals. The brain is plastic, but it does solidify as you age.
This makes sense. Growing up I had a friend whose parents didn’t let him watch tv. Whenever he came over to play he would stare almost drooling at the tv (or if it wasn’t on, begging to turn it on) while the rest of us who were allowed to watch tv played and were easily able to ignore it.
It almost allows people to create their own real estate and rent it out at growing prices as the crowds increase. And when they max out at what one would pay for one piece of that real estate, they just rent off other pieces of real estate (more ads)
The best concert I ever saw was one I only knew about from a TV commercial.
And I realized after become aggressive about skipping all commercials that I'm no longer seeing movies other than the most mainstream franchise ones that it's impossible not to learn about. I used to come across trailers for movies and now I never do.
As with all things, the far extremist take (advertising is a cancer) is misguided.
Advertising is information. We're smart adults and can separate the facts (a new pizza place opened in town) from the bias (it's the best pizza place in town!)
"Advertising is a cancer" is the moderate position, in that it assumes the patient can be saved. My personal view is that art that has been infected by advertising should be taken out back and shot.
I'm glad you enjoyed the show! Again, my personal opinion is that we gather more enjoyment out of these things if we spend a modicum of effort to curate our experiences rather than being spoon-fed the slop with the largest marketing budget.
As for "we're smart adults": The research on cognitive biases wrt advertising is settled. No, we're really really really not smrt.
Edit: I realized I am criticizing without offering a solution to my 2nd para. Think about the art (music / games / movies / comics) you like. Find those artists on the internet and see what art they recommend, and then consume that.
There is nothing remotely moderate about saying “advertising is a cancer”. It removes a massive industry from relevance, and condemns a whole lot of performance artists to unemployment. Advertising creates space for artists and sponsored performance spaces are the only performance spaces in many cities.
This reads like elitism. There is amazing art being made with a zero dollar ad budgets and amazing art being made with massive budgets. Those of us in small cities only get to see art because of advertising.
The commercialization of baseball is really ruining the game for me at times.
Company billboards and logos are in almost every square inch of empty space inside the stadiums now, making them look like giant versions of race cars with way too many tacky sponsor stickers. And just like race car drivers, these sponsor logos are creeping into the players' uniforms more and more each year, now placed prominently on one of the shoulders. If they made it into the jerseys I guess the hats are next to get ruined.
One of the worst examples are the led ad screens behind the batter, which sometimes in the tv broadcast they digitally overlay a different advertiser than what the folks in the stadium see, and it creates this messed up outline around the batter/catcher/ump that makes it look like the entire game is fake.
Then there are the tv announcers who are now required to attribute the replay on every exciting play to a different sponsor, like "this homerun replay is brought to you by Hefty! ... blah blah blah". They do it for homeruns, doubles, stolen bases, great catches, pitcher changes, even manager challenges!
But probably the most insidious practice is during an active game mid-inning, sometimes after a strikeout before the next batter gets to the plate, the tv broadcast will shrink the game down into one corner of the screen and play a regular, albeit shortened, commercial on most of the screen. No more announcer analysis about who is coming up to bat, or any other talking points relevant to the moment. Instead it's garbage commercial audio all the way up to the moment the pitcher is about to release the next pitch.
It's almost like they're trying to ruin the integrity of the sport. But I know the truth is simple corporate greed.