Is it possible for NBC to play MORE commercials?

[Oliver Klozoff]

The playing through is being used not to give you more golf coverage. It's being used in hopes that viewers will see the ads while watching recorded golf. Advertisers are wise to everyone fast forwarding through commercials. This is their answer. I think we will see more and more of it.

The Euro tour does a far, far better job of golf coverage. Less commentary. Less analysts. More humor.

It's the American way - more commercials and more noise and more money and more, more, more. It's in our nature.

[vbfromev]

“Playing through “ commercials, one of the most annoying things while watching sports. Goes hand in hand with paying for steaming services that hit you with commercials and stretch 90 minute movies into 150 minutes. When is the consumer going to say enough!

[brutus27]

All sports TV programming is extremely offensive. The amount and duration of commercials is painful. The PC biased content of commercials is an attack on our intelligence. Hockey is great to watch due to nonstop action, although intermissions are commercial ridden.

[TheIncelGolfer]

24 minutes ago, brutus27 said:

All sports TV programming is extremely offensive. The amount and duration of commercials is painful. The PC biased content of commercials is an attack on our intelligence. Hockey is great to watch due to nonstop action, although intermissions are commercial ridden.

It was pretty unbearable. I don't watch much TV but when I do, I'm always blown away by the saccharine cringe of current year commercials. Total MK ultra They Live psyop mind control. They make robocop's satire look normal.

[chillybilly]

13 hours ago, TheIncelGolfer said:

It was pretty unbearable. I don't watch much TV but when I do, I'm always blown away by the saccharine cringe of current year commercials. Total MK ultra They Live psyop mind control. They make robocop's satire look normal.

 

Well stated.  The current trend is also 'audio branding' hence the ubiquity of little piano or vocal figures at the start and end of every ad.  One could argue that such a trend started decades ago with little jingles like 'by.....Mennen!'

 

Ironically, predictably and hilariously all the audio branding suffers from the 'sameness syndrome' that affects the visual and narrative content of their insipid ads.  Is that piano interval for a car maker or an insurer?  Are they in different keys?  Why are they copying each others' songs already when the songs are merely two notes?  If you're a jingle writer you're cackling like a madman on the floor having composed 5 sec of music.  Not quite Mike Post-levels of output.

Edited July 19, 2021 by chillybilly

[Ghostwedge]

DVR is your friend.....

Tape the tourney, watch it later. Blow thru the commercials and " playing through" nonsense. Cuts 6 hours into less than 2 hours easily.

One question though.... who is that smoke show doing the iron trick swing during the Sketchers commercial ? lol

 

 

 

[hebsan]

On 7/18/2021 at 4:51 AM, vbfromev said:

“Playing through “ commercials, one of the most annoying things while watching sports. Goes hand in hand with paying for steaming services that hit you with commercials and stretch 90 minute movies into 150 minutes. When is the consumer going to say enough!

What was bad, was Marcel Siem finishing up his round yesterday, and they were going through a "playing through" commercial.  Here we have one of the more "colorful" players out there with his fist pumps, and we only see a split screen of it.

[BeerPerHole]

No. Not possible. I ended up watching less of this major than any other. 

[ilikegolf26]

2 hours ago, Ghostwedge said:

DVR is your friend.....

Tape the tourney, watch it later. Blow thru the commercials and " playing through" nonsense. Cuts 6 hours into less than 2 hours easily.

One question though.... who is that smoke show doing the iron trick swing during the Sketchers commercial ? lol

 

 

 

If you do that then you miss half the golf because half the golf is during “playing through.”

[Greg_B]

3 hours ago, Ghostwedge said:

DVR is your friend.....

Tape the tourney, watch it later. Blow thru the commercials and " playing through" nonsense. Cuts 6 hours into less than 2 hours easily.

One question though.... who is that smoke show doing the iron trick swing during the Sketchers commercial ? lol

 

 

No idea, but I knew that bit would be catnip for some of the types here. I thought it was ultra-gimmicky the first time I saw it and my opinion didn't change a bit every time I saw it after that. But I'm biased against Sketchers as I have several pair of their regular footwear I bought because they felt great in the store, but they rapidly become almost unwearable after a short time.

 

One general comment about commercials of late: the whole BLM/social justice wave over the past year has been a bonanza for ad and talent agencies. I could almost hear the corporate VP-Marketing types yelling at the agencies to hurry up and get some people of color into their ads, and to increase the percentage of females both on-screen in ads and doing voiceover work.

[Ghostwedge]

5 hours ago, ilikegolf26 said:

If you do that then you miss half the golf because half the golf is during “playing through.”

That's all right, I'm only following the last two groups.

[Blonde Line Lizard]

15 hours ago, Greg_B said:

 

No idea, but I knew that bit would be catnip for some of the types here. I thought it was ultra-gimmicky the first time I saw it and my opinion didn't change a bit every time I saw it after that. But I'm biased against Sketchers as I have several pair of their regular footwear I bought because they felt great in the store, but they rapidly become almost unwearable after a short time.

 

One general comment about commercials of late: the whole BLM/social justice wave over the past year has been a bonanza for ad and talent agencies. I could almost hear the corporate VP-Marketing types yelling at the agencies to hurry up and get some people of color into their ads, and to increase the percentage of females both on-screen in ads and doing voiceover work.

It has gotten to the point where I can hardly watch anything on TV anymore.  The SJW propaganda has even infected the MotorTrend channel.

[Birdman2]

I agree. They should play more commercials so I can turn it off. They really make it unpleasant to watch.

 

[Mark Brown]

Playing through is worthless.  Rather just get the commercials and then get back to golf.  I have a 70” screen but the commercials are twice the size of the golf so can’t see who is playing, their score or anything else.  Can only hear the commercials anyway.  Don’t waste my time with the playing through.

[RSLP]

NBC’s advertisers must really be banking on the sub 2M golf viewers!  

[Zitlow]

Woke commercials. 

[ShortGameGod]

2 hours ago, Zitlow said:

Woke commercials. 

One interesting thing with wokeness is that it is ever evolving. They are never satisfied and try to break "new boundries" all the time.

 

In my country being woke by having different skin-colours or sexuallyties shown are so last-year's.

 

The hot new things is things like young people with chopped arms or stoma pouches etc. 

Crazy!

[ShortGameGod]

On 3/2/2020 at 10:01 PM, Oliver Klozoff said:

The playing through is being used not to give you more golf coverage. It's being used in hopes that viewers will see the ads while watching recorded golf. Advertisers are wise to everyone fast forwarding through commercials. This is their answer. I think we will see more and more of it.

The Euro tour does a far, far better job of golf coverage. Less commentary. Less analysts. More humor.

It's the American way - more commercials and more noise and more money and more, more, more. It's in our nature.

Don't forget those "guitars on a can" blasted in all the US-golf-productions! Or pehaps that is what I get to listen to when you in the US watch ads?

Edited March 26, 2023 by ShortGameGod

[st1800e]

It’s only going to get worse….

[falken19150]

Between Jimmy Roberts and the commercials…NBC coverage is unwatchable. I just do the ESPN+ coverage in the morning and then go on with my day.

[Carson33]

I was watching the replay last night. I do this to be able to fast-forward through the commercials. However, they literally broke away for a full barrage of commercials and then came back and showed TWO shots (McIllroy and Shauffle sp?) approaches to #17 and then went away again for another full commercial break. I laughed at the absurdity. This has to stop or they are going to start losing viewership.

 

How about “grow the game” by at least showing the game!

[Carson33]

On 3/2/2020 at 4:01 PM, Oliver Klozoff said:

The playing through is being used not to give you more golf coverage. It's being used in hopes that viewers will see the ads while watching recorded golf. Advertisers are wise to everyone fast forwarding through commercials. This is their answer. I think we will see more and more of it.

The Euro tour does a far, far better job of golf coverage. Less commentary. Less analysts. More humor.

It's the American way - more commercials and more noise and more money and more, more, more. It's in our nature.

I really do enjoy the Euro coverage. The commentators are better and I do not have to listen to the obvious drivel of Paul Azinger. I used to like him, but he now grates on my nerves.

[wcbjr]

[Body_Visions]

On 3/26/2023 at 12:17 AM, falken19150 said:

Between Jimmy Roberts and the commercials…NBC coverage is unwatchable. I just do the ESPN+ coverage in the morning and then go on with my day.

 

 

Although it’s better than the networks, the ESPN+ coverage is getting worse every year.  We don’t need a studio, and three announcers; just put a camera on a group (preferably not the same players every week) and follow them PLEASE.  I’m pretty sure it’s only hardcore golf fans watching, and we don’t need all that.  Sadly, it is becoming nothing more than extended GC coverage.

 

We will leave the ever-increasing commercials on a subscription platform for another time...... 

[chillybilly]

On 7/18/2021 at 7:45 PM, brutus27 said:

All sports TV programming is extremely offensive. The amount and duration of commercials is painful. The PC biased content of commercials is an attack on our intelligence. Hockey is great to watch due to nonstop action, although intermissions are commercial ridden.

 

It's one of those rare moments when I don't know if I can adequately describe the inadequacies of present-day advertising.

 

We are light years removed from 'Mad Men,' when, in the words of Don Draper, 'We create an itch that has to be scratched.' He meant that you either were in the market for a product already or the advertising would put you in the market.

 

Like so many other industries, advertising has disappeared up its own backside. Creativity is now decoupled from sales. Except there isn't much creativity. There are spokesidiots, cliches, attempts at social commentary and what I have termed Outrage Marketing ie if it annoys enough people it will generate social media chatter. No such thing as bad publicity and all that. Oh, and there are lots of male slobs with 3-day beards, t-shirts, flannel overshirts and blank expressions. Despite their slovenly appearance, they are all married to sharp, put-together women with impeccable hair and makeup and wearing nice dresses or outfits. The slovenly men can barely get their mowers started but the clever women are running the world from the kitchen table using their laptops and this or that web site or piece of software.

 

It's never been explained why the target demo of 18-54 ie the demo watching sporting events including golf is portrayed in this insulting manner and it's never been explained why the advertisers (agency & client) believe that such condescension would motivate the target demo to purchase or subscribe. You certainly don't see dumpy women in housecoats in ads for cosmetics or feminine products (unless, of course, they are transformed into Cinderella at the end).

 

(Spoiler: as we know, Don Draper, if he ever existed, is long gone and creative agencies are teeming with females. Nothing wrong with that per se except they bring their own stereotypes to the table and one of them is that men are beer-drinking, junk-food devouring pigs. There may be a sliver of truth in it but is it a pretext for nearly every ad?)

 

But advertisers know that most of us have developed a routine of watching the content and then tuning out during the interminable ad breaks by looking at our phones or tablets. Or using the FF or switching channels. They also know that the venerable mute button is still with us, ready to silence the obnoxious close-mic'd voiceovers with their obnoxious ad copy that is otherwise irrelevant to the features & benefits of the product, ready to silence the tinkly piano musical 'bed,' ready to silence the 5 second jingles that agencies have paid songwriters eye-watering fees to compose. Audio engineering involving compression that boosts the apparent loudness of ads far beyond the actual programming and has us reaching for the mute button. Again.

 

Typically, the only thing that's left is visuals. Which means drone shots, jump cuts, fast-mo/slo-mo transitions, etc. Have you noticed that the only way to sell vehicles, apparently, is to show them doing the sort of dangerous and/or illegal moves that you would never even attempt in a vehicle you'd paid $50,000 or more to obtain? 360s while rooster-tailing through giant puddles, for example. Extreme driving in reverse. What does it have to do with the vehicle's suitability for your actual transportation needs? They aren't saying. To use an analogy, if a golf club were advertised like a car they would show the golf club hitting rocks or scything down weeds but never actually hitting a golf ball off grass.

 

Go back and watch 90s advertising in SD. There were shadows. Lots of shadows. And there were key lights. Bright, halogen spots piercing the darkness and illuminating the product label. There were lots of flashing lights - or fades to white. Why? Because it made the pupil narrow then dilate and the eye would involuntarily blink, thus compelling the brain to refocus (on the ad, they hoped). Similarly, 90s ads were the apex (or the nadir) of the herky-jerky camera with subjects intentionally sliding in and out of frame. This annoying technique was famously lampooned in the 'Bad Idea Jeans' parody ad on SNL.

 

Once HDTV arrived the improved picture quality meant such ham-fisted techniques were no longer necessary. But they still wanted to dazzle the eye. This coincided with advances in digital editing technology and editing suites manned by kids fueled by caffeine and sugar. The result: 100 jump cuts in a 30 second spot as they desperately try to get the eye and brain to follow along. They want their ADD to be contagious and your attention span reduced to the 30 seconds the ad is airing.

 

The advertising model remains because, in those infamous corporate board meeting words, 'That's the way we've always done it.' Broadcasting is largely stuck in the 1970s mud. Union contracts. Presenters in blazers. Affiliate networks. Local promos and news. Even when streaming /subscription options are announced and people take them up on it, they can't help but lard up the streams with sales pitches. Because that's the way they've always done it.

 

It seems so many spend 51 weeks mocking Augusta National and The Masters but still are able to spend 1 week praising them for being different. Unique. Finally, we can focus on the golf. ANGC and The Masters seem to have a secret formula but in reality they simply exercise a rapidly-vanishing phenomenon: restraint.

 

The PGA Tour and its broadcasts are often portrayed as Clash Of The Titans but too often they're more like the county fair with patent-medicine hucksterism to match.

Edited July 24, 2023 by chillybilly

[Greg_B]

Well, Billy, I can't even begin to comment on your essay. I will say that current-day societal trends have been a bonanza for ad agencies and creative producers. Over the last couple of years there has been a sea change in what we see depicted in commercials. The previous typical white middle-class couple? Banished virtually entirely from ads. Now all ads must feature couples of either mixed-race or same-sex, and if they can be different types of POC (and to some extent, with a visible disability) so much the better. While one could argue that the former stereotype did not represent the populace accurately, it is far more valid to suggest that what we see today is even more inaccurate and largely off-target for the target markets. Re-shooting all those ads to comply with that dictum made lots of money for creatives and the talent they had to hire. But they are just as unrealistic as ads showing pickup trucks climbing up a mountain through 2 feet of snow or ads with impossible CGI effects. I will note that golf ads have so far shown some immunity to this, but that may well be due simply to smaller ad budgets as compared to mass-market products, which delay the re-shooting of commercials.

 

Please note that the above is not a commentary on the merits of those new faces as people, but merely an observation on the knee-jerk reactions of agencies and advertisers to what they think had to be done in response to present-day events.

[falken19150]

11 hours ago, Body_Visions said:

 

 

Although it’s better than the networks, the ESPN+ coverage is getting worse every year.  We don’t need a studio, and three announcers; just put a camera on a group (preferably not the same players every week) and follow them PLEASE.  I’m pretty sure it’s only hardcore golf fans watching, and we don’t need all that.  Sadly, it is becoming nothing more than extended GC coverage.

 

We will leave the ever-increasing commercials on a subscription platform for another time...... 

Yep I agree ESPN+ is jumping the shark too. I remember when we could do the annual PGAtour app subscription and forgo all the commercials. Now its all about Chipotle doing some fake grilling.

[VicW]

I, too, FF through all golf commercials including the deeply offensive and worthless play through variety. Golf shots without the context of distance, lie, wind, target area, etc. are not worth watching, especially on a tiny portion 9f my screen. Tell me about it later, thanks. 

 

That said, my God, how pathetic is this thread with all the bigoted and childish philosophizing about "Woke" and "SJW". Get over it, whiners. Grow up and live and let live. 

 

- 65 year old white guy who identifies as Human. 

[Fairways_and_Greens]

Watching the open on Sky Sports is jarringly better.

[Stevens24]

I turned it on Friday, watch’s 5 commercials saw 4 shots, all putts, then they went side by side for 5 more commercials. I just turned it off.