After a couple of months without a television, we have ended up with a tiny 15″ set that we lent to a relative last summer, and have now had returned. This means the occasional return to Spanish tele in the evening – medical dramas for Marina (House, Grey’s Anatomy) that I can’t watch, and bad films for me, that she can’t watch.
The last two nights have been a real treat, with two trashy, poorly dubbed Steven Segal films – he obviously goes down well over here. Anyway, there I was enjoying the second one last night, “Belly of the Beast” (which gets a stellar 4.3 out of 10 on IMDB), reveling in the awesome final fight scene between big Steve and his psycho Thai nemesis, and at the very climax of the film, just as said nemesis had Steve down on the ground, ready to deliver the killer blow we knew would somehow be avoided, in fact in the very middle of the baddies final ‘now you die’ sentence… an ad break.
A twenty minute ad break in the middle of the films biggest moment. Again, right in the middle of the films biggest sentence! We had ads for every big internet provider, several cars, Andalusia, 6 trailers for other shows from the same channel, and god knows what other crap. Finally, when I was about to drop the little tele from our 6-floor balcony, the film was allowed to conclude.
So, classy stuff from TV1, Spain’s state TV flagship. What I’d really like to know though, is does this carpet-bombing approach to advertising actually work any more? What are the recall figures for ads presented in 20 minute batches? Is anyone actually taking this ad format in anymore? The fact that I was left with a an overwhelming desire to go to Andalusia might sadly provide an answer – I’m shocked and ashamed to say that one of those 20 ads did actually get through to me as I waited furiously to see big Steven Segal escape that killer blow and save the girl. Life was better without TV.
(Image courtesy wikipedia).
Parubin
9 Apr 08 at 9:31 am
Why watch tv since the invention of the DVD??
A lot of people just turn on the tv without even knowing (or even caring) what’s on and they happily put up with the crap thrown at them.
First of all, these people must have plenty of spare time to lay on the coach with the remote in hand, second, if you like to see a movie, go rent it, if you like it a lot, go buy it. The same goes for tv shows and series.
Then there is the pay-tv channels (in Spain Digital Plus) which happen to be of better quality, with no commercial breaks, no dubbing (if you wish) and with a diverse and specialised offer : footy, nature documentarys and hard porn.
Still it is better value for money to go for that marvelous electronic appliance that is the DVD.
The only show for which I find tv irreplaceable is for football games, but then again it is better to go watch Real Madrid to the pub in the corner with your friends and a caña or two in hand.
frank
9 Apr 08 at 9:40 am
“La televisión ha hecho maravillas por mi cultura. En cuanto alguien enciende la televisión, voy a la biblioteca y me leo un buen libro”
Groucho Marx, comediante, actor y escritor estadounidende
Beckett
9 Apr 08 at 11:12 am
I can’t watch Spanish TV because of the neverending commercial breaks. Not only do the breaks happen in the middle of scenes or near the climax but the commercial breaks are so lengthy it makes watching any program a real test of endurance. A movie that is 90 minutes long can take almost twice as long to watch it on Spanish tv.
Advertising clutter and ad saturation is a real problem, so the law of diminishing returns has got to kick in at some point. But I hate to say it, I won’t be surprised if the Spanish tv executives’ answer to dealing with the problem will be to make commercial breaks even longer instead of breaking them up into shorter and more palatable three to five minute breaks.
soy pescador
9 Apr 08 at 11:28 am
In my opinion which I have witnessed from my wife and her family , is they tend to switch through the channels when the ads pop up at the most crucial times of the movie. They seem to mumble (mas propaganda ) and shrug it off.
Personally I do not even switch on the TV to bare witness to all the crap that they veiw on their channels. I have seriously got back into my reading since I have resided in Spain. So my conclusion is that Spanish TV has benefited me largely as I now read far more than I used to. (ps we have not one but two television sets at home , rather sad dont you think )
Pepino
9 Apr 08 at 11:37 am
I agree with all the comments so far about the ads on Spanish TV. It makes the whole thing totally unpleasant and irritating. In my flat, we have a Telefonica package, and it’s still rubbish. If I do turn it on, I’ll usually only watch the News, Family Guy and Sé lo qué hicisteis, and the rest I’ll only catch fleeting moments if I’m either desperately bored, want to practice my Spanish listening, or if my flatmate is watching something. TV is Spain is pretty bad I’m sorry to say, and it’s mostly the fault of the overlong ad-breaks.
Ben
9 Apr 08 at 3:45 pm
@Parubin, yes, a DVD player is the way forward, and the only thing I’ll use from now on!
@Frank, love the Marx quote, especially since he made his living from the thing!
We Are Never Full
9 Apr 08 at 4:01 pm
I can’t even read this article without laughing every time I look at segal’s face in that photo. i feel like he’s seducing me – maybe he’s seduced you? ben, i don’t have less of an opinion of you for admitting you like his movies… really, i don’t.
Ben
9 Apr 08 at 4:06 pm
It’s that gorgeous silky jacket of his that does it for me every time
ValenciaSon
9 Apr 08 at 4:21 pm
Spain and maybe the rest of Europe is in dire need for DVR (digital video recorders). Not only can you skip past the shows you program it to record, you can program it to record quite a few shows so that one doesn’t become a slave to television. I find that you watch less television that way. While you are watching a show that is live, you can pause if you have to answer the phone or mother nature calling (bathroom break) and go back to watching when you are done. When the ads come, you can fastforward through them until you are caught up with the realtime telecast. Our DVRs are sold separate or can be part of the cable/satellite/fiber optic box. My 5 year old uses it so does my 80 year old father.
Ben
9 Apr 08 at 4:23 pm
@VS – quite right. What Spain is also in dire need of is Netflix and the new, US implementation of Apple TV which includes hi-def movie downloads. Apple TV exists here, but of course not the movie downloads bit. There is a sort of Netflix copy two, but research found me lots of complaining customers who said the service was appalling, so I never signed up.
Which leaves our crappy video club round the corner!
richardksa
9 Apr 08 at 4:46 pm
There are just two shows I like to see in a week – and I try to watch the local news most evenings. When the ads come on it’s time to fetch food and coffee from the kitchen. So they are lost on me.
But is is annoying that a 100 minute movie takes nearly three hours to show because of the ads. And if the film starts later in the evening, say around 10pm, the chances are you’ll have fallen asleep by the time it ends.
Several people I know now use Emule to download films and TV shows while they are at work to watch on their return.
Maybe the ad agencies who place their products should know about this. Shortened ad breaks would give them more bang for their buck!!
Pepino
9 Apr 08 at 5:19 pm
It also bugs me how the official start times of the programmes bares no real resembalance to when the show will actually start.
My final moan is about digital TV in general. Back when TV was only analogue, so long as you had a good aerial, you’d get a perfect picture and you could flick between channels in a fraction of a second. Nowadays, we’re all being forcefed digital TV and told about the great quality. Well, sorry but I just don’t see it! Everytime the image pans quickly, the little “boxes” that make up the image seem to take on a large, nasty, pixelated effect that destroys the quality. I’ve seen this effect in the UK on dozens of TVs, in electrical showroom wholesalers, and now in Spain too, so it can’t just be one dodgy aerial. Also, our Telefonica TV package takes a minimum of 2 or 3 seconds to turn over once you’ve actually pressed the button, if not longer, as many times you have to wait for the onscreen display thing to fill in before it will let you move up a channel, which can leave you watching some ugly footballer and his equally toothy mother advertising Colacao for a lot longer than you would otherwise like! (If you’ve seen it, you’ll know who I mean!)
OK, moan over. I’m glad in some ways that Spanish TV in particular is so bad, as I’m more likely than ever to read, listen to the radio, or just go out!
luke
9 Apr 08 at 5:32 pm
My wife also loves the medical dramas and documentaries; is this a female thing? I just figure that I’ll have plenty of time to observe the medical profession when I get old and infirm. Even Segal would be preferrable but I’ve never sat through a whole film on TV in Spain; hats off to those with that kind of patience. Also I have to say that the standard of ads in Spain are relatively poor; apart from that great advert that encourages kids to take drugs!
frank
9 Apr 08 at 5:41 pm
“Spain and maybe the rest of Europe is in dire need for DVR (digital video recorders).”
Strange as it may seem, we have had it for some time!
But I still haven’t found the need to buy one yet. Guess we will one day, but for the amount of TV I watch, you could bin the lot.
Parubin
9 Apr 08 at 6:13 pm
@ Valenciason :"Spain and maybe the rest of Europe is in dire need for DVR (digital video recorders).â€
We have that in Spain too. Digital Plus sells it under the brand name ‘I Plus’, I think.
@ Pepino : “watching some ugly footballer and his equally toothy mother advertising Colacao for a lot longer than you would otherwise like! (If you’ve seen it, you’ll know who I mean!)”
You mean Ronaldinho?? Isn’t it Natillas Danet what he advertises??
Talking about TV Series, has anyone seen the tv series ‘Rome’, produced by HBO??. Great quality entertainment.
In Spain it was aired Canal Plus, still I never got to watch it from tv, instead I followed some reliable and trustworthy recommendations and got the whole dvd-package at ‘El Corte Inglés’. Great stuff.
Pepino
9 Apr 08 at 6:26 pm
@parubin – my god, I think you’re right!
Proof that an advert, no matter how annoying and repeated it might be, doesn’t always leave you with the right “product” in mind! Thanks for the correction. Ironically, I’ll actually look out for this advert now! jeje
Neil Wykes
9 Apr 08 at 6:52 pm
I’ve been using a TDT box plugged into a hard disk for 6 months or so now. We tell it to record every episode Buenafuente and Intermedio using the channel guide and it does the rest. Many channels, such as Sony and Cuatro and sometimes TVE2/1 broadcast American programmes and films with an English and a Spanish soundtrack so you can switch between the two. Long advert breaks are a thing of the past. You can pause live television too. Quite simply, without it I wouldn’t watch Spanish telly, the adverts would force me to get my kicks from another medium. Best of all no subscription fees!
There are disadvantages though, when buying TDT boxes it’s often unclear which boxes offer the most features. The first box we owned was just a digital decoder, but didn’t let you change language soundtracks on every channel. The DVR model we now use lets you choose the language, but only of live television. It refuses to record House or Rome, for example, in English even if you can watch it live in this language. This model has also pretty unresponsive menu system. There are lots of annoyances like these, presumably from a disregard of European standards by broadcasters and manufacturers alike. Despite this it’s worth every cent as it makes the unbearable, bearable by watching only those thing I want to watch and my Spanish comprehension improves
ValenciaSon
9 Apr 08 at 7:23 pm
@ Parubin: The DVRs used in the US are either sold as a separate unit or part of the decoder box supplied by the provider. Most people have the latter but pay $6.99 a month. Well worth it I believe. They can record in HD if the program was transmitted in HD to begin with. Another HBO series I highly recommend is the miniseries John Adams. It is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning book by David McCullough. It stars Paul Giamattis as John Adams and Laura Linney as Abigail Adams. It’s a great intimate account of the life of John Adams before, during and after the Revolutionary War. My wife, my oldest son, my father and I love this show. It is quality entertainment for sure.
@Neil Wykes: I’ve never encountered channel restrictions with my DVR.
@Pepino: The pixelization you observe maybe due to overcompression of the digital signal and is avoidable at the transmission source. It seems like too much data is being squeezed through not enough bandwidth. Otherwise, the image quality of digital, especially if the content is provided and received in HD can be quite stunning and will make you forget your analogue sets.
Pepino
9 Apr 08 at 11:01 pm
@ValenciaSon. I’ve seen the HD TV’s in showrooms and the picture is really something else, so you’re spot on there. However they seem to always be demonstrating a picture playing from a HD DVD (or BluRay I should say). I’ve not yet seen a HD TV broadcasting from a digital terrestial HD signal but I assume it must be good.
Putting HD to one side though, as that’s not what my whinge was about, I just can’t believe that I’ve yet to see a digital (non HD) TV signal that beats my old analogue TV picture. My parents have digital, other friends too, and me and my flatmate have it here in Spain, and the pixelation problem seems to be the standard, not an intermittent thing caused by a passing bottleneck. Besides, digital terrestrial signals don’t use internet/phone lines, so aren’t subject to bottlenecks. I wonder if there are more people reading this in the UK who have recently switched to digital and think the picture is much worse?
Brendan
11 Apr 08 at 8:35 am
I was watching some great ads last, but they were being continuously interrupted by a movie…
Wannabegafapasta
24 May 08 at 3:50 pm
I’ve seen even ad breaks interrupting the… ¡credits roll!
dave
13 Mar 09 at 5:27 pm
The breaks on the Spanish channels are ridiculously long. The 5 minute ones on British TV are bad enough, but 15-minute ones are a disgrace! I am simply getting fed up of watching TV nowadays with all the commercial breaks every 5 minutes and stupid adverts, and I am seriously considering not watching TV at all anymore, and just reading books!
David
8 Oct 09 at 4:22 pm
The Spanish breaks are the opposite to the irritating 1 minute breaks on US TV, which doesn’t even give you enough time for a loo break! The perfect thing to do would be to show 5-6 commercials in a 3 minute break – even 5 minutes is too long!