Why do TV channels have annoying station identifiers in the corners now?

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Awrrr
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#1295002 1-May-2015 13:15

mclean: Going back to the OP, I wonder if it's a form of station identification, which is a legal requirement for some broadcast radio transmissions. I think on US TV it's at least few seconds at the top of the hour. UK TV stations seem to do the same. Also radio stations here but more frequently than that. Just guessing.

My guess is it has to do with watermarking to protect copyright. Probably forced on broadcasters by the IP mafia. This makes it easy to identify the source of anything that has been copied. Of course it could also just be another case of mindless imitation. Someone somewhere started doing it as brand identification so everyone everywhere else wants to jump on the bandwagon. I have satellite TV and I am not aware of any broadcaster anywhere in the world who does not advertise their logo in this way.

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#1295133 1-May-2015 16:17

mclean: Going back to the OP, I wonder if it's a form of station identification, which is a legal requirement for some broadcast radio transmissions. I think on US TV it's at least few seconds at the top of the hour. UK TV stations seem to do the same. Also radio stations here but more frequently than that. Just guessing.

30 seconds post each of the (excessive!) ad breaks would be bearable. I see no need for it to be there the whole time - some of them are burned in to my plasma screen now!

MikeB4

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#1295148 1-May-2015 16:21

Geektastic:
mclean: Going back to the OP, I wonder if it's a form of station identification, which is a legal requirement for some broadcast radio transmissions. I think on US TV it's at least few seconds at the top of the hour. UK TV stations seem to do the same. Also radio stations here but more frequently than that. Just guessing.

30 seconds post each of the (excessive!) ad breaks would be bearable. I see no need for it to be there the whole time - some of them are burned in to my plasma screen now!

Screen burn in from a water mark would be very rare given the 'movement' behind the water mark. Do you live pause a lot ?

bfginger

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#1295173 1-May-2015 17:06

They're in competition with each other to make them as obnoxious as they can get away with. With each new revision they make them larger and less transparent. It must be possible to fade them out with a HTPC, is anyone doing that?

Geektastic

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#1295184 1-May-2015 17:31

MikeB4:
Geektastic:
mclean: Going back to the OP, I wonder if it's a form of station identification, which is a legal requirement for some broadcast radio transmissions. I think on US TV it's at least few seconds at the top of the hour. UK TV stations seem to do the same. Also radio stations here but more frequently than that. Just guessing.

30 seconds post each of the (excessive!) ad breaks would be bearable. I see no need for it to be there the whole time - some of them are burned in to my plasma screen now!

Screen burn in from a water mark would be very rare given the 'movement' behind the water mark. Do you live pause a lot ?

Yes - I get interrupted! You can see the My Sky Pause logo too.

Geektastic

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#1295185 1-May-2015 17:31

bfginger: They're in competition with each other to make them as obnoxious as they can get away with. With each new revision they make them larger and less transparent. It must be possible to fade them out with a HTPC, is anyone doing that?

No idea what an HPTC is but someone better be working on it...!

ojo

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#1295298 1-May-2015 19:52

old3eyes: Anyone remember about 15 years ago TV3 ran a promotion to get a free sticker and place it at the right bottom corner of your TV screen for a couple of weeks and win a free prize?? Just a big marketing have but indicated to the marketing bunnies by the amount of stickers that hey gave away that people were quite happy with a bug on their TV screens..

Tellydots. People went mad for that. I think I still have couple of them somewhere...

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muppet

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#1295325 1-May-2015 21:44

Geektastic: This is bugging me.

Why is it necessary to have a stupid logo interfere with my viewing?

Also annoying are ads for other programs sliding onto the one I am watching - no need for that either.

Who thinks up these things and why do they think it either good or necessary?

Ugh I know. It's like those people that have a big dumb speedtest image on the end of everything they posay is that the time? Seesh I'd better go I'll be late.

aros71

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#1296321 3-May-2015 22:42

rugrat: They just do it because they seem intent on annoying their customers as much as possible

Except in this transaction you are not the customer - you are the product.

The customer is the one who pays - ie the advertisers, in the case of broadcast TV.

It is your eyeballs (or more accurately your attention) that is being sold by TV channels to their advertisers.

rugrat

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#1296379 4-May-2015 01:33

aros71:
rugrat: They just do it because they seem intent on annoying their customers as much as possible

Except in this transaction you are not the customer - you are the product.

The customer is the one who pays - ie the advertisers, in the case of broadcast TV.

It is your eyeballs (or more accurately your attention) that is being sold by TV channels to their advertisers.

Yep, but they don't need to have station identifiers, to have their advertisers be happy. If having bugs on screen stops some people from watching then they are delivering less value to their customers, the advertisers.

And in skys case on the zone channel, all the breaks are self promotion ones, not worth a penny to them and people are paying them around $50 for start up channels, they're just making the streaming services more attractive, but since they're intent on annoying customers less eye balls on their screens.

If it wasn't for other people in house sky would be gone tomorrow, and I've already stopped watching most freeview programs, only watch first 15 minutes of news now, and the flash is only program I'm watching on it.

Paul1977

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#1297451 4-May-2015 09:44

MikeB4:
Geektastic:
mclean: Going back to the OP, I wonder if it's a form of station identification, which is a legal requirement for some broadcast radio transmissions. I think on US TV it's at least few seconds at the top of the hour. UK TV stations seem to do the same. Also radio stations here but more frequently than that. Just guessing.

30 seconds post each of the (excessive!) ad breaks would be bearable. I see no need for it to be there the whole time - some of them are burned in to my plasma screen now!

Screen burn in from a water mark would be very rare given the 'movement' behind the water mark. Do you live pause a lot ?

Not as rare as the the manufacturers would have you believe. I have the top of the line Panasonic plasma from the second to last year they still made plasmas (so only a couple of years old), and I have the TV 2 logo burned in. Never pause live TV. And it didn't take long to get there, first noticed it after only a couple of months and I don't even watch a lot of free to air TV

TV2's on screen logo is a lot more opaque than the other channels, perhaps they are aiming to advertise to you regardless of what channel you are watching.

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Geektastic

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#1297463 4-May-2015 10:06

aros71:
rugrat: They just do it because they seem intent on annoying their customers as much as possible

Except in this transaction you are not the customer - you are the product.

The customer is the one who pays - ie the advertisers, in the case of broadcast TV.

It is your eyeballs (or more accurately your attention) that is being sold by TV channels to their advertisers.

So which am I when watching Sky, who still have ads and identifiers despite billing me every month?!

frankv

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#1297563 4-May-2015 12:24

Geektastic:
aros71:
rugrat: They just do it because they seem intent on annoying their customers as much as possible

Except in this transaction you are not the customer - you are the product.

The customer is the one who pays - ie the advertisers, in the case of broadcast TV.

It is your eyeballs (or more accurately your attention) that is being sold by TV channels to their advertisers.

So which am I when watching Sky, who still have ads and identifiers despite billing me every month?!

You're the product that pays :)

mdooher

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#1297620 4-May-2015 13:08

Paul1977:
MikeB4:
Geektastic:
mclean: Going back to the OP, I wonder if it's a form of station identification, which is a legal requirement for some broadcast radio transmissions. I think on US TV it's at least few seconds at the top of the hour. UK TV stations seem to do the same. Also radio stations here but more frequently than that. Just guessing.

30 seconds post each of the (excessive!) ad breaks would be bearable. I see no need for it to be there the whole time - some of them are burned in to my plasma screen now!

Screen burn in from a water mark would be very rare given the 'movement' behind the water mark. Do you live pause a lot ?

Not as rare as the the manufacturers would have you believe. I have the top of the line Panasonic plasma from the second to last year they still made plasmas (so only a couple of years old), and I have the TV 2 logo burned in. Never pause live TV. And it didn't take long to get there, first noticed it after only a couple of months and I don't even watch a lot of free to air TV

TV2's on screen logo is a lot more opaque than the other channels, perhaps they are aiming to advertise to you regardless of what channel you are watching.

I have TV2 logo burn in on my telly too. Mind you, I do have a 17 year old Panasonic projection television

Matthew

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#1297864 4-May-2015 19:05

rugrat:

If it wasn't for other people in house sky would be gone tomorrow, and I've already stopped watching most freeview programs, only watch first 15 minutes of news now, and the flash is only program I'm watching on it.

Yep. It's the same on many of the other Sky channels, and is the principal reason I'm close to dumping Sky. Why they would go to all that time and effort to gratuitously annoy someone paying them circa $100 a month is beyond me. If I wanted my programmes constantly interrupted by promos, pop up banners, and loud voiceovers when the credits run, I would watch Freeview.

Back on topic, I can still really see no useful purpose for the channel logos. There are other ways of marking a content stream, such as briefly flashing it up or using an invisible watermark, and the info button on remotes means it's dead simple to check which channel you are on. Other than annoying people and potentially driving viewership down, I can't see what they actually achieve?

I agree with the sentiment of an earlier poster - it's no wonder people are so keen to abandon broadcast TV for alternatives - Netflix anyone?

(If GZ ever hosted an "ask TVNZ" or "ask Sky" thread, these are questions I would be interested in seeing responses to).

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