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by dcolkitt 1855 days ago
Broadcast NBC was only "free" in the strictest sense. Every hour of content requires the viewer to sit through 22 minutes of mind-numbing commercials.

At a labor value of $50/hour, watching ten hours of content a week imposes an economic cost on the viewer of $825/month. By comparison subscribing to all the major streaming platforms would cost about $100/month. Let's not even get into issues of higher quality content and huge on-demand libraries. It's pretty clear ad-free streaming subscription is a massive improvement for consumers over "free" broadcast TV.
3 comments
adrianmonk 1855 days ago
The important implication of broadcast TV being "free" isn't that there's zero cost. It's that there's no subscription.

Subscriptions mean you have to pay a certain minimum amount, even if you want to watch just one episode of something. That's a much bigger burden than changing the channel.

Yes, in theory you can carefully manage things and cancel as soon as you've watched what you wanted, but in practice that effort is a cost too (like watching a commercial is a cost).

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athenot 1855 days ago
The heavy load of advertisements is a point well made, however the cost is a bit more nuanced. By your calculation, it would cost $2,166/month (+price of service) to just watch that amount TV.

This is an opportunity cost but only if you have the stamina to be doing billable work during all that time instead of relaxing.

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lotsofpulp 1855 days ago
The biggest opportunity cost was having to schedule a specific time to watch something or not being able to pause and watch later or not being able to watch while waiting for your flight to board.
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thakoppno 1855 days ago
> sit through 22 minutes of mind-numbing commercials

Commercial detection and skipping has worked well for me via MythTV for nearly twenty years at this point.

Seems like there’s a free startup idea in there somewhere. $100 worth of equipment and a webapp and now your parents can watch network TV, local news, sports, and weather without ads.

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chrisseaton 1855 days ago
How can you skip the commercial in a live broadcast?
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thakoppno 1855 days ago
You can’t skip live without a time machine. You can disable the audio and replace the video. Alternatively, you start the game 22 minutes / hour late. It’s all about trade-offs but attention is being under-valued imho.
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woobar 1855 days ago
Pause -> get a snack/bathroom break -> fast forward.
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