Television station broadcasting nothing but commercial spots. Those who surf at a leisurely pace may alight on this station and watch for a bit, just to see what’s “on.” By the time they get impatient and move on, they will have absorbed perhaps several minutes of commercials. Air time is sold to advertisers, creating revenue for station owners – the idea’s raison d’etre.

Please note the difference between this idea and paid programming / “infomercials.”

It should go with out saying that this is an evil idea and should never be implemented.
-- snarfyguy, Sep 06 2001

Yeah, I was imagining that the owners of the station would conspire with the programming information source from where TV Guide and local / national newspapers get their TV listings to *not* run information about which channel the station's broadcast on. Perhaps it could move around for maximum evil.
-- snarfyguy, Sep 07 2001


I've not had cable for quite awhile, but there is/was a channel called "Prevue Guide" which would show very-slowly-scrolling program listings in the bottom half of the screen while it showed promos and commercials in the top half.
-- supercat, Jan 31 2002


some UK adverts are better than a lot of UK programmes
-- po, Jan 31 2002


This is the TV version of websites that make you go through pages of banner ads promising that there's content after just one more page, because they get paid for people seeing their ads.
-- StarChaser, Jan 31 2002


You folks obviously spend a great deal more time here on the Net than you do surfing around the available cable and satellite channels....There are at least a dozen extant channels that do nothing but hawk merchandise...either 24/7 like the Home Shopping Club on HSC or in the form of 1/2 hour infomercials, like literally dozens of late night channels. Is this really a desirable turn of events?
-- jurist, Feb 01 2002


Of course not.
-- snarfyguy, Feb 01 2002


This is a beautiful idea. You don't have to pay for any of the content, and the advertisers get to advertise at very cheap rates. Also catches the channel flippers as they flip through. It might help to to break it up into segments, with special presentations of specific types of commercials at specific times, including specials like "top ten funniest commercials of the 70's" or "the best Super Bowl commercials", which you'd get the companies that still exist to pay for.

Add in voting for favorite commercials online, and the possibility of seeing that guy fight the bears for salmon, and you approach the broadcast version of adcritic.com.

Worst case, you'd still have more content than G4.
-- DonBirnam, Jan 22 2004


The original idea was to trick people into watching advertising, but I like your take on it, as well, [Don].

"We'll be right back with more of the most beloved cheese commercials after these important messages."
-- snarfyguy, Jan 22 2004


This may be the first time I've voted [+] for an idea supporting advertising.

If I might make a suggestion... maybe they could feature advertisements in a specific interest area during certain hours of the day, like the programming on regular channels: an hour of car ads could be followed by an hour of appliance ads, followed (no doubt) by several hours of Viagra ads...

["If you experience more than four continuous hours of male enhancement advertising, see your doctor immediately".]
-- land, Oct 27 2005


Heh. Adviapism.
-- bristolz, Oct 28 2005



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