TV logos and other things displayed on tv (1 Viewer)

So I am watching "Family Ties" on WGN. They had in the lower right hand corner a giant WGN logo and also a line mentioning another show that was going to be on another time. Then in the upper right hand corner a "#familyties" line. They stayed on the entire episode and were bold white. Why do the stations feel the need to do this? I can understand having it appear every so often. But, to leave it on and so bold it really is distracting.Even the news crawls during the Today Show were really bad. I see the scrolling news at the bottom...but, then right above it they had a giant line explaining what they story they were doing is. Problem is they blocked the entire bottom third of the screen and it cut off a third of the segment video they were showing.

Is this thread from the 80's? Seems that both the show and the problem are from that decade. Yes, this is a constant problem with network tv. No way to get around it. Netflix, anyone?

McPaul said:

Is this thread from the 80's? Seems that both the show and the problem are from that decade. Yes, this is a constant problem with network tv. No way to get around it. Netflix, anyone?

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No, not a problem from the 80's, this is current and pisseps me off too. CNN iS really bad doing this. Plenty of times in a close up, you can't see below. Person's chin, because there's so much stuff taking up the bottom of the screen.

I can't stand it. It's why I rarely watch anything on TV anymore.

It's amazing when you see one of the sports channels rerunning a broadcast from the 60s or 70s or even the 80s, and how much less stuff there was on the screen back then. For old baseball games, they didn't even have the name of the teams or the score on screen for the entire length of the game, much less what inning it was or anything more specific. Or even when I watch VHS tapes I recorded off TV in the late 80s or 90s, you don't see the network logo plastered on the screen every single second.

On a slightly related note, the amount of commercials continues to grow... I was channel surfing the other night and I saw that "The Dark Knight" (a movie that runs about 153 minutes with credits, probably 145 without) was being played in a four hour slot - an hour and a half of commercials! I get how networks can get away with that with live events and even the first airing of a new TV show, but for a six year old movie that's readily available without commercials in a variety of places and formats? Who would even want to start watching something that way?

Apropos of nothing, but Todd's well-worn sig gave me a smile :"Bring back John Doe! Or at least resolve the cliff-hanger with a 2hr movie or as an extra on a dvd release."Hope springs eternal

Wasn't MTV the first network that started that?

When travelling, I like seeing the logo - it tells me what network I'm watching, when oftentimes the little laminating guide can't be found. But to the OP's point, I'd prefer it being translucent.

I do think they often go overboard with the promos - haven't noticed lately, but for awhile they'd have these big motion ads for other shows that took a big chunk of the screen and distracted from the show you were actually trying to watch! (which was their point, I understand, but I think it backfired as often as it worked)

Now, with news, I don't mind the bottom of the screen being taken up with information on other stories. News is generally a 'voice medium' as opposed to entertainment shows - meaning that you can close your eyes and get the same result - the news, whereas most of the time, you have to actually WATCH a show to get the entire result (except those A&E / Headline News Forensic Files episodes - I'd record them and just listen to the audio at work years ago).

And sports - it actually annoys me to watch old reruns - I depend on the logo that tells me how much time is left, what the down is, and most importantly, what the score is! Oh, and I love the scores at the bottom - allows me to see who's winning and who's not.

JohnMor said:

I can't stand it. It's why I rarely watch anything on TV anymore.

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Neither can I. The last decade network TV was mostly free from this persistent visual clutter was the decade Family Ties first aired. That's one reason I do much of my TV watching from Netflix, YouTube, DVD or Blu-ray.

The real question is why does Family Ties require a hashtag?! Is it the hot show that everyone is talking about?

Hate, hate hate those things. They could easily be shown for a short period of time after commercial breaks (like the rating bugs) and serve a useful purpose - to let you know when to stop fast forwarding through commercials on your DVR...

Showing them constantly just makes me feel hate for the network airing the show.

The network logo bug isn't bad. The constant promos are getting ridiculous. Some cable channels have the promo halfway up the screen during the entire show.

A few years ago, NBC was really bad about their countdown promos. There was one show (I can't remember what) that was being hyped constantly. The week before it started, all of the shows had a bug "X days until XX premieres!" The hour before it started, there was a literal countdown. And as soon as that show started up, they already changed it to hype the next "big" show. It just seemed like disrespect to the show that's currently on.

As for sports, the modern day wins. I hate turning a game on and having to wait to figure out the score. Although, ESPN goes a little overboard with their program alerts for primetime sporting events that run into the Sportscenter slot. Of course I know Sportscenter is next. And if I tuned in specifically for Sportscenter and don't see Sportscenter, I know that it'll be on after the game.

Sorry, 90's problem I guess. Vh1 used the station Id bug first, (no date), and MTV followed in 1993. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_on-screen_graphic"From its inception, cable network VH1 commonly used a bug in the corner of the screen while broadcasting music videos for copyright purposes. MTV did the same, beginning in 1993. MTV first began using a bug while videos were shown on the program Beavis and Butt-head, displaying the show's logo during the videos (but not Beavis and Butt-head's commentary of them). The "big four" networks (CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX) began using on-screen bugs in the fall 1993."And I would suggest the station id bug IS really bad, it's just that on screen promos are so much worse it makes the station bug more palatable.

all this crap over the top of the program is more than just a nuisance any more, the older I have gotten, I some times need captions, try to read when layers of crap is over top. maybe the networks might want to remember that little fact of the population

What gets me here in indiana, is the weather crawls. The other day we were under a tornado watch. Not a warning, but a watch. In the upper right, we had a box flashing the counties one by one. In the lower right, we had a map of the effected areas. These are not actually in the corner, but in the corner where a standard def screen would be. Then, ever 5 minutes or so a crawl along the bottom of the screen repeating what the other boxes are saying. This for a watch. A warning usually interrupts programming so we can watch live radar. In the winter it's worse. First we get the winter storm watch, with the box constantly flashing the effected counties. This usually runs continually for a day or two before the actual snow starts. Then it switches to the actual warning or winter weather advisory which stays on the screen still flashing the counties one by one. If it's more than an inch or two, places start to close and the closings scroll along the bottom of the screen continually. This is not just schools mind you, but all the churches call in, even when it's not a Sunday, along with various businesses that are looking for publicity. Most of the time the schools don't actually close, but go on a two hour delay so they can keep their federal funding. A lot of times businesses do this too. Why do I care that Curves is on a two hour delay and what does that actually mean? The scrolling just runs, repeating the same thing over and over however long it takes before it stops snowing.

I'll never understand it. It snows in the winter. Get used to it.

Josh Steinberg said:

It's amazing when you see one of the sports channels rerunning a broadcast from the 60s or 70s or even the 80s, and how much less stuff there was on the screen back then. For old baseball games, they didn't even have the name of the teams or the score on screen for the entire length of the game, much less what inning it was or anything more specific. Or even when I watch VHS tapes I recorded off TV in the late 80s or 90s, you don't see the network logo plastered on the screen every single second.

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I know, and sometimes, I find myself just waiting for the graphics to show up, to see how it looked back then, which would often be a long time.Plus when watching these old sports games, I find the scrolling of the news and scores really distracting, as it really takes me out of the "back in time" moment.

Paul D G said:

The real question is why does Family Ties require a hashtag?! Is it the hot show that everyone is talking about?

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That struck me as very odd. Though not as odd as people demanding to see an 80's show in crystal clear HD.

Paul D G said:

The real question is why does Family Ties require a hashtag?! Is it the hot show that everyone is talking about?

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If only they'd have had Twitter in 1985.

I'm with Mark, but imagine getting weather warnings and school closings and emergency beeping for the Boston area when you live in Vancouver. One of the downfalls for having American TV sim-subbed for Canada.

Two weeks ago, I'm watching Agents of SHIELD. The entire first half hour has a crawl about a thunderstorm warning for two counties that are so far on the edge of the viewing area, they have their own TV stations.

But the same station was worse last year for election day. Again, during SHIELD, at 8 PM, they start running election returns. And they shrink and squeeze the picture and put this distracting blue moving background across the bottom. When the polls close at 8, why even bother showing returns that early? No one's reporting yet. And when it was all local elections, 90% of the audience doesn't care about 90% of the results on the screen. (Residents of County X don't care about the results for Counties A-W, and vice versa.)

And the school closings for snow...in this day and age, I don't need network television to tell me if schools are closed the next day. Most school systems send out messages in some way (text or rotocalls), or I can just look online. Worse case scenario, I can wait until 11 for the news.

This drives me crazy to. We blame DVR's. All the commercial skpping, the networks have to get the word out somehow. So lets take up a 1/3 of the screen real estate of the show you are watching!!