Watch This Commercial Or You Might Miss A Spectacular Car Crash!

from the how-to-keep-attention-on-the-TV dept

It’s no surprise that TV producers are coming up with more creative methods to get people to not fast forward through commercials in an age of TiVo. We’ve written about replacing recorded commercials with more relevant commercials, pop up ad gimmicks and even contests that get you to watch commercials. That’s over the course of nearly five years. So is it really any surprise that the folks producing Indy Car Races are using split-screen commercials during races? The idea is pretty straight forward, and actually makes sense for long car races. Car races don’t stop for commercials, so each commercial break is a chance to miss the action — so this year the commercials are run as a split-screen, picture-in-picture style. The race is still going on off to the side with the data displayed in text format. Meanwhile, the standard commercial is happening on the other side. It’s likely some fans like it too, as it means they don’t miss any of the action. Still, it’s not clear such a solution works in many other situations, since other shows/sporting events wouldn’t have much to show during such commercials breaks.


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Comments on “Watch This Commercial Or You Might Miss A Spectacular Car Crash!”

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4 Comments
Paul Devisser (user link) says:

Commercials `In-line`

I’ve been a regular fan of the World Cup of Soccer for many years. The last couple of events (1996,2000,2004) that were broadcast on TSN (The Sports Network) in Canada have featured inline commercials. They used a slightly different format, with a couple of boxes, with the game continueing in the smaller box. I found that it didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the game at all.

secret squirrel says:

sckred on the screen

Most of the subchannels, such as A&E, History Channel, TLC, etc are all messing up the bottom of the screens so badly as to make many of their own programs unwatchable.

for instance I can’t stand the idiot “Dog” but have to endure ceaseless plugs at the bottom of the screen for him. what a bunch of crap.

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