TV pet peeve #2: logos, or "bugs."

[AKA]

For the last eight or nine years, networks (both broadcast and cable) as well as local stations have felt the need to stamp their logos on any given corner of the screen, usually the bottom right, during the entirety of a program.

Does this get on anyone else's nerves? I mean, I don't need to be reminded I'm watching NBC, for goodness sakes.

edit - mud.

[mudbone]

These come from the fact that there are soooooooo many stations and when people 'surf' thry probably have no clue what station they're landing on. I can't stand 'em. The Discovery Channel also places small ads on the left hand side of the screen for upcoming shows. I don't like those either. Someday EVERY station will be running a crawler.

mud-:D

[Damián]

What about when stations re-broadcast material (such as archival stuff) from OTHER stations, and in order to cover up the previous logo they paste a larger one on top?

[Sckott]

Most providers (and digital TV I *think*) have display remarks of TV station, program you're watching and time/date doesn't it?

TV in general needs less clutter. I wish there was a way they could just knock it off.

[mudbone]

Sckott, bigger screens = room for more junk.

mud-:D

[Sckott]

Oh, crap - Don't remind me. My RCA Proscan tube is something like 11 years old and counting. Someday, I'm gonna have to pony up.

Or live in a tree or somethin.

[mudbone]

Hey, I remember my grandfather's 5" ROUND Emerson TV screen. No crawlers back then. No Room! :laugh:

mud-:D

[JonUrban]

I hate these too. I think VH1 was the first one to do it.

I also REALLY hate it when other stations try to cover up these. THis happens a lot in sports replays. If you've ever seen George Micheals Sports Machine, they put this HUGE logo over everyone elses logo. Sometimes they even explode the playback view so the logo is obscured. They cover so much of the action, or the score, or the shotclock, it just gets to be frustrating.

I wrote to a local station in CT (CH20) that broadcasts the UCONN Huskies basketball games. They had this stupid WB20 logo on all the time, and it was not transparent, it was solid, and it happened to be in the exact location of where the Big East Network (ESPN+) put the shot clock. This meant that while watching the game, whenever the shot clock was displayed, you could not see it.

It took a year and a half, but now they have someone fade out the logo when the shot clock appears. What a nightmare!

[Steve Hoffman]

The worst thing is, they REMOVE the logos for commercials and put 'em back for the programs.

[mudbone]

Anyone ever seen a commercial interrupted for a bulletin?

mud-:D

[Gary]

I thought they did that to prevent home copying.

Imagine if they did that to songs on the radio - a little 2 second station ID blurb in the middle of each song....

[BradOlson]

Platinum Disc Corporation's DVDs stamp their logos in the same location as well.

[Dave D]

The WORST case ever was when TBS was gonna be showing some college football or something, and right in the middle of a movie we were watching (Deep Blue Sea, I think) A friggin CHEERLEADER come cartwheeling across the bottom of the screen!!!! We thought it was a charecter in the movie!!! It was a promo for the upcoming game! The second time it happened, my wife responded with a mighty ^%@$ &^%&^#!!!!! Her reaction was funny, but the "bug: was annoying!!

Up here, the infamous CBC "pineapple" is a real pain....if you've seen it, you know what I mean.

[Dave D]

Here it is

[ronbow]

Anyone ever get a persistence effect from the superimposed logos? My Tosh 56" rear-proj has - on occasion - displayed the CNN logo even while I was watching a DVD!!

It doesn't appear to be permanent, but I would wonder if CRT's would be more susceptible to real damage. (I tend to have CNN on for long hours at a time.)

[HGN2001]

I hear that the new plasma TVs are quite susseptible to burn in, so that if you watch CNN a lot, you'll get their logo and maybe even their crawl line permanently etched into your 50" beauty!

[-=Rudy=-]

I hear that the new plasma TVs are quite susseptible to burn in, so that if you watch CNN a lot, you'll get their logo and maybe even their crawl line permanently etched into your 50" beauty!

My father-in-law's RCA rear projection set had a toll-free number burned into the screen. I don't think he could ever see it, and I never had the heart to bring it up...but it came from years of my mother-in-law watching QVC for hours on end. That burned-in number was clear enough that I could read it if the programming was light enough!

And that's odd, because I used to play different Nintendo games for hours on end, and my Sony XBR rear projector never burned in. It died several times from a poor power supply design, but that's another story. ;)

[-=Rudy=-]

I thought they did that to prevent home copying.

That was my impression also.

[BradOlson]

I would not want a logo etched into a TV so I am content with CRT, plus CRT TVs are much cheaper than plasma TVs.

[-=Rudy=-]

I would not want a logo etched into a TV so I am content with CRT.

Usually those logos aren't that bad. Some of the ones I've seen are like an "embossed" overlay on top of the picture. You can see it clearly enough, but it's not all that hard on the screen as something in a solid color would be. I'm trying to think of an example of one...

[AJH]

I believe that the whole thing started with CNN and/or CNN Headline News way back when Headline News was called CNN2.

AJH

[ubsman]

what's worse than bugs is those pop-up ads ... like if you're watching fear factor and they want to try to get you to watch vegas, or whatever the next show is called... then of course they need to remind you of what show you're watching also, in case you've forgotten.. i won't even watch sports on tv anymore because of bugs, on-screen scoreboards, banners, sound effects, and those idiotic slow motion replays

[Dugan]

The newest one that I really hate is with school closings due to the weather. I know that the info is important but, at least in the Pittsburgh market, not only do they run a 2 inch crawl across the bottom of the screen (which is fine) but the also insist on listing the 10 biggest school closings about 3 inchs wide on on the left side of the screen. They then squish the picture between the two.
I'm sorry but if I have a 27" screen I want to see a 27" picture not a 20" one.

[reechie]

I remember a few years ago when Comedy Central still ran Mystery Science Theater 3000, they started running a "bug" of their logo, and it completely covered up Crow. Well, of course, the fans went ballistic, and they wound up having to come up with a new computer program to put the bug on the left side of the screen.

That was one of the reasons Comedy Central wound up dropping the show...every time they tried to put up a bug, talk over the closing credits, or edit the shows to add more commercials, they'd get innundated with complaints. They got tired of the fans telling them what to do.
:laugh: :rolleyes:

[ronbow]

The newest one that I really hate is with school closings due to the weather. I know that the info is important but, at least in the Pittsburgh market, not only do they run a 2 inch crawl across the bottom of the screen (which is fine) but the also insist on listing the 10 biggest school closings about 3 inchs wide on on the left side of the screen. They then squish the picture between the two.
I'm sorry but if I have a 27" screen I want to see a 27" picture not a 20" one.

Doesn't this sound like the SNL bit, from quite a few years back, where the onscreen talent was increasingly squashed by the multiple crawls, sidebars, and graphics on the news broadcast, and competing for real-estate? It really has gotten as extreme as SNL satirized all those years ago.