A TVFMF reader who wishes to remain anonymous (you know who you are) passed along the following comment. He was watching the season finale of Being Erica a week or so ago when he was yanked out of the drama by this giant, on-screen distraction. “We were near the end, when the family decides to rebuild the barn Erica’s brother died in,” he writes. “So right as the stake is going in the ground to mark the new barn, up pops Peter Mansbridge’s head for a promo for the upcoming news. If that wasn’t enough, the red swatch filled a ton of the screen. And then…when you think it is over…up pops Strombo, looking smug, and spinning in his cool chair.”
As Craig Ferguson would say, “I KNOW!” Call the exterminator. CBC’s on-screen logos, programming pitches and other promotional bugs are crazy out of control. Fox and NBC and CTV and Global and everybody uses them (it’s messy and distracting when City-TV burns their larger logo over ABC’s for Jimmy Kimmel Live, for example), but, every eight minutes or so, CBC tarts up their screens the way Leons treats a store window during a Don’t Pay a Cent Event.
“CBC’s are really the worst and take you right out of the show,” says our reader. “It certainly doesn’t make me want to watch the news after…it makes me scream and want to get away from their network.”
Have to agree with his other point, too: “It might be one of the reasons that so many people are finding other ways of watching TV,” he writes. “You don’t get that crap on a DVD compilation for instance. I swear, it just made me hate George Strombo and want to wipe that smug look off his face and I don’t think that is what CBC was going for.”
TVFMF welcomes further comments on this subject (mocking Strombo optional).
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Right on.
Great that you found a moment and expressed this annoyance we all suffer through and complacently allow to continue without objection.
Doesn’t that simple interruption tell you a lot about CBC’s insecurities and their choice to spoil the drama of the moment with a promotion for anything else.
For what it’s worth, the creators of Family Guy agree with you.
well…i think the plus side to these DOGs (digital on-screen graphics, as wikipedia calls ’em) is that they’re kinda translucent, so unless you’re watching, say, “american idol”, “the view”, colbert or stewart, you won’t notice too much that it’s there.
in the philippines, where i grew up, the networks’ DOGs are in full color, and on the upper right of the screen…and if the show is rated PG, you’ll see either “PG” or “parental guidance” on the lower right (along with the network logo above) the whole time that the show’s on the air. how ’bout that to obstruct your view of the show? 😀
then again, the incessant promo graphics on the lower thirds? that’s another story and another annoyance altogether.
and oh…citytv puts its bug on the upper right of the screen now when it airs kimmel, and just leaves the ABC logo be. 🙂