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Smithsonian has commercials now!?!

2K views 11 replies 10 participants last post by  Diana C 
#1 ·
I just cancelled my HBO "free" package and got 3 months free of HD Extra. Hadn't had it in two years. While watching my favorite Smithsonian documentary, "Making The Monkees", I noticed that there are commercial breaks now. When did this start? You can't catch a break from freakin' commercials anymore!

Even the end of the program was changed. Instead of showing Peter Tork playing a banjo and singing while wearing a Cream T-Shirt, with the credits rolling over him, it's now a black screen with the credits. Why would such a change be made to a program that had already run dozens of times (I should know, I always watched it when it was on before!)?
 
#2 ·
Smithsonian is not a premium cable channel, it's just that DirecTV only carries the HD feed and requires the HD Extra pack to get it. (The same goes for Hallmark Movie Channel and Crime and Investigation)

Most of the other providers that have it carry it in both SD and HD and have it as part of their regular digital tiers like any other digital basic channel like Nat Geo, Cloo, Chiller, TeenNick etc.
 
#4 ·
KyL416 said:
Smithsonian is not a premium cable channel, it's just that DirecTV only carries the HD feed and requires the HD Extra pack to get it. (The same goes for Hallmark Movie Channel and Crime and Investigation)

.
Yep, another BS fee!
 
#5 ·
I know it's not a premium channel like HBO, but I'm telling you, when I had Directv 2 years ago I had the HD Extra package, and every time they showed "Making The Monkees" I would watch it, I just enjoyed it. I must have watched it about 20 times in 3 months, so I know what I know, it did NOT have commercial interruptions before, if it started at 7 p.m. it ended at 7:46 p.m. and the screen did not go black for the closing credits like it does now.
 
#7 ·
mystic7 said:
I know it's not a premium channel like HBO, but I'm telling you, when I had Directv 2 years ago I had the HD Extra package, and every time they showed "Making The Monkees" I would watch it, I just enjoyed it. I must have watched it about 20 times in 3 months, so I know what I know, it did NOT have commercial interruptions before, if it started at 7 p.m. it ended at 7:46 p.m. and the screen did not go black for the closing credits like it does now.
Then you didn't watch it on The Smithsonian Channel.
 
#8 ·
I'm pretty sure they've had commercials since the beginning. A little Googling shows they hired a company in early 2008 to handle ad sales for their channels so they've had them at least since that point.

http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/04/trifecta_to_sell_smithsonian_c.php

IIRC, they've had ads since we got the channel. They used to show the program in its entirety and then had the remainder of the hour or half hour with promos and ads. I haven't watched it in a while so I'm not sure what they do now (I'll check it out when I get home).

Mike
 
#9 ·
As I recall, at one time Smithsonian programming ran uninterruped but it also ended early. An hour long program would end about 15 minutes before the top of the hour.

Then the next 15 minutes would be filled with shorts promos and ads. Often just ads and promos for other Smithsonian programming.
 
#11 ·
HarleyD said:
As I recall, at one time Smithsonian programming ran uninterruped but it also ended early. An hour long program would end about 15 minutes before the top of the hour.

Then the next 15 minutes would be filled with shorts promos and ads. Often just ads and promos for other Smithsonian programming.
I've been trying to find evidence of this but I pretty much recall it that way too. I think they started with mid-show commercials rather early on but only at certain times of day then they went full commercials.

I don't recall the timeline and the phasing in may be a fiction of my brain but that is how I remember it. I do know that they did not have mid-show commercials when they launched at the very beginning because I clearly had shows from there that did not have commercials for a long time on my DVRs.

But is has been quite some time that they have had commercials. It is not new.
 
#12 ·
DirecTV was the first to carry the Smithsonian channel back in late 2007. I don't think any cable operator picked them up until Comcast did in 2010. Back then, the channel commanded a pretty good fee from the cable and satellite operators simply because they were one of the few HD channels around. Certainly, by the time Comcast (and most definitely later when Verizon, Time Warner, AT&T and Charter) picked them up, HD was a lot easier to come by. As a result, I'm sure they were forced to move to a more traditional advertising format since they certainly weren't going to be able to get more money for their channel than was being paid for Science HD, History HD, NatGeo HD, etc.
 
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