[Stewart Vernon]

Have been noticing something cool this week on PTI (airs on ESPN most weekdays at 5:30pm)...

I usually either am watching delayed from my DVR or recorded from being away from home, and typically skip through the commercials... but this week I've noticed that in the middle of the commercial breaks they will take a quick trip back to the studio for maybe 10-15 seconds and show snippets.

They show things like the hosts getting their makeup retouched, or changing the set, while making idle conversation about random things.. or once one host was busy checking his notes while the other was meandering randomly.

The thing is, this stopped me from skipping the commercials blindly... as I didn't want to miss these unrehearsed bits...

SO rather than those annoying popup ads over the program, I think a cool thing to get people to watch more commercials would be to splice in 10-15 second spots of behind the scenes stuff or bloopers or whatever from the show being aired. I know I'd slow down and watch those, and as a result would end up being exposed to more commercials in the process.

Assuming this is what ESPN is doing (or has been doing this week anyway), this is a cool and sneaky thing that I think works.

 

[Grentz]

Thats why I like the slip feature instead of just skip. Lets you see and stop on anything interesting

 

[Galaxie6411]

BBC America does something similar, they have interviews with the cast during the commercial break for under 30 seconds so you have to skip ahead then back to catch all of it, which means you see some commercial content. Most networks just run those damn headers at the bottom of the screen during the show though or they have product placement in the program that will correlate with the commercials.

 

[cygnusloop]

Thats why I like the slip feature instead of just skip. Lets you see and stop on anything interesting

I agree. Having been a SKIP fanatic, I now prefer SLIP. Things tend to catch my eye, and I will back up to check them out. I guess I hate commercials a lot less now, being that I essentially haven't watched any for most of the last decade.