The Comedy Network’s long-running series Robot Chicken starts off with a road-kill chicken being brought back to life as cyborg by a mad scientist. The mad scientist then straps said chicken into a chair and props open the chicken’s eyes. The chicken is placed in front of a bank of TV screens and forced to watch.
Recently, I’m beginning to feel like the Robot Chicken.
The other day I installed the CTV Go app on my iPad Mini.
As far as apps go, it seemed pretty decent. I could watch recent episodes of CTV shows for free. Well, sorta free. Television channels (like newspapers) rely on advertising to pay the bills. Thus, I expected there to be some ads mixed in with the most recent episode of Big Bang Theory.
The show starred with three ads from 15 to 30 seconds long. Fair enough. It even helpfully told me in the bottom corner it was “Ad 1 of 3” and how many seconds were remaining. This was obviously placed there to ensure I am patient enough to sit through the TV show and watch all their ads. Okay, I get that. But then something odd happened. I wanted to stop it for a second, simply pausing it until I was ready to continue.
I tapped the centre of the screen, the universal “pause button” location for most video players online. Nothing happened. Indeed, I couldn’t stop it at all. Nor is there a volume control or mute within the app. My iPad had become possessed. No matter what I did, I could not shut up this app nor pause it without either leaving the show’s page, leaving the app, or mashing the external volume controls down. I was going to watch those ads, one way or another.
During the episode, I could pause, advance and rewind, but when it came to the ad time, the app again seized control of my tablet.
Where the heck did the pause button go?
In recent months a similar thing has happened on YouTube on my personal computer. It used to be that when your video was over, YouTube would suggest several different, likely related videos you might also enjoy. The key thing is you had to actively choose to play another video.
Now it automatically advances to the next video it thinks you might be interested in. A countdown to “Up Next” goes for roughly 10 seconds, and then it automatically starts playing. The previously ever-present pause button disappears. You can’t pause the countdown at all. You can quickly hit cancel (which is very small, I might add) or the top right X which then takes you to the old grid of suggested videos.
It’s easy to figure out why YouTube does this. Every new video is another ad (or several) they can play. Often there’s a pre-roll video. Then there’s the bottom pop up ad that you usually have to X out. Then there are sometimes video ads at certain intervals within the video you are watching, especially if it is a long one. Each time one of these ads appears, YouTube charges someone something. If you left your computer on YouTube all night, conceivably someone (other than you) is getting charged for those ads.
It reminds me of the saying “If you aren’t paying for it, you’re the product.” In both of these cases, this is very true. To watch these videos, for free, I am being served up to advertisers like an appetizer on a plate.
Fair enough – I didn’t pay for either of these video sites. But if I am to go along with the implied social contract of “thou shalt be subjected to ads to enjoy our service,” it would be nice if I could at least pause the darn thing once in a while or easily mute it.
That is, of course, unless I’ve got a playlist of Robot Chicken going. Then just prop my eyes open and leave me be.
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
