U.S. Logo-Free TV Broadcast Organizations?

iluvpr0n asks: "I ran across The UK Campaign for LOGO FREE TV and admired their goals for encouraging television broadcasters to stop taking up valuable screen space with their annoying and brightly-colored logos. It's not enough to be bombarded with 8 minutes of commercials during programs, but they also need to deface a supposedly artistic work (yes, for most of television that's highly debatable) to enhance their 'brand identity' initiatives. Is anyone aware of groups with this goal operating in the US (or other non-UK locations)?" Do we really need these things anymore? I'm sure most television viewers out there can associate shows to networks, these days.

It sucks the most...

[carrier lost]

...on re-runs of Saturday Night Live.

You can tell right away if a commercial on the show is real or not - the (usually) hilarious SNL bogus commercials have the damn Comedy Network logo on 'em.

MjM

8 minutes of commercials..

[josepha48]

.. I always thought that it was 10 minutes of commercials for every 30 minute show.

I think that the small logo in the corner is a little annoying but I have seen it get worse. There have been times when I have seen the network, then the US flag and then other logos, all adding up to about 3 to 5 logos on the screen. On a 20 inch TV this makes for small viewing. :-(

What is worse is AT&T's digital cable service now has advertisements in its on line TV guide. It used to be that you could see 12 channels at a time when you press the guide button, but now it is about 8 channels and 4 ad's. This makes it slower to browse the digital TV guide. I called and apparantly noone likes this but they don't care cause what can I do? Get satelite like my brother and then possibly not get the local stations (he doesn't)?

While logos are bad I think that being bombarded with advertisements is worse. Look at yahoo and their new popup window ads.

Station ID

[astroboy]

It's really not that obnoxious. Broadcast stations -- TV, Radio -- need by FCC regulations [fcc.gov] to identify themselves; this is a (comparitively) un-obtrusive way of doing this.

Further, it means that if their shows are copied -- whether taped on a VCR, or stills shown on entertainment news or whatever -- that there's a little ``hey, this is the work of CBS/NBC/ABC/...'' sign in the bottom, which doesn't seem all that unreasonable.

This came up when TNT took over Babylon 5

[shutton]

When TNT stepped up to fund/broadcast Babylon 5's fifth season, this issue came up, and was addressed by Dean Treadway of TNT programming. So, here's a broadcaster's perspective:

Bugs (Logos) on Screen/Voice-Overs During Closing Credits: The strong leaning in programming (and we know this won't be a popular decision with fans) is to leave the TNT logo on the corner of the screen throughout a large portion of the episodes. This is something that we have to start doing to foster recognizability of the TNT brand, not just during B5, but during movies and Lois and Clark and everything on TNT. Why? Look, there are 70 channels out there for the average cable subscriber to choose from (let's don't even get into satellite). In the age of remote controls, people don't pay attention to chennels or numbers or anything like that. The days of "ABC's on 2, NBC's on 11 and CBS is on 5" are over. Networks must do something to make themselves and their locations on your "dial" much more noticable (Sci-Fi Channel keeps their bug up 24-7...). Therefore, the logos (bugs) will be a regular fixture on B5. Same goes with voice-overs during the credits. B5 is programmed where it is because we want it to lead in to our prime time programming; we want to create an audience for what we have on the rest of the night. Voice-overs are necessary to keep people tuned into the network, to let them know what's coming up next. Again, we know this won't be a popular decision for people looking to tape the show for posterity. But remember: we are not an archival service designed to provide the public with programming they can tape so they never have to watch our network again. That's the kind of thinking that will send television out of business for good forever, and then you won't have any B5s or Crusade or anything to enjoy ever again, because we won't be able to pay for it. In short: we are not a taping service, we are a network, and that means we'll be carrying all the trappings of any other networks, including bugs, commercials, and voice overs. Sorry...

The full discussion is here [a42.de] -- page down to the entry from "97/07/18" (that's 07/18/1997 for us 'mercans).

-Scott

Re:You won't remove that icon

[Xibby]

OK, got myself going. :) Went and looked:

All other TV questions should be sent to [e-mail]. For a quicker response to your television questions, please call viewer relations at 1-888-404-5969.
Don't file your complaint here...look up the contact info and let the networks know what you think. Anyway, I have a letter to write...

MSNBC banners are much more annoying

[tswinzig]

Those little logos don't bother me on things like live sports, but they are totally distracting when watching a movie or good drama. Especially those that show up really bright when the full frame is dark.

But the most annoying trend on television is the MSNBC-style banners. I noticed this especially during the September 11 coverage. I swear, the huge banner on the bottom of the screen took up almost 1/3 of the height of the screen, and had basically NO information on it. WTF is up with that? These people need to get some designers in there that know how to put the most information in the least amount of space.

I don't need a huge banner to tell me the name of someone who's face I can't see because it's half covered up by said banner!

Re:Station ID - NOT!

[owlmeat]

What they are doing is not an FCC-legal ID. The FCC requires the *broadcast* station to ID with their callsign, not their network name. AFAIK, there is no requirement for a cable station to ID.

Re:Logo's in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh... that's how it works?

I wouldn't even call Fox journalism, let alone appropriate political bias from it. CNN is liberal? hrm, as in anything left of Hitler liberal? It wouldn't say it's overtly liberal, maybe domestic CNN is very different.

Now IndyMedia [indymedia.org] is liberal, or provocatively Marxist depending on your political outlook.

Re:This isn't the reason they do it ...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.dscaler.org/ has an experimental filter to reduce logo intensity. It is really hard to make a logo go away completely, but they've got a promising start.

Of course this only helps if you use your computer to watch TV - but anyone with projection system should be doing that - there ought to be enough geeks with projectors on slashdot to make that useful to someone

Re:The Slashdot Mindset

[kyz]

Let me see if I get this straight. Vocal slashdotters want PVRs that can skip the commercials that pay for the production of the programs.

What if I told you that the UK has TV channels with NO COMMERCIALS! I'm kidding, right? No, there really is!

And guess what, there's NO LOGO, either! (OK, so they've started putting one in for a second or two at the start and end of the program) Is this broadcaster crazy? How does it get its funding?

Now, I know that THE MARKET must dictate everything, and socialism is an EVIL THING that has NEVER WORKED, but guess what, the people of the UK actually collectively pay for these TV channels! And they like that!

They also pay for 5 radio stations (pop/rock/dance, easy listening, classical, current affairs and comedy, sport and talk) and local newsrooms up and down the country.

The issue at stake is that the channel they own, because they pay for it, is doing things that they don't like, such as producing crap TV shows and bastardising their output. So they complain. And believe it or not, they can actually win this one.

Re:Station ID

[Monte]

Broadcast stations -- TV, Radio -- need by FCC regulations to identify themselves; this is a (comparitively) un-obtrusive way of doing this.

The FCC requires that broadcasting stations ID themselves by stating their call sign(s) - a minimum of once an hour, IIRC. I've yet to see a "bug" with a call sign in it. And this regulation doesn't apply to cable channels, as they're not broadcasters.

Dscaler fixes this

[Anonymous Coward]

People with plasma's and RPTV that are worried about logo burn-in should check out the latest version of dscaler from dscaler.org.

It's GPL'ed software that does realtime scaling, filtering and now has an alpha version of a logo killer.