no, that guy's pool is amazing

over the long weekend, i was fortunate to be able to watch some rebroadcasted television online. it seems that no one, in terms of ratings makers and ad salespeople, really cares about the online audience, but thanks to verizon dsl, comedycentral.com, and the blackberry corporation, i was able to view some intriguing long-form commercials with my programming.

up until recently, online television has apparently taken a realistic view of the problem of serving up advertising: if there's no content from the ad network, you go back to your video without further delay. the worst thing that happens is you stare at a blank screen for the same (limited) amount of time that you would have watched a commercial.

the vzdsl/c...c....com/bb team, however, has brought an entirely new hilarity to the equation. with no one else using our 3mbps (haha) connection, i found myself staring at a sort of wallpaper/splash screen that featured blackberry branding and an aqueous background. at first, i found this amusing, as if i was watching a slideshow. i was soon irritated, however, to discover that the ad was just going to sit and sit until i had been forced to watch it in its entirety.

let me be clear on one thing: it might be annoying to advertisers that their content doesn't always come through as well as the streaming video it's paying for, but that doesn't mean it's time to enrage viewers. if i'm forced to sit and wait and wait for a chance to watch a dude in a grey deep-v t-shirt play with his phone by a pool, i'm probably going to hate that phone, the people who made me watch the phone, and the people who deliver my internet. three-for-one, guys. clap clap.

so i went and watched videos on a different site. yup, c...whatever may have a monopoly on its own content, but it doesn't have a monopoly on stuff that interests me. sorry. i came back later and found comedycentral.com was working, so i watched some more...and was treated to another static first frame of a commercial, joking to myself that it would be fun to see where the hawaiian theme of this intro was going. it was going to the same dude, but without a narrative that coherently connected it to the previous commercial. yup. why am i still watching commercials of this guy? he is almost as pointless as that palm pre ghost woman - and palm went dead dead sold to hp. bad company to be keeping. so blackberry - even more annoyed at y'all. i'm going to bed now and i've gotta plug in my nokia, which has the same features as your phones and fewer awful ad experiences.

somehow that dude seems sexier now though.