CTV.ca throttles down online content to support advertisers

Canada’s CTV network, whose employees constitute a notable source of funding for the federal Conservative party, has now begun throttling back its shows that are shown online in order to increase advertising revenue.

Online advertising, of course, is increasing. General computer users, who may infrequently experience any kind of slowdown when using youtube or other kinds of social networking sites, will now find themselves repeatedly shut down by CTV. Attempts to watch CTV content are now greeted by curious shutdowns that have one end: pages must be reloaded so more advertising must be watched.

CTV programming—(admittedly, sometimes depending on what its political aims are) is more throttled down than ever, resulting in more reboots and (CTV hopes) advertising hits that add to the CTV bottom line. Viewers are screwed, but so far CTV lawyers have not been pressed into service.

A unique feature of the CTV.ca website that CTV lawyers will be working hard to address is how CTV advertising is never throttled, but programming is. Expressing themselves uniquely, CTV lawyers will point out that high-decibel advertising can not be throttled down, but programming can, and this is a good and just thing. Trampling the rights of the polity to have access to uncommercialized information is just wrong. Parents, if you've got kids, make sure they end up being CTV lawyers.  But then, for CTV, it isn’t information—none of it is, ever; it is all, always, only advertising.

Advertisers are pleased: CTV advertising routinely touts unhealthy products no medical doctor, and certainly not Lloyd Robertson, would give to his kids, such as Red Bull.

Still, no compromise is too great. We've come a long way, from D-Day to today, and no compromise is ever too great in order to make sure we drink Red Bull.

There is a coda to this.  CTV, and its gullible advertisers, evidently still believe that people can be held hostage in the hopes of receiving a few dribs of content.  They just don’t get that the world is swimming in a sea of content, and they and their 50s crew of pocket-protected staff and advertisers just don’t get it.  They think they can play whack-a-mole with every new technological development that occurs, and use the profits of their mutual enrichment society to make their friends in government create laws to defeat content access.  They will try until they are as old as Lloyd.  And then they’ll die. If they ever just thought, “well, we can get in some advertising and not destroy our content,” they maybe wouldn’t have to keep playing whack-a-mole endlessly, and could keep some eyeballs.  If there is something I want to see/hear/read, there are still just too many ways, and I won’t put up with CTV.ca’s ham-fisted Neanderthal ways.  I’ll pay, I’ll accept delays, and I’ll go elsewhere, but I won’t have any more to do any longer with CTV.ca’s puerile and pathetic attempts to destroy content so as to provide a few more ads.

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