Previews at the start of show (and even during)..WHY?

[newsposter]

Is the sole reason because they think non dvr users will turn elsewhere? Even if that's true, i can't believe anyone could stop at :08 and turn to another show and watch that one without seeing the first few minutes of that show. Scenes from last week are OK with me, but not these preview things.

MadTV has started doing the previews at the beginning of their show and at each break and it ticks me off. We get to 'see' what's upcoming and it drives me nuts. It's filler and a waste and the show has now become impure for me

I expect this on such great sweeps shows as earthquake 11.5 and Tornado F8, but not on regular series shows.

Is there a petition anywhere to stop this? And are they officially called previews or is there some other TV lingo?

[Amnesia]

NCIS has been doing it for some time. (the B&W snapshot at the beginning of a segment shows how it will end.) Oh, and BSG, too...(the opening credits include scenes from the episode)

[dimented]

I love the way NCIS does it though. It is a challenge for me to try to figure out how they are going to end each break in that picture. Sometimes it is pretty obvious but most times it is not.

It actually adds to the appeal of the show for me in this case.

[TIVO_GUY_HERE]

Ya can't really call what NCIS does as previews, still don't know why they do that.

But what the OP said, Ya I find myself FF though the commericals till what I think is the show starting back up, but it's only previews of what is coming up.

[Jeeters]

Scenes from last week are OK with me, but not these preview things.Scenes from last week are ok with me. But I hate when the recap involves far past episodes as it often contains minor spoilers about what characters are going to appear in this episode. Lost is very good at that... If the recap shows Rousseau or Desmond from some past episode, and you haven't seen them in weeks, you can be sure that they're likely to make an appearence in tonight's episode. This week's BSG premiere did that... they showed scenes of Starbuck and that cyclon she interrogated from way back when (forget his name). I knew immediately I could expect to see him. I'd rather be surprised when characters like that make their appearance.

[murgatroyd]

I love the way NCIS does it though. It is a challenge for me to try to figure out how they are going to end each break in that picture. Sometimes it is pretty obvious but most times it is not.

It actually adds to the appeal of the show for me in this case.

+1 for the 'snapshots' that frame the acts on NCIS.

The long "here's what's coming up next on <xyz show>" teasers within a show -- hate them hate them hate them.

Jan

[trainman]

Way back in the mid-'90s, they did this on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" -- showed clips of the comedy bits from the upcoming show during the opening -- and it drove me a little nuts. Not nuts enough to start a petition or even write a complaint letter to NBC, but I was glad when they changed the opening after a couple of years and eliminated the clips.

[MacThor]

They did this all the time in the 80s. Check out an episode of the A-Team or Miami Vice on "Sleuth" -- the first 3 minutes are all clips from the show we're about to watch.

[jlb]

Coming up next on the Bachelor......

Yeah, I hate this too.

[Jebberwocky!]

I love the way NCIS does it though. It is a challenge for me to try to figure out how they are going to end each break in that picture. Sometimes it is pretty obvious but most times it is not.

It actually adds to the appeal of the show for me in this case.


-1

I hate that they do that - in fact, my wife will FF and I won't look until it clears so I don't have to see it. Several times when it started they had pic's that were a little to revealing. Bad idea and one that I hope no one else copies.

[newsposter]

good one...i do hate seeing shows give away who's evicted etc right up front.

[terpfan1980]

I was just thinking of shows that I've seen do this and it seems I recall seeing this done in Hell's Kitchen episodes. I might be wrong, but I have memories of them showing a good bit of upcoming scenes in each episode.

I'd say it doesn't bother me much, but it is very irritating when they insert just enough of something from the show you are watching to have you stop fast forwarding through the commercials because you think the show is starting again only to find that it's a few seconds worth of still image stuck there to do just what it did - make you stop fast forwarding.

[LordKronos]

MTV does this all the time. Before each commercial they give you a preview of whats coming up in the episode, and then after the commercials they spend 30 seconds repeating stuff that already happened.

[mqpickles]

What Not To Wear is terrible about this. If they'd just run the show without all that repetitive crap, it could have a 1/2 hour run time.

As it is, it starts and I think, "Do I really want to give an hour of my life to this?" Sometimes the answer is yes, which probably says more about my life than I want to admit.

A lot of the TLC, HDTV and Food TV shows are really bad this way.

[newsposter]

i saw an ep of wife swap once..it's bad..i think 1 min of previews ..coming up jane refuses to eat the meat because she's a veggie girl....rick cooks up a big steak...the kids go to the zoo and get trampled by an elephant...stay tuned for more

i wonder if the previews are because they dont have enough good stuff to fill a show or if they need to kill a few minutes each our promoting because they think we are so fickle we will change the channel. On shows like what not to wear, wife swap, heck even temptation island etc, you sorta have a vested interest in the end and i honestly can't see anyone switching channels. Who wouldnt want to see how things turn out?

[jeff125va]

I seem to remember this as fairly common when I was growing up, at least with drama-type shows. Definitely on The Waltons, maybe Six Million Dollar Man?, a few others. I guess it was a means to retain audience from the previous show, but probably got nixed when they realized they could be selling commercial time instead.

I've noticed that Smallville shows a recap of the first half-hour, I guess they think a lot of people watch something from 8-8:30 then channel surf.

Things like this evolve all the time. It was only a few years ago when all the networks decided at the same time to change the way they did the transitions from one show to the next, using split screens for the credits, having a commercial break before the credits then going right to the next show. Remember back when they used to run the credits full-screen with a bunch of still shots from the show we just watched, with like an alternate version of the theme song playing?

What I really used to hate was the guide data for NYPD Blue, it almost always contained a spoiler for the episode. The worst one was when "Zack Morris's" (can't remember the right name, sorry) dad committed suicide at the end of the episode, it was totally given away in the episode description. I usually tried to avoid reading it but it was impossible to avoid sometimes.

+1 for NCIS. I don't think it usually gives anything away, except for maybe that one of the main characters doesn't die, which usually isn't much of a surprise anyway.

[Amnesia]

I don't like it for NCIS. For example, this week one of the snapshots showed a character on the ground, looking knocked out with a fallen cell phone nearby.

When we later see that character looking around a corner holding a cell phone, it's no surprise when the person gets knocked out.

[newsposter]

it didnt hook you and make you wanna see how it got on the ground? ;)

[Magister]

The movie running man. All the previews they should show of the Hunters would be scenes you will be seeing later in the movie.

Pretty cheesy.

There have been a few reality shows that would show the preview for next episode before the end of the episode, and show you who got kicked out before the vote has taken place. pretty annoying.

[mattack]

MadTV has started doing the previews at the beginning of their show and at each break and it ticks me off. We get to 'see' what's upcoming and it drives me nuts. It's filler and a waste and the show has now become impure for me

I don't like them either, but at least for most shows, you know you can start hitting the 30 second skip when they say "coming up next"..

(I've stopped doing that for the NBC Nightly News, since once in a rare while they start talking about coming up next but then DO mention something else in the current segment.. but I can usually figure that out visually at FF, though I actually watch the NBC News on my non-Tivo recorder where I can watch it with sound at the first FF speed.. so I watch the news in about ~12 minutes, minus FFing through boring weather stories, etc.)

These aren't anywhere near as bad as the logos, however, except when they really spoil the next segment (made for TV movies seem to do that a lot.. though this season there aren't any made for TV movies on??)

[newsposter]

These aren't anywhere near as bad as the logos, however, except when they really spoil the next segment (made for TV movies seem to do that a lot.. though this season there aren't any made for TV movies on??)

i haven't seen any schedules but i can virtually guarantee november will not disappoint you. I think that's when the 10.5 type shows are usually on.