From banners at the bottom of the screen to computer-inserted product placements, I thought this particularly insidious and annoying form of commercial deserved its own thread. Some say that TiVo and other commercial skippers bear direct "blame" for the increase of such things as more and more viewers skip regular commercials.

I was mostly inspired by a report on another message board that a TBS "Family Guy" rerun was halted in the middle of a scene to advertise "The Bill Engvall Show." I had not seen this; can anyone confirm?

Here's a blog report on it, with video, but there's some debate about whether it interrupted Family Guy itself or merely an ad for Family Guy (an ad within an ad). Still obnoxious. Although, in its favor, the pausing is actually more respectful than the usual MO of having both moving graphics/video and audio stepping over a show in progress. I always find myself craning my neck around and shushing, like the ad is a noisy jerk in the seat in front of me at the movie theater. Somehow, it never helps.

They inevitably have a little "Bug" ad for Dr. Phil pop up while I'm watching Jeopardy. Aside from a general dislike for such ads, it inevitably covers part of a clue and greatly annoys me.

It happens during the actual show. Bill Engval will come on, turn towards the scene with his stupid remote and "pause" the scene to plug his show. He then says, "And now back to the Family Guy" and "unpauses" the scene. So annoying!

No, if that was really during the show the TBS ghost logo would have been in the bottom corner. I think that actually was a real commercial.

Maybe what they're showing in the blog was an actual commercial but what I was talking about happened in the middle of the show. I can say this with certainty because I was watching the show at the time.

Sunnshynn is correct - I, too, was subjected to the Bill Engvall interrupts during my Family Guy viewing earlier this week. I was so pissed that they had the gall to stop the show like MID-SENTENCE to put an ad in. Can TBS possibly cram any more ads into their programming???

I saw that, too. That is the absolute limit.

At first I was thinking that such advertising would only discourage people from watching TV live even more, but I wonder, if you were to watch it online, would it still have the "pause" advertisement in it? (I mean, I know they probably aren't showing Family Guy on the TBS website, but I'm talking about if this becomes more common.)

I wish we could have a name for the person directly responsible for this "inventive advertising" so my baseball bat and I could have a conversation with him/her. Just a quick tete-a-tete. Won't take long.

And he can just "freeze" whatever he happens to be doing when you and Mr. Wood walk in.

I actually did this the other night, and felt like such a moron. I can't recall what I was watching, but some stupid-ass graphic was covering the entire bottom right of my screen and at one point blocking something crucial to the scene. I did crane my neck, as if I could somehow see around it, and - worse yet - said aloud, "you're in my way."

I shudder to think where this will all end up (and I don't have DVR, so I'm not even part of the "problem," although I flip around the dial during commercials). First we had ghost logos for the network, then they stayed there permanently rather than only when coming in and out of breaks, then we had graphics pop up advertising other shows, then they stuck around longer, got bigger, and added video and audio. Now we apparently have an advertisement "pausing" a program in the middle of a scene. What's next?

No question about it, as soon as the regulators could be bought off and as soon as the technology could be imposed, all TVs, cable converters, and media players would be required to play a stored list of mandatory ads before switching to "normal" functionality. The only unknown is how many minutes/hours long the list would eventually grow. Then we'd get a seat belt interlock for the sofa to make sure we watch them.

I also witnessed Bill Engvall stopping Family Guy to shill his show. I refuse to watch TBS ever again.

"Hour long" shows are already forty minutes to allow for commercials. Half-hour shows are only twenty minutes. I wonder how long before they whittle the shows down to a 1:1 ratio with commercials. If you add in the in-show advertising, some of these shows probably do have more commercial airtime than actual content.

This is why I rarely watch network channels anymore. Well, that and the shoddy quality of the shows, but still. I did like in an episode of The Simpsons, Marge saw the commercial going on around her head and told the guy to go away. I forget the exact premise, but I love that they called Fox on it, because they were among the first (and worst) offenders.

You had to ask, didn't you?

Snuggle the Evil Fabric Softener Bear now *dances along* with the contestants on "So You Think You Can Dance." They've gone from "pausing" the program for an ad to just joining right the hell in.

Wow. Way to ruin the snuggle bear for me (he's cute on mute) ad schmucks.

I hate those in show ads with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. Watching DHC last week before it became 'Planet Green' *gags* was almost more than I could bear.
And then on Discovery Channel they had a 'countdown timer' to PG. Gah!

The bastards did it again! TBS did the same "pausing Family Guy" bug. This time when he said, "And now back to Family Guy," it went straight to commercials. Then they continued to show moving bugs for the same show during the rest of the episode. People, I don't think we've written enough angry letters to TBS about this. We need to step up our efforts!

Cutting away from the show completely for several 30 second ads. Oh wait...

Tonight's episode of Law and Order SVU on NBC had a bug on the bottom of the screen for Mamma Mia. I thought bugs only advertised other shows on the network. When did they start advertising movies?

I think it started with Hellboy a couple of weeks ago.

I read somewhere once that in the run-up to the Jimmy Neutron movie, Nick was running so many in-show pop-ups that one person said their kid was mad at Jimmy Neutron for interfering with their favorite shows.

Come to think of it, I might have read that on TWOP.

Technically it's a webisode, but the newest webisode for Heroes is sponsored by Sprint and you can clearly see a Sprint cell phone prominently used in the scene. They must have focused on the phone for a good 3 seconds for the viewer to take notice of the brand. It was very blatant.

Oh man. I don't even have words for how much this pisses me off. Its one thing to have a ghost logo, sitting quietly down in the corner. Those are actually helpful.

It is an entirely different and highly fucked up thing to have friggin full-on previews play, WITH SOUND!!!! during a show!! That is totally not fair, and sneaky, and arrrggghhhhh!!! Are 20 minutes of commercials per one hour of TV show not enough anymore? Seriously!!

One of the most inappropriate 'bugs' I saw involved a 'whoosh' of flare and flames. As they died down, up came the little animation of the show (deliberately blocking out which one it was.) It was during a rerun of 'E.R.' The scene? They had just wheeled a burn victim into the trauma room. Great timing, guys!

This one is slightly different, but on Jeopardy last night, they had a question where the Clue Crew girl held up a little cell phone, and said something like "This Sony X28985 phone, which has such-and-such features, was created by Ericsson, a company based in this country." I was quite appalled that they turned my beloved Jeopardy into such blatant product whores.

(P.S. What is Sweden? :))

Yes.

I was watching a repeat of 7th Heaven on Hallmark a few weeks ago. The entire episode was about Ruthie getting a tattoo. Literally, an entire hour about it. It comes to the big reveal and-

Giant box advertising MASH coming up next covers up the entire bottom half of the screen for the entire duration of the reveal. I wasted an hour of my life watching this lame show just to see the fucking tattoo and Hallmark blocked it. It's bad enough having the stuff pop up in the first place, but when it's big enough to block the screen view, it's ridiculous. What happens when it gets to the point when in the finale episode of the season of 24, a giant "AMERICAN IDOL!" ad pops up over the ticking clock on the bomb? Shows shouldn't have to worry about accounting for network ad-space in their cinematography.

The guys from South Park complained about that in the episode "Towlie." The big moment when they introduced Towlie, a big bug advertising another show blocked the entrance of the new character. Now they put a bug at the bottom of their computer screens while animating the show so they know not to put anything important in that corner. Drawn Together did a good parody of these bugs when they had Ling Ling's father show up. Since he was not speaking English they used subtitles for his dialogue, but every time he spoke a bug for the Daily Show covered up the end of the lines. I was annoyed until I realized they were doing that on purpose.

Animated screen boogers are the Devil. I adore Mad Men on AMC, but one of the animated doo-dads has Don Draper (Jon Hamm)'s cigarette wafting smoke all over the screen.
And don't even go there about promos on TNT. Whatever that show is with Holly Hunter has a pop-up that takes up about half the screen. Thankfully I have been absent from tube-watching this summer, but I'm starting to tune in a little more due to Burn Notice and the upcoming S2 of Mad Men. It's irritations like these that make me retreat back to reading, with the trusty VCR recording shows so I can FF through the crud.

I was watching Lifetime Movie Network, which has bugs that take up the bottom of the screen to advertise either another movie or show a description of the current movie's plot. One of the ads came up while I was out of the room and I heard my boyfriend shout, "Pick-a-Fuck Fridays? Am I reading this right?" It turned out to be for "Pick-a-Flick Fridays," where people vote for what movie they want to see, but it was written in all caps and with their choice of font the L and I were too close together. Someone should have proofread that add more closely.

It's a long, cold country in Scandinavia, noted for neutrality and Ingmar Bergman movies, but that's not important now. (with thanks to Leslie Neilsen, lol)

The product placements within "Biggest Loser " are not only annoying, they're extremely wrong-headed and counterproductive. First of all, you can tell what agony they are for Bob and Jillian to pretend to be 'casually' pushing this crap on obese people trying to change their lives. Secondly, the artificial food-like products are far less effective towards weight loss and overall health than fresh produce, lean protein and whole grains - and the producers know this! So it makes me gag, which leads to potential eating disorders...