via Kotke:
Newspapers, magazines, and television networks have dealt with this same issue for decades now.2 They derive large portions of their revenue from advertisers and, in the case of the TV networks, from the cable companies who pay to carry their channels. That results in all sorts of user hostile behavior, from hiding a magazine’s table of contents in 20 pages of ads to shrieking online advertising to commercials that are louder than the shows to clunky product placement to trimming scenes from syndicated shows to cram in more commercials. From ABC to Vogue to the New York Times, you’re not the customer and it shows.
This subject isn’t a new one to my blog. I link to bloggers who highlight this whenever i come across them in case you’re new to the blog and didn’t know about this underlying aspect to almost everything. You pay comcast for a pipe to the Internet or television channels. They make very little from your Comcast payment. Commercials, advertisers and people who buy data are the customers.
It’s why I pay for most of the online services I use. I want to be the customer. I stopped paying for Hulu because despite charging me $8 a month, they still showed ads and sold my data to other companies. That business model has never made sense to me.