If you’ve been following or reading my blog over the years (and
many people probably haven’t), you know I like watching TV. I love Star
Trek (all the iterations except TNG) and older shows like Green
Acres, All in the Family, MASH, Bunker’s
Place, Barney Miller, and British series like Doc
Martin, Grantchester, and Foyle’s War, along with
many others. I really enjoy how new streaming services like Amazon
(MGM), Pluto TV, Tubi TV, and Plex make so much of this content
available for free. One of my favorite features is when they turn a show
into its own channel.
This past weekend it rained the entire time. I watched one movie, but before and after that I mostly had either the Pluto TV Star Trek: Voyager channel or the Amazon MGM Green Acres channel on, unless I was watching regular TV.
I also own a lot of DVDs of these shows. I like having the discs because cancel culture seems to get worse every year, and I want to make sure I can always watch the things I enjoy. I’ve been working on digitizing everything I own for archival and backup purposes, though the TV and movie industry doesn’t make that easy (that’s a topic for another post). Normally I don’t care for free streaming services because, like regular TV, they include ads. But since I’m not paying for them, I tolerate it.
One category of ads I’ve noticed a lot on Pluto TV is casino-style slot apps. They are heavily promoted. If an adult wants to play those games, that’s their choice, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea to make those ads so visible to impressionable young people, especially young males. It feels like the ads are designed to make gambling seem fun and easy to start. I’m not trying to preach, since I occasionally play the lottery, which is gambling too. But I don’t see lottery ads every single commercial break. The slot ads, on the other hand, sometimes run two at a time, and they even frame the story as if young men are already hooked and stealing to play.
That’s just my two cents.
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