I've watched Dateline for years but the last couple haven't been that great. Sure, the veneer of the show is the same as it was but the content has changed greatly.
The old 1 hour format felt impactful and interesting most of the time. Since they went to their 2 hour format the hype is still the same but it feels like something is missing, some element has been removed but the show is still touted as being something more. The thing that's lacking certainly isn't the commercials by any means. In the most recent show I watched, (S31E8 - Dark Waters) there were eleven commercial breaks.
I know as well as anyone that with few exceptions television shows are largely funded by commercial revenue but in one break the actual program returned from one of the many commercials at approximately 1:01:27 by our counter and broke for the next at 1:06:34 after taking a few seconds prior to each commercial breaks to set the hook telling viewers what they'll see when the show returns.
This continues throughout the length of the entire show taking 2 hours of overall runtime to tell the same story that was originally told in just 1 hour and advertising exclusive never before seen content then presenting viewers with the same content chopped into mostly 5 minute segments throughout.
So, after years of faithful viewership I'm done watching this sham of a 'news' show.
The old 1 hour format felt impactful and interesting most of the time. Since they went to their 2 hour format the hype is still the same but it feels like something is missing, some element has been removed but the show is still touted as being something more. The thing that's lacking certainly isn't the commercials by any means. In the most recent show I watched, (S31E8 - Dark Waters) there were eleven commercial breaks.
I know as well as anyone that with few exceptions television shows are largely funded by commercial revenue but in one break the actual program returned from one of the many commercials at approximately 1:01:27 by our counter and broke for the next at 1:06:34 after taking a few seconds prior to each commercial breaks to set the hook telling viewers what they'll see when the show returns.
This continues throughout the length of the entire show taking 2 hours of overall runtime to tell the same story that was originally told in just 1 hour and advertising exclusive never before seen content then presenting viewers with the same content chopped into mostly 5 minute segments throughout.
So, after years of faithful viewership I'm done watching this sham of a 'news' show.