Know What I Hate?

Yeah, I know, it's a long list. But one thing that gets my goat is the practice--most notably on Fox and its sister F/X cable channel--of advertising upcoming shows during the show that's on.

Lately, because of the summer re-run doldrums, Sarah and I have been TiVoing "The Practice." Whenever the show comes back from commercial, F/X advertises its new fire department show with Dennis Leary; I can't even recall what its title is, though the theme is Queen's "Under Pressure" ("Ice, Ice, Baby," for those of you under 20), so you can see how well the advertising works. They way they do it is by appropriating the bottom half of the screen (and a good chunk of the right side, too) with moving graphics and a sound effect of sizzling fire that drowns out the audio of the show I'm trying to watch. This goes on for probably five or eight seconds.

Fox does this on its broadcast shows, too. I imagine F/X does it most of the rest of the time as well. How is this even remotely a good idea? It just pisses me off and makes me want to just not watch.

Bastards.