David Sehring, the Senior Vice-President and General Manager of Monsters HD, has written to let me know that Video WatchBlog's complaints about the VOOM bug have paid off... not completely, but appreciably.
He has succeeded in convincing VOOM management to cut back the number of station ID bugs from once every 10 minutes to once every half-hour. This change officially went into effect yesterday, on January 10. Hey, that's eight fewer watermarks per two-hour slot -- a significant improvement!
Of course, that still leaves four bugs every two hours, so things could still be better -- they could be the way they used to be, with no bugs! But I'm a realist and know that most everything, eventually, changes for the worse. If the bugs have to stay, maybe they can be made transparent and inanimate, like the Showtime bug. The present VOOM bug is not only brightly and distractingly colored, but animated (rotating from the initial VOOM logo to reveal the subsidiary Monsters HD or whatever other channel name). Even if things have to change for the worse, there's still room for compromise and improvement. There must be.
One thing in our favor as VOOM subscribers is that David's one of the good guys. He knows our concerns and he's in there pitching for us. He's still appealing to management for fewer bugs per broadcast, and I would imagine that goes for all the VOOM channels and not only Monsters HD.
Cross your fingers, and stay tuned for further updates.
