TV bugs must die!

It is getting to the point that I can no longer watch the History Channel, Discover Channel and a number of the other not quite mainstream cable stations. The reason for this is not the content. Most of the content on these off channels is quite good, interesting and well made. I particularly enjoyed "Ice Road Truckers" (even though is was an idea ripe off of "Dangerous Catch"). The reason I may have to boycott these channels for a bit is their annoying habit of showing large, active, invasive screen station bugs during the various shows.

For anyone that does not know what I am talking about, a screen bug is that small station logo that appears in the lower right corner of the TV screen while you are watching a show.

Some stations have reasonable, small, unobtrusive bugs that do not get in the way but allow you to see at a glance what station you are watching. A number of them are even translucent so you can see through them to the part of the screen that they cover. Others though, take annoying screen bugs to new heights. I feel that the History Channel is the current "worst offender" in this regard. Their bugs are large to start with, are active, change size and worst of all, at times take up the bottom 25% to 30% of the screen. This completely blocks the show you are watching and is very distracting because the bugs are active and are in many cases, ads for other shows. Normally this is just distracting and bothersome but it is down right fatal to shows that include sub-titles. These bugs completely overlay the sub-titles so you can not read them.

A fear of mine is that with the advent of Tivo and PVRs, that more and more networks will move to these larger, active screen bugs to make up for people zipping through commercials, allowing us no respite from that annoyance. So if any TV execs are reading this (especially History Channel) do us all a favor and kill the bugs!