I'm going to pay close attention to this in the coming days, and I hope we can discuss it during the next show. At this time, it appears that there are a couple of options to avoid the ads. First is for all of you viewers to purchase a JTV Pro account for $9.99/month or $79.99/year. If you watch JTV a lot, this might be a good deal. If you don't watch JTV all that much, the cost per viewing hour might be unreasonable. Second, perhaps the usual ad-blocking options will prevent these ads from interrupting the stream. I don't know. I hope to find out.
I'm completely aware that JTV, like any other company, is not a charitable endeavor. They have to turn a profit at some point or they close up shop and go home. However, no company has carte blanche to do whatever the heck they want. If they push the envelope too far, their customers will leave. I think placing preemptive ads during casts pushes the envelope too far.
You all know I do my very best with my limited resources to present a top quality cast according to what I think is important. The video component of the show is pretty low tech and unexciting, but for what I'm trying to do with the cast, it's adequate. Since the music is a central focus of the cast, excellent audio quality is a must. Way back in 2009 when I started dabbling with casting I decided if I couldn't put out a high quality audio stream, I wouldn't do a music cast, and really I probably wouldn't have cast at all. At the time, there were too many music casts with crummy audio and I wasn't going to be one of them. I still feel the same today. Having unavoidable random interruptions to the Off the Charts cast is unacceptable to me as I'm sure it is to you. If there is no satisfactory resolution to this, I don't envision continuing to cast Off the Charts on JTV for very much longer.
For what it's worth, I predicted about 9 months ago that JTV in its then current form might have a remaining life span of 18 months. My prediction was based on a couple of observations that I won't go into right now (but nothing proprietary). I thought JTV might simply go away. Instead, it looks like it might (attempt to) morph into something rather different than what is has been historically. Folks, we all knew this wasn't going to last forever. I'm not going to make a rash decision, but the writing seems to be on the wall. Get mentally prepared and let's talk about it next Monday.
Update: Now there is another forum thread on the same topic. Entitled "Help Me Understand the New Ads", it's a very well written and entertaining post by Crash_. I recommend you take a look. He's been writing some good stuff lately in the forum.