Orange is absolutely in no way intended to give people more power.   Its not to say they are any better, or anything else.   The only purpose is for you guys to identify them and be able to not ask questions of who the fuck does this guy think he is?    Its also sweet that companies can have official representation on here, so if you've got quetsions for Salomon, find the orange salomon name and blammo you're taking the question straight to the horses' mouth.
As for the ads... yeah I know that this is a problem.   Honsestly its not the solution that I wanted, but we really upped the ante on our offerings this year and that shit cost a lot of dough.   Things like brining Schmuck on board, doing broadcasts, paying journalists, developing the site, getting better server equipment, etc, etc...   all of that stuff cost, and we didn't get nearly the industry support that we were hoping.   The companies that did support us were great, and we should all make sure to buy their product over the others... because lets face it we just didn't get the support we were hoping for.
So, in light of needing to bridge the gap in costs somewhat, the remnant ads (which are the ones you guys hate) had to be implemented.  The only reason they are there though is to fill the gap until we can lock down more advertisers directly interested in NS.
Sure NS is moving forwards, and with growth it will seem that the direction is more corporate... but what is that really?   I mean sure there's some banner advertisements, but does that single handedly rip the soul out of this site?    I dunno... I guess there's different opinions on that matter, but we're still the same guys trying to make the same dope site for you guys.   That hasn't changed at all.
We've just got some bigger stakes at hand now, which I guess does change some stuff, but it is the natural pains of growth to have a bit of difficulty with this.    I assure you though, we will not let this site start to suck.    Hell if we fuck it up I'll burn it to the ground myself.
Oh and no likey the "hype" banners?  We just thought it would be good to use those to bring extra hype to super special things we do...  we don't have any other way of promoting things like the live broadcasts...