IP: DVRs and commercials (NYT)

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Tim O'Connor" <oconnort () nyu edu>
Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 23:23:50 -0400
To: dave () farber net
Subject: DVRs and commercials (NYT)


This feature about DVR use appears in the May 23 NY Times at:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/23/technology/23VIDE.html

Not that much of this is news to IP readers.  However, those who would
force content down our throats seem to consider seamier and seamier
measures every time the issue is raised.

DVRs are one angle; what about those of us who DON'T use technological
means to skip commercials?  Some of us get up and deliberately walk
away when the usual insipid commercial comes on; after a while, you
get pretty good at gauging how long to stay away from the blare and
the irritation, and when to come back for your content.

Granted, this low-tech approach doesn't allow viewers to compress
an hour's broadcast to a 40-minute viewing, as DVR owners can do.
But it's effective.  And what will that lead to?  Rear-end-mounted
alarms to alert broadcasters that a viewer has wandered out of the
range of increasingly inane commercial offerings?

There is something both sad and amusing about how music publishers,
DVD producers, and television broadcasters are growing increasingly
frantic about shrinking markets.  They seem not to consider that
the fault lies within their own narrow visions and schemes.
*Magazines* have certainly figured that if you produce mediocre
content, sales will plummet; when that happens, they change strategies
as needed to remedy downturns, or they perish.

Now, what about other businesses?

When the Gap sells fewer T-shirts, it doesn't take legal action
against nudist colonies.

When beef sales drop, cattle producers don't try to outlaw
vegetarians.

But content producers, well, they seem unable to grasp anything but
a market in permanent growth -- especially galling in the CD realm,
where prices are as high as ever, while production costs must be as
low as they have ever been.

This intriguing article on TiVo and ReplayTV may alert many IP
subscribers (and other ancillary readers) to the continuing schemes
concocted by those content producers who would love to trample us all,
indiscriminately.

Whether you like commercials or not.

Or whether, like me, you hit the MUTE button and leave the room
until the intrusions you choose to ignore have ended.

--tim o'connor


[article excerpt follows]

May 23, 2002
Digital Video Recorders Give Advertisers Pause
By AMY HARMON

Digital successors to the VCR that eliminate the frustration of
recording television programs have crossed a popularity threshold,
raising alarm among advertisers and TV executives who see the devices
as a threat to the economics of commercial television.

Digital video recorders, or DVR's, make it so easy to program and play
back shows -- they do away with videotapes by storing 30 hours or more
on a hard disk -- that their owners often choose to watch what is on
the machine rather than what is on TV. Ignoring the networks'
painstakingly planned schedules, they watch prime-time programming
during late night and late night before dinner, often oblivious to the
channel on which it originally appeared.

They also see fewer than half the commercials they used to,
compressing hourlong shows into 40 minutes as they fast-forward
through the advertisements that the television industry has long
depended on to pay for its programming and profits.

One in five people who own a DVR like TiVo or ReplayTV say they never
watch any commercials, according to a recent survey from Memphis-based
NextResearch.

Numbers like that have provoked gloomy pronouncements from industry
executives in recent weeks. Some even come close to accusing habitual
ad skippers of theft.

                               --snip--


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