Personal Video Recorders vs Ads

Kris_J writes "Electronic Media Online have an article about PVRs and their effect on viewing habits. Specifically it says that owners watch more TV, less ads and have less of an idea what channels they're watching. I like the last line; "The [senior advertising] executive said he had never heard of PVRs, and moreover, he wasn't interested in learning more." Good." Having owned a TiVo for about six months now, I can confirm this - my TV watching has gone up, a bit, I watch barely any ads - but I usually have a good idea which channel I'm on. CartoonNetwork has some great network promoting ads.

Comments

So?

[Wind_Walker]

What's wrong with not knowing what channel you're watching? Does it really matter that it's on NBC, or CBS, or BBC? If it's a good television show, they're going to watch it.

Maybe we're now moving to a time when all the companies will merge together and begin concentrating on actually providing quality television, rather than scrambling for ratings.

I hope that, in the future, there is only one or two channels that show us quality television all the time. Especially the news. The fewer people that are reporting the same stories, the better quality those stories will be.

Think about it; how many channels have a dozen people reporting the news? Tons. And if you could concentrate all those people into one large group and send them out on non-overlapping missions, that would be great! With only one agency reporting the news, it would be more concise, clear, and best of all, not biased at the least in order to get ratings.

I look forward to this Brave New World.

------
That's just the way it is

FreePVR is a must

[bfree]

It is no surprise to hear that people are watching less ads when they have a PVR, but we must ensure that we can continue to provide a Free way to create a PVR from commodity traffic. The question is why is their not yet a tivo type service for every tv station on the planet (like Ireland please, I could grey import a tivo now but what would be the point?). We need to release a Free package that can control a video capture device by using a db of your interests/program choices and an online db of all the tv stations available to you. I started to gather the resources to do Irish TV, can anyone point me to any projects that might like my help?

Re:Second Hand Knowledge?

[milo_Gwalthny]

Well, it *is* second-hand knowledge: I got it from the SEC, in the companies' IPO filings. This is all publicly available info (it's amazing the amount of info that needs to be filed with the SEC, and how little scrutinized it is.) These are the major corporate investors or, in the case of controlled corporate venture funds (ie. Disney's investments were through its VC subsidiary Catalyst), their parent. It's something of a who's who of media companies. The point here is that unless an open-source box is developed, your TV is still controlled by the same old corporations.

Corporate investors in TiVo:

DIRECTV, Inc
NBC Multimedia, Inc.
Philips Corporate External Ventures
Advance/Newhouse Programming Partnership
CBS Corporation
The Walt Disney Company
Comcast Interactive Investments
Cox Communications Holdings
Discovery Communications, Inc
TV Guide Interactive, Inc.
Showtime Networks

Corporate investors in ReplayTV:

News America Incorporated
Adelphia Communications Corporation
Comcast Interactive Capital
Motorola, Inc
Sega of America Dreamcast
The Walt Disney Company
The Endeavor Agency
Liberty Media Corporation
Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics
William Morris Agency
Murdock Venture Partners
NBC Multimedia, Inc
Showtime Networks, Inc
Time Warner Inc
Tribune Company
Shaw Communications Inc
At Home Corporation
Omnicom Group Inc
Echostar
Grey
The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc
Rogers Communications
Scientific-Atlanta, Inc
Sharp Electronics Corporation
Universal Music Group, Inc

Enjoy!

Here's how to answer surveys like this...

[fmaxwell]

This will confirm the biggest fears that the networks and advertisers have about PVRs. In the future, there will be contracts with DirecTV, Dish Network, and PVR manufacturers to assure that you cannot fast-forward over ads (no, I don't care what you can do with you linux-geek-boy-PC-PVR application). Trust me: DirecTV can afford the bandwidth to digitally mark a section of time as "no fast forward." Defeat it, and they will have you prosecuted under the DMCA.

The correct explanation of why you got a PVR (when talking to someone doing a survey for television advertisers) is: "I sometimes miss the toll-free phone numbers on ads and wanted to be able to pause them. I also like to watch really good ads over and over. Don't you just love the Budweiser ads with the frogs and lizards? Advertising has gotten so clever..."

Remember, the television networks took DirecTV to court to prevent DirecTV from giving subscribers network signals from stations outside of their local area. The networks are violently protective of local and national advertising revenue. Telling them that you just found a way to skip all of the ads is as clever as telling a store owner that you found a neat way to shoplift from his store (although the former is not illegal -- yet).