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Turner CEO: "PVR Users Are Thieves"
mrbrown1602 writes: "It was bound to happen - 2600.com is reporting that Turner Broadcasting CEO Jamie Kellner is calling PVR users thieves. When asked why personal video recorders are bad for the industry, Keller says 'Because of the ad skips.... It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming.' Since when have we made contracts with the broadcasters for watching their content? More of the 2600 article can be found here."
Apparently there was no clause in the contract about quality of programming, have you seen the crap on TNT?
yes i run a goth/punk/emo porn site.
Give me a break. Next they'll ban remote controls that let you turn the sound off during ads.
i suppose he hasn't heard of a vcr which has the same exact technology. or cable tv for that matter.
How does receiving publicly broadcast data bind you to a contract? It wasn't in the EULA when I bought my TV.
This is silly. I pay my damned cable company ~50 for the right to watch whatever portion I want of what they send down the wire. I didn't agree to watch everything they offer.
Are they going to come and beat me now up if I flip the channel during a commercial. I almost always do.
This is silly.
I don't look at ads anywhere -- on television, at the cinema, on shopping center walls... And yet I continue to keep my eyes open and see everything else!
I am stealing all of society! I will crush the world economy! It is my evil masterplan!
Bwahahaha! Ha-ha!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Normally I just zap away during a commercial break.
If they get what they want then I can imagine a future with digital tv, when you zap away the commercial break too long, you will be banned from watching the end of the show.
There's going to be all kinds of irritating rules if we don't watch out.
Beter close the curtains next time I take a whiz or get some Haagen Dasz from the fridge during the ad breaks, for all I know a neighbour might be watching and snitch on me!
Consider that the major networks are given public airspace to broadcast for FREE.
That's right. Free. NBC pays the government how much for the rights to its frequency? Zero. New HDTV channels? Zero.
Channels that exist exclusively on cable or satellite are paid for in your cable or satellite bill.
And that about covers it.
"I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom."
Wow, I sure am glad he cleared that up. Feeling the a thief every time I made a trip to the can during a commercial was bringing me down.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Skiping commercials is theft? Then what about hitting mute? What about going to the bathroom? What about talking loudly to your loved ones during commercial? Gonna send us to jail for that?
Should we envision a dark future where you watch a show and then are QUIZZED on the ads you saw? If you pass you're good, if you fail you're fined? That's the only way I can see this form of theft ever really held in check.
When I buy something and take it home or have it delivered to my home, I can do whatever I want with it. If I buy something I can use it however I want. I can even throw it away if I want. Same should apply with my cable television. I paid for it, it was delivered. I didn't sign any contracts promising I'd watch any single second of it, and whatever I do with it is up to me -- the sale never stated otherwise.
And what about broadcast television? What are your signals doing tresspassing on my property? Okay, that one's a bit silly, there are federal regulations for airwaves, but it isn't much siller than calling skipping an ad theft.
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
Maybe the next time I pick up a newspaper I'll cut out all the ads, just so I don't have to see them, let alone read them. 'Course, if I did that, there'd be nothing left of the paper :-)
Using a PVR constitutes theft. What a ridiculous argument.
were as entertaining as the Budweiser "WHATUUUPPPP", then I might consider viewing them ;-).
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Hasn't this whole ad scenario already been mocked enough in Carl Sagan's "Contact"? I really can't even take it seriously now...
Posiks
What contract?
you're actually stealing the programming
Okay! I will record only the ads and watch them 200 times...hope that will compensate them for the loss...
I've written up an essay of one possible result of the conflict between commercial TV, PVRs, commercial skip and DRM.
You can read about The future of TV in the essay.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Why do I pay for cable? I remember when they were laying out the lines that it was supposed to be that you paid for a subscription to avoid ads!
HAHAHAH.
And cable stations didn't have to following the 7 dirty words and decency regulations.
What a crock. MTV is sanitized, no one shows skin, its all a failure.
Sorry, Turner, you and your mogul pals failed to deliver. How about showing European style ads with breasts showing? I hate American TV for how sanitized it is. Forget you TED.
I feel like getting a Tivo - I have already upgraded several for my friends, I should just do it. Thanks for MFSTools.
As for Turner's content, it's a joke. Time for Direct TV with a Tivo BUILT IN!!!
End rant;
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Uh, our registered impression numbers? Oh. Well. Those. Heh. Funny you should ask! Um ... Well ... Well, you know what it is ... Uhhhh ... Oh! Oh! I know! It's those PVRs!!! It's the VIEWERS! They're STEALING! That's it! It's not us! It's the VIEWERS! Gosh, boy am I MAD! Gladys! Get in here and take a letter! I'm so MAD I'm going to issue a STATEMENT!
Quoting from the article the 2600 article references...
CW: What if you have to go to the bathroom or get up to get a Coke?
JK: I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom. But if you formalize it and you create a device that skips certain second increments, you've got that only for one reason, unless you go to the bathroom for 30 seconds. They've done that just to make it easy for someone to skip a commercial.
Ok, so you're allowed to go to the bathroom. But just don't be in there too long buddy! We'll have you taken to court for violating your contract!
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
That's right kids, your cable bill buys you.. spam! Not just any spam, but spam that talks to you and tells you how much you need their products.
:P
I don't remember agreeing to anything about watching commercials and actually wanting to. Nowhere did I put my john hancock on a piece of paper saying, "I wanna see Billy Mays pimp more Oxi Clean to me!"
Someone explain to me PVR's are any different from VCR's with "VCR Plus!" which automatically mark commercials and skip over them when you watch a recorded tape. Same thing, except it's not instantaneous like a PVR. Why is one stealing and one is not?
AOL TW if you're reading. Wanna save some of that 45B mark down? Fire her ass, you'll save yourselves a whole lotta grief down the road.
Don't forget! When you're stealing TV (that you paid for), you're watching communism.
I turn the channel when ads come on. I feel so bad now. I think I'll go write a check to ted turner. I know he has billions, but dammit I stole his show and that makes me a criminal.
50 hail marys and 20 our fathers
The only payment for a lot [of content] is the willingness of the viewer to watch the spot, the commercial. That's part of the contract between the network and the viewer. For anybody to step in between that content and encourage the viewer to disregard the payment in time that he's making--I think everybody should fight those people...or let the viewer have a subscription model where they pay for that, in which case the monies can be taken in and distributed back to cover the loss of the ad revenue.
This is wrong on so many levels. I can watch whatever the fuck I want to of the television programming you send into my house. If I want to watch only 3 minutes of CSPAN perday and nothing else, so be it. If I want to watch only the 5 or 6 interesting shows on the air, so be it. If I want to close my eyes and not watch the ads or find some other way to not watch them, too freakin bad for you! YOU were the one who decided that the volatile business model of selling advertising would bring you stable profits; you are the one taking the risk and putting together the programming together in the first place.
I don't owe you anything.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
...is that the vast majority of us change channels during commercials.
Sigs are for losers
CableWorld interview with Turner
*cough* posting anonymous because... well.. you know.
-spectecjr
Yeah, right... watching Buffy, then skipping over to PBS while the ads are showing is going to be illegal soon, right? Your new CBDTPA TV set is going to force you to watch shows ALL THE WAY THROUGH.
Jesus, give me a break! (no pun intended)
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Then I'll just take my public airwaves back please... Oh, NOW who's the thief?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
if I'm a thief of your precious IP then you're a thief of my far more valuable freedoms. Your entire business is a government created business. It cannot exist without state intervention into the economy. In a true lassiez faire nation you would not exist or would be scraping by. Don't whine and bitch and moan to me, you people are worse than welfare babies. Both you and welfare babies have to suck off the public teat for your sustinanice, but at least the welfare babies are even a little bit greatful for what society gives them. You miserable little shits expect society to hand over its cash and rights to you and then respect you and for you to not have to in any way show appreciation.
That is what I would say to that exec if I was called a thief by such a person to my face.....
I signed a contract saying I am legally required to watch all adverts they show on TV? Hmm, maybe I signed a contract with Coca Cola that I have to drink their product whenever I see a Santa Claus
I personally like to watch commercials if they are good quality.
i.e. Nike ads etc
so if they can make ads attractive enough, ppl like me will WATCH it
..if I decide to watch the ads, I can quit paying money to watch cable?
I was under the impression that the money I pay to my cable company - Time Warner, which is a Turner enterprise in its own right - is passed along to the cable content providers in licensing fees. I thought that my cable subscription fee was divvied up and sent piece by piece to Showtime, E!, the Comedy channel, etc. I guess perhaps I've been wrong all these years, and Turner is giving the programming to my (Turner) cable company? That Turner isn't making a penny off the fees I pay to my cable company? Ignoring, of course, the obvious Turner-Time Warner relationship.
I really don't get it. I pay for cable programming, it has commercials. My local TV stations are free, they have commercials. Guess which channels on which I'm more likely to mute/skip commercials? Damn right - the channels I pay for.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
What's going to be next? This???
Will they pay me if I record their channel and JUST watch the comercials? It sounds like a sound arguement.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
Ok let's see, I pay $60/month for cable. What in the world do they smoke that they think they can even PLAY ads?! It's like AOL, you pay for a service that shows you ads???
When will people realize that they are getting screwed over BIGTIME. When you pay for something, you should get it, not the ads that "come" with it.
-Dudds
I for one will be taking my toilet breaks during the shows from now on.
I only pray that Mr. Kellner can forgive me for my previous indiscretions.
I am a Karma Library.
Well, i don't bother to use my TiVo to record the lame edited movies on TBS and TNT, I'd rather watch the whole movie!!
Have you not noticed how strangly almost all the channels have their adverts at exactly the same time. "Ah adverts, i'll just channel hop for a bit, adverts, adverts, adverts.... etc" Its almost as if they all work together to make sure this happens, but that can't be right? ... Can it?
-- Vagnerr - (www.vagnerr.com) Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
I'm sorry love, can't help with the dishes -- entered into a contract to watch the commercials...
SLOGEN [ http://ungdomshus.nu : Sebastian cover music]
"I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom."
What about sleeping? I like to get a couple hours of sleep each day, am I actually stealing during that time?
I casually slip out of the living room during comercials. It's a welcome break to have a snack, go to the toilet or read some part of the boot while the TV is mute.
I never thought my kitchen, toilet and books were all part of qualified theft. Then again, I'd rather stop stealing by stopping whatching TV than by stopping eating or reading.
What's wrong with this guys in the US? Since when I am not free to choose what I see or don't see on TV? When I buy a TV, use a web browser or whatever I am under no contractual obligation to see comercials.
I decided a long time ago that if I could remember an ad for anything I wouldn't buy that product. It works great in supermarkets. Pick up item, remember advert (entertaining or not), put down product, find something else. It's good practice for keeping a free mind.
Maybe he just means 'social contract'. But still, if you can claim someone owes you anything simply for passively listening to radio waves broadcast on public spectrum unencrypted, you seriously need to reevaluate your position.
Its a bit different with cable, since you do actually sign a contract, but I doubt "must watch the adds" is a clause.
And how is this different from flipping channels, or going to the bathroom or something during a regular TV show? Or fast forwarding through commercials on a tape?
really, turner's CEO's position is really pretty tenuous...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Now maybe if they'd only show two or three ads an hour, I wouldn't mind watching them so much...
Take life easy: one bit at a time.
"Forget you Ted"
After a quick Google I found an example of such device, being the Hitachi VT-FX880E that has a feature called Commercial Advantage. I am not sure how effective it is but his a snippet taken from a review
If the FX880 were a computer Commercial Advantage would be described as its killer app. What it actually reflects is Hitachi ingeniously tackling the old problem of getting rid of the ads from programmes recorded from commercial TV stations. There have been attempts to do this almost from the dawn of the VCR but most have attempted to blank out the ads completely. What Commercial Advantage cleverly does is detect when an ad break starts, automatically kicks into fast forward and then drops back to normal speed when the programme resumes, all without you having to lift a finger.
It does this by detecting a signal that is sent at the beginning of each ad break which effectively returns a network to local programming so ads for that region can be shown. A signal at the end of the break marks network programming restarting and the end of the Commercial Advantage option. As with all good ideas it is deceptively simple but not without its faults. In our tests of the feature we found CA kicking in at the start of local TV promo spots (trailers, etc) that run before the advertisements themselves. Even so, it's a great idea and a genuinely useful one.
aus.music.scrapbook
If the TV stations do not like PVRs why does the UK satellite broadcaster (BSkyB) offer a PVR as one of its subscription options? Or is this different (from the broadcater's pov) because the broadcaster is getting additional subscription income from the PVR users?
Why is it that they haven't figured out that declining profits are of their own making?
Ted, let me tell you something. It's not pirates who are killing your bottom line. It's not the guys who trade your files on Kazaa or Usenet.
It's you. It's your cartel-like pricing, coupled with your outright hostility for the people who have to buy your product. GM tried this tactic in the 70's. At one time they had a greater than 50% market share. Today they are still trying to recover from their mistakes.
Keep legislating. I'll keep voting with my pocketbook. I quit buying CDs two years ago. I quit buying DVDs after a few of Jack Valenti's rants this year. If it comes down to it, I'll pull Time Warner out of the wall and only watch the media I've currently paid for and own. Turn my computer into a glorified toaster and I'll never buy another.
You know what? I'll deal. I thought getting rid of CDs would be bad. It hasn't. DVDs were even easier because I'd been down the road with CDs. Suddenly, I've got a lot more disposable income to spend on other things and other passtimes. I figure this year alone the RIAA and MPAA should save me about $5,000 with their predatory tactics.
Keep it up guys, I'm sure I'm not the only one who is spending their money on things other than your overpriced product.
-------------------------------------------------
So choosing to skip an ad, whether by fast-forwarding through your Tivo's buffer or simply going to the kitchen or bathroom during breaks is "theft." So what exactly is the term for broadcasters' government-sanctioned hijacking of publicly-owned airwaves for their own profit? Everyone who wanted 17 more channels of WWF pay-per-view in lieu of HDTV that's actually HD, raise your hand.
I tend to watch live programs live with commercials and all.
Emo? I have to say I hated that term since the first time I heard it. And how can you have emo porn?
But thats beside the point. Any chance of hooking a fellow slashdot sig porn spammer up with a free account?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I am suprised it took this long for a broadcaster to finally come out after the PVR people for something like this. I expected it a long time ago when PVR's first hit the scene. I think that instead of putting commercial breaks between the show we will start seeing picture-in-picture commercials or we will see MUCH more product placement in shows, perhaps with the stars of the shows themselves doing advertising like the Truman Show. Either that or an annoying block of text scrolling at the bottom of the screen, however advertisers probably don't feel there is enough sex appeal in scrolling text.
The only thing I know is that PVRs are here to stay, so broadcasters are going to have to change thier business model accordingly.
After all, it was TNT that stole the good name of "Babylon 5" away from the creator with that "Crusade" abomination.
Yes, we really want to follow up five years of quality cerebral science fiction (not 'sci-fi') television with a show that features a character that greets new aliens by having sex with them.
Some of the ideas the TNT execs had for Crusade make Andromeda seem like Asimov.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
Information is not a physical object, it cannot be stolen.
It can be copied, shared, illegally distributed, but to call someone a thief or a pirate, is just a way of issuing out your propaganda, to make you feel morally wrong for doing whats right.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I wonder, does this "contract" that we have with the networks also mean that we must buy things too? What if we make a point of expressly NOT buying everything we see in commercials, would that make us thieves if we DO watch the commercials?
Once again, it's old worn-out business models running at hurricane speeds into the reenforeced concrete wall of technology and progress. If they absolutly demand that thier advertisements get seen, then start using product placement in the shows! Oh, wait, that would hurt thier lucrative syndication racket^H^H^H^H^H market. How about making thier business a micropayment one, where you pay per minute watched (with ads deducting from the bill)? Oh, that would require innovation and investment on thier part. Again, not going to happen.
As soon as all of the *cough* "Content" industries fail we may finally have a chance to see some real creative innovation in both the kinds of shows we watch and the models in which we pay for them, but until then, I'll just sit back and enjoy watching them squirm about like the stuck pigs that they are.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
However he is right about the broadcastig. You 'we want everything free as beer' people need to realize that it is the advertisers that pay for the airwaves and to a large extent the internet bandwidth and the people that provide the content. You start circumventing everyway to avoid advertiseing and soon you all of the free content will be gone.
While I think it's a bit far fetched to say that not watching the ads is stealing, at least as far as network television goes, the ads are there for a reason. Because we get it for free. And as far as cable/satellite goes, you're paying for the service, not for the programming. The programming still needs to be paid for by ads. And while the quantity of advertising has gotten ridiculous, even abusive on some stations, there is definite pressure for more ads. The push for hdtv alone (something most stations can't really afford) will mean more ads if we actually want to see it as a reality. I personally don't care about hdtv, and I'm fine if people want to use pvrs, though I don't see the need for them, myself. If so much tv programming is crap, and it is, why bother spending money on something like that? Ads themselves are not inherently bad, but the increase in them I think is just a biproduct of other evils in the media.
or any number of crud free channels... whoops -- guess i'm stealing from them 'cos i opt to watch their competition.
Turner should prohibit me from getting up and taking a whiz during commericals too, cause i'm 'skipping' the ads.
I'm a tivo lovin' bandit! I confess...I thumb my nose at you, you english speaking pig-dogs!!! Your mother was a hamster and your father...well, you know the rest.
Tivo Community - Link to thread
There are already 4+ pages of pissed off people..
Evolution: love it or leave it
Face it, its their way of trying to make you feel morally wrong for doing what you have a right to do.
You paid for access to the information, once it gets to you its YOURS to do whatever you want with it, or at least thats how it should be. information is NOT an object, its more like air, they want to charge you for air and then say you are a thief if you use the air in the wrong way, (example you find a way to use the air to create more air)
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
2 dashes and a space, or just 2 dashes?
I channel surf during the adverts. Sue me.
Then we could sue for lack of quality programming. I'd love to see the CEO's expression when he finds out about a class-act lawsuit. Who cares if the whole lawsuit is frivolous?
Of couse... I'd want my share if any settlement occurs.....
This is exactly why this guy and everybody else working for television broadcast companies are going to be joining the unemployment line. Ahh, how I look forward to the future where I can download any program I wish via the Internet, right from the production company for a few lousy bucks. Yay for progress.
5 years from now, there will be no commercial breaks. They will just stick a huge banner on the screen all the time like CNN/Fox news do now but with adverts. I guarantee it.
Well, actually they will probably still have commercial breaks. Fat lazy Americans who spend all their time in front of the TV will complain because they need to have pee breaks.
This is quite different from us intellectual people who spend all their time surfing slashdot/k5/fark/etc and have the luxury of urinating whenever we want to.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Come on, this is the fuckwhit who brought us "The WB"
More to the point: Since when do people actually watch ads? Ads are designed to be forced down our throats.. and most people go out of their way not to watch them (channel surfing, pop up blockers). If they fail for whatever reason - tough shit.
Move faster
I'm sure they wouldn't mind producing this 'contract', then. What's that? I didn't sign a contract? Well, that's interesting. Perhaps they meant 'broken business model' and not 'contract'.
Additionally, maybe this fucktard Kellner can explain how I go about stealing something I've already paid for. I'd love to hear that one.
I swear to God, the year that we perfect a method to endlessly duplicate food will be the year in which half of the US population starves to death.
In the rare chance that Slashdot is still here when that happens, I'll post an 'I told you so' message. I'll be the one with a shotgun and a food duplicator, hiding in my basement, posting from the only Apple IIe that survived the circumvention crackdown of 2015. I'm saving this link. I expect a +5.
My directivo is connect to a pc running emulation software anyway. Also I have the extreme2.5 drive image and am testing the tivo sub as well.
If you think calling me a thief for skipping commericials is a big deal.... sheesh, I steal DirecTV and Tivo service man!
No such draconian measures are required. A simple mandatory commercial display device (CDD) will be required to be installed in the bathroom, behind (for the guys) and in front (for the ladies) the toilet.
A computer will detect when you fall asleep, and will air specially created 'sleepverts' that influence buying decisions why the consumer is asleep!
See, no draconian measures are required at all! Good behaviour will be rewarded with soma
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
laugh now.
but bill and ted will have their revenge:
- digital television, brought to you through your xbox2.
- advertising overlays on your shows every three minutes that you can only get rid of by pressing a special key combo on your xbox controller
what's scary is that you could almost see something like this happening. how fucked up is that?
... called GTA (Grand Theft Advertisement)! Crush the economy by moving around the town and not looking at the ads.
Advertising is not a protected form of speech. It is not a contractual obligation to listeners. It is a gamble. A marketing tactic that says x% of the population will respond for n$ revenue. There is no contractual obligation that you open the junk mail in your mailbox. There is no legal ramification for deleting spam messages from your e-mail box. What right, under law or ethics do the television broadcasters have to claim legal protection for their advertising.
The modern day PVR is the equivalent of filtering your telephone calls or arranging for junk mail blocking with your post office or email service. The broadcasters are gambling on x% of the viewers to respond just as a marketing person gambles on their 1.0% return on a direct mail campaign.
Why should television get an advantage over every other legitimate business or industry? The broadcaster's have chosen this model of free broadcast for advertising revenue because it works. When that model no longer works you don't go to the courts and force them to make people respond to your commercial/mailing/phone call. You change your business model. The Cable companies figured this out long ago and made a change.
Perhaps Turner Communications should try Direct Mail?
People advertise on TV because people watch the ads. If people find clever ways of removing ads and never watch them, the advertisers would soon realise. TV would see less/no ads, and we would no longer have "free" tv.
We signed no contracts, as was said. Let the advertisers advertise on TV. If they think it doesn't reach an audience, let them stop paying the tv stations. This issue will sort itself out if left to run it's own natural course.
The less attention you pay to an add the more effective it is. Advertisers want the ads to pass right to your subconscious with as little critical thought as possible. If you don't pay much attention to the ad (yelling at kids, nodding off, wanking, whatever) great.
If you flip channels or skip or whatever, then you cost 'em money.
Not that I'm defending their idiotic position, but I just thought I'd point that out.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Mr. Kellner can charge what he likes for providing it and impose any regulation he likes on using it.
If we are not happy with it, we shouldn't buy it. Simple. We can whine all we like, but if we keep giving him our money, he'll keep peddling crap.
I am a Karma Library.
I find this kind of naked, and cynical exploitation of corporate power completely and totally alarming.
I am in the process of building a PVR to protect my one year old son from the endless pumelling of sell, sell, sell adverts from TV.
And before you self-righteous few start criticising me for allowing my son to watch TV, I will point out that my son _sometimes_ enjoys watching TV and I am not about to play some kind of stupid authoritarian figure and ban him from things he enjoys because of my misgivings.
However,when adverts are now played so loud that I hear them in clear detail whilst taking a dump several rooms away, I think I am totally justified in being worried about what kind of effect this is having upon my young lad.
Where does it say, that the TV companies have the right to dictate to me what my children watch?
Indeed if our satellite provider were to provide a service where there were *NO* adverts on Kiddy channels (also on the Channels I watch), then I would gladly pay the premium for such channels
(Subscription channels do work. The best channel in the world is the BBC who provide 2 kids channels without adverts; 2 24 x 7 News channels, 1 arts/documentary channel, 3 general lifestyle channels, 6 high-quality broadcast/internet radio channels, and many, many specifically local radio channels, along with the world service).
I personally think such overpaid, insensitive CEO of multi-million companies should be taken out and shot for try to mess my kid's head up.
What fuckin' backwater does this guy come from?
Well, now that I've got your attention....
Let's think about it this way: let's say in five years, everyone owns a VCR that removes commercials. Thus, no one ever watches commercials, and all broadcast networks go out of business. You know what all the Slashdot posters will be doing? Posting here because they can't afford to pay for their shows!
People, look, you can whine all day about how you deserve to get everything for free. At the end of the day, someone has to pay for it, though. Yes, you can go to the bathroom, channel surf, use mute, whatever. The point is, with all those methods, the advertiser has a chance to get to you first. You can ignore it, but the advertiser can still catch your attenetion. With a Tivo, that doesn't happen anymore. You can skip commericals with no risk of missing anything.
Think of it like a timeshare deal, where you get the free weekend for listing to the sales pitch. You might very well go there with no intention of buying anything, and you may well leave without spending any money. The point is, you can't skip the sales pitch. Everyone gets to take their shot since you took the offer. Same with TV. The advertiser won't spend money if there's no change of people watching his commercials.
Over a two year period I considered how commercials on TV affected my buying. During that two years, I spent $6.81 because of having seen commercials.
Have you ever noticed that the things that are advertised on TV are usually things you should not buy, if you care about spending your money wisely?
We're all thieves in content providers' eyes. The best way to put that thought into motion is to strike at any technology, reguardless of it's non-infringing uses, and nail it to the cross and say "Look there's proof!"
How is this different than those VCRs with a built in commercial-skipping feature? My guess is that the VCR is an analog medium. Kinda makes sense when you think about it.
When you have content in perfect digital quality, it makes it hard to improve on perfect, and they know this. So what do the content owners do? That's right, slam any piece of technology that can: copy, reproduce, and store digital content of any kind.
In their eyes we're stealing from them because that's how TV Broadcasters make their money. They rent TV airtime space to advertisers and get a kickback which finances their operations. I can understand this. Suppose if everyone in the US for starters, all had PVR's and know how to use them? What then? How would they continue to exist? I definately can see that.
Their needs to be a balance here. Why not revert back to the business model of: "you pay x amount for ad free tv" AND STICK TO THE DAMN MODEL. If they did that for cable when it first came out, this would not be an issue.
Kinda funny to see how shit like that comes back back to bite them in the ass.
A penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
So blocking banners is a crime as well?!...hehe stupid f*cks.
girl
If you get a Satellite PVR, you're probably getting a TiVo, American DirectTV PVRs are TiVos, I would guess BSkyB's are too. TiVos do not have a 'commercial skip' feature (30x to skip add breaks in a few seconds). The networks specifically negotiated it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Well... I guess that's that cleared up.. For years I've been fast forwarding through adverts.. So..I'm a thief.. Tarred and Feathered...
:D
Since I'm guilty anyhow, I'm going to hop onto IRC now, and download all the latest movies with xdcc. Why the hell not.. I'm already guilty. Anyone want the latest DVD rips? I've got 160Gigs of disk space that I'm gonna fill up with movies now.. Why not... After all.. I'm a thief already.
I guess it's time to sell the TV, and spend the money on a faster internet connection and more disk space.
So lets see.
I didnt ask for ads to be pumped into my home.
But I'm a damn thief if I don't watch them.
If I pay for cable(or anything else), I have the right to use it how I want. I never agreed to watching the ads.
If I get something for free (like free-to-air TV), I didnt think I could steal it.
I wonder how broad this man's belief is.
Am I stealing the internet because I dont click banners?
Am I stealing email because I dont read spam?
Its scary that these kinds of people can have so much power.
If you pay for cable or satellite TV, then only a small proportion of the money goes to the company that produces the programmes. Most of it is sucked up by administrivia.
Here in the UK, the "TV Licence" that so many USians seem to just not understand pays for something like 6 advert-free TV stations (two of which are on analogue UHF, all six only being carried on digital TV) and a couple of dozen advert-free radio stations. Now, there's a side effect to this - in heavily commercial radio and TV the programmes are just a vehicle for the adverts. In other words, any programming is just there to fill the 10 minutes between ad breaks. Remove the need to be commercially competitive, and the quality of the programmes goes up - the incentive is to make something that people want to listen to.
£130 well spent, I think...
As a recent slashdot poster mentioned, in the USA you can get locked up for not watching the adverts they show in schools on Channel One. So it's obviously a matter of time before they extend that to the rest of the population.
(I've finally got around to start reading Naomi Klein's "No Logo"... does it show? ;-)
How about companies selling you multiple channels? Or, companies selling you more channels when you already have some? Are they not accessories to the crime?
This must be their new business plan to recover from their 54 billion dollar loss from last quarter. I guess classic business models don't work anymore; have to accuse millions of a crime that doesn't exist.
"It's not our fault we lost 54 billion! They didn't watch the commercials!!!"
I love ads. I choose them over the programmes. I don't *buy* anything, but lovge the jungles and pretty pictures.
I got a few of you covered. Consider it a gift.
http://www.SachaWheeler.com
People who leave the room containing the television to use the toilet while commercials are running are stealing ad revenue!
One thing that they seem to have lost track of reality on, is that nothing *guarantees* them the *right* to keep on making money the way they always used to.
They (the networks) choose to make a gamble in paying content providers (or paying to produce it themselves) and that they can recover their costs and make a profit in the process. You do not get the payoff without taking the risk. They have no more "right" to expect the models to work forever than I have the "right" to expect a guaranteed job forever from my employer.
If times change and they can no longer do this, then they had better find a another way to make money.. Here's one.. Find out what the consumers *actually want* and be the best to serve their needs rather than choosing something cheap and nasty and attempting to ram it down their throats and force them to like it.
Viewers are not the property of the networks. If times change and the old media models no longer work, then they had better start thinking of new ones. Actually listening to people instead of trying to "capture" them would be a good start.
This is stunning. We should encourage this sort of behavior. Luckily for us, Ol' Ted is carrying out thier argument to the logical and absurd extreme. By being as incendiary as he is, even the most lethargic of people will draw the right conclusions.
Like another post said: Is muting during the commerials "breaking the contract"? What contract? Wouldn't his logic also make fast-forwarding the commercial on a regular VCR "theft" also?
Keep saying it, Ted. You'll win this issue for us.
Software Wars
Are you talking about pages linked to from Autopr0n? Suicide girls? Autopr0n itself?
.jpg links, not to HTML pages in order for me to post 'em.)
I don't really know that much about the pages I link to. I use a special program that just shows the pics they link to (and they have to be direct
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Shouldn't butchering movies by altering them to contain commercials be a violation
of DMCA? It seems like Turner is taking movies and making derivative works of "art"
by inserting commercials into movies, thus changing the plot and structure of the film.
.. he does have a point, in that commercial TV is supported by.. surprise surprise, commercials!! Commercial advertisers pay money to networks with the expectation that people will see the commercials. If that doesn't happen then the advertisers don't get a return on their money. The advertisers aren't paying for a commercial to simply run, they're paying for a commercial to be run and for people to see it. That's why networks charge more for a timeslot during the Superbowl or during popular programs. Sure, they know not everyone watching a program will see the commercial, but they can be sure a good percentage will. For a device to come around that makes this truly common.. now that's when it becomes dangerous enough to be attacked. The RIAA never cared enough about a few people swapping .wav files or .mp3's over irc... but Napster, Napster became a threat. Advertisers put up with VCRs, because even with those you're still getting a fair amount of the commercial. But a device where you don't even know what commercial aired? The commercial that is paying for the program? It should be no surprise advertisers aren't thrilled about that. And if these devices become popular? Should be no surprise again that they go on the attack. Network TV isn't commercial free, it's not supposed to be. Comments about whether or not this would be a good thing aside, the networks and channels like Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi, Food channel, History Channel.. none of these would survive without people actually watching the commercials that run. Or does everyone look forward to every channel running PBS-like pledge drives?
This is the same argument that comes up when people complain about banner ads in websites. Commercial TV needs either advertising, or else they have to become a pay channel like HBO. Slashdot needs to run advertisements to survive or just become a pay site. So does Salon.
All of them are supported by advertising, advertising which requires viewers for it to work. Saying that PVR users are thieves is... a little extreme, and somewhat silly, but to strip commercials completely out of programs is being a little dishonest.
Ignoring the fact that I pay a subscription and still get ads (SKY), does Turner's view mean that a video tape of a programme that contains the ad spots can still be legally distributed? Or did I misunderstand? Perhaps I just have to send a letter to the advertiser to remind him pay the content producer.
Geeze, the RIAA doesnt like CDR's, but is ok with Audio Cassettes.
Now the Cable companies dont like PVRs, but are ok with VCR's?
WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF DIGITAL ELECTRONICS BOYS!
.get over it.
Let's face it, we're becoming over-saturated with marketing, and I think it's losing its effectiveness.
The companies that are placing ads on TV (which seem to take up 50% or more of any show's air time these days) are probably seeing a shitty return on their investment.
As a result, the ad companies are probably complaining that there aren't the same levels of profits, etc., and are complaining to the network execs. Those execs are probably in denial and are looking for a reason that would explain the drop in marketing response, and have become somewhat fixated on PVRs as their scapegoat. After all, it CAN'T be due to the quality of the programming or advertising, could it?
It amazes me that they put such incrediblely shitty programming on TV and yet expect the same returns as with quality programming. Look at adcritic and ifilms to see how quality stuff is entertaining and effective.
Oh, yeah, and I forgot to mention that my PVR is the ONLY reason why I don't ever watch the commercials on TNN... yeah, that's it... it's got nothing to do with the fact thay they have shitty programming and I don't watch ANYTHING on TNN, never mind the commercials.
$0.02 (CDN)
What's next, publishers demanding that table of contents information be removed from books, due to inherent use for skipping sections of already read material? And what about TVGuide, it allows you to eliminate whole shows you'd rather not see.
Come on Turner. This sort of add revenue is used to offset production and distribution costs. Assuming that a person watches these commercials once, Turner should be happy. After all additional views aren't being broadcast, and thus costs Turner nothing. Time shifting is legal, and Turner, I would think, would want people to view Turner shows often. This would raise interest in Turner programming. The more interest in Turner programming the more they'll be able to charge for adds anyway.
Also given that the interest level of the average commercial is rather low (ie, people would rather do something else than watch a commercial, and often do). I would think Turner would look into ways of making commercials more interesting. Failing that, it's actually quite ironic that in order to tape a show "without commercials" one actually has to intently watch a show with commercials in order to cut them out. So Turner actually get's more bang for their commercial buck from people who use a VCR to tape a show "without commercials".
And last thought. Why does Turner even care? After all they charge for commercial time based on viewership numbers estimated by third party polls. These polls don't take into account estimated numbers of people who recorded the show for later viewing. View the show later and skip all the commercials you want, Turner still got it's money and gains viewer loyalty in the process. Sounds like nothing but a win for them to me.
Have you ever noticed that the things that are advertised on TV are usually things you should not buy
It might vary from area to area; here in the UK, TV ads are a fair mix of useless tat and useful products.
One such advert for a useful product prompted me to consider buying the product, but buying something as a result of seeing it advertised on TV left a bad taste in my mouth, so I bought a similar product from a competing company instead.
-Stephen
Taking a piss during the commercials, or going to the kitchen to make a sandwich, is theft, too, with the logic Ted Turner is suggesting. What the PVR is probably doing is formally defining it and as a result, advertisers demand discounts on the basis of percentages assumed from sales of PVRs. More likely he's pissed off that business models are changing and he's past his prime in coming up with new business ideas to make money in the new ways.
And about this contract. I never made such an agreement in writing, nor have I ever seen even so much as an announcement of such at the beginning of the shows, such as "By continuing to watch, you hereby agree to view the commercials in the following programming, and not go to the bathroom or kitching, or fast forward". Is it really any different if I don't watch the commercials during the time of broadcast, or when the program is played back later when I get home?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This has got to be the stupidest thing yet (right up there with Al Gore inventing the internet and Microsoft being the only one who should innovate). So he means to say if I edit all the commercials out of program that I'm recording constitutes theft? Get a life Jamie! If I want to edit all the crap out or a program I'm recording there is nothing that can be done about it.
What's next, you gonna make it illeagle for me to throw away all the junk mail I get in my mail box just to get my bills? Sheesh!!
rm -r windows
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Ted Turner has a good point, adverts as an advertising medium haev passed their sell-by date. What a shame his company will go out of business because he'd rather bitch about it than get a new revenue model.
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
Just wait until the TV stations realize youre NOT a part of their Target Audience.
YOURE GOING TO JAIL PAL!
Shit, 99.999999999% of the commercials I see are NOT targeted to ME.
I DONT have HERPES.
I DONT have PMS.
I ALREADY HAVE A DELL.
If I DID GET HERPES I KNOW TO USE VALTREX.
I DONT smoke. I know the TRUTH.
I DONT drink, so WHASSSSSUP?
I DIDNT know who Shaq was until I asked someone "whos the big ole black guy in those Burger King Commercials anyways?"
Doh!
If this argument applies to broadcasted content - that not watching the adverts constitutes theft - then the same argument must by extension apply to other mediums. Thus buying a newspaper and not reading all of the adverts contained therein also constitutes theft. I hope you have large prisons in America.
==========
Error in module creativity.dll : Unable to create witty comment.
Abort / Retry / Ignore ?
Actually, what Ted doesn't realize is that I use my Tivo so I don't miss any commercials. When I leave the room to get a snack that I saw advertised in the previouse commercial break, I can pause the signal so I don't miss any valuable and high quality advertisements for useful goods and services! Its the people WITHOUT PVRs that are really costing them money.
So, basically I think the networks should make it mandatory that everyone have a Tivo and buy them for everyone. Of course, those of us that already have them would get a credit for a big hard drive.
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
I think he his damaging the good name of all PVR users.
Can't that be the grounds for a class action for defamation?
Cheers...
P.S.- There is a little diference between something that one doesn't like and something illegal. And anyway, isn't thieving a public crime? If so, it is also improper for calling thief someone that has making a breach of contract (as that isn't a public crime, but instead a civil case).
I sometimes fast forward over the boring bits of a show. (Say some silly romantic in Star Trek) Does this means I can no more?
J.
Glad i get to watch BBC1 & 2, no adverts in the programmes at all, just the odd one between, and thats for upcoming programmes.
Still cant believe the amount of adverts on US telly as it is. Is is possible to watch more than 5 minutes of a programme without ads?
It's been years since I watched an ad and acted positively on it's content (ie bought something)
I often promise myself to avoid products whose ads treat me as an idiot.
As ads have become less effective and less relevant to viewers the broadcasters have responded by making adverts more intrusive, more common and generally making watching TV a difficult experience. Surprise! People watch less TV.
When the MPAA says anyone attempting to break the encryption on DVDs is a pirate, it can be difficult to explain to the laymen how innacurate such a statement is. One could go into depth about fair use rights, the definition of "pirate", as well as region coding... and on and on. However, noone is going to need any kind of geek to layman translation of this bull.
All of a sudden I'm entering into a contract when I hit the power button on my appliance which converts electromagnetic waves into pictures and sound!? Um, I don't think so. Nope, no matter how much the dictatorial corporations try to push this concept on the public, ain't noone gonna buy it.
Here (in France) before a movie begins in a theatre, there are commercials for various products (in general these ones are better than those broadcasted on TV) and some teasers for other movies. Should the people who come late (and so miss the ads) pay more to see the movie ??? :-)
The other day I was considering situations such as these where it is illegal to do something. Such as, copy a music cd, copy a dvd, play my dvd's to an audience [my house mates, my gf and her friends] to name but a few. Now we can't watch TV without breaking the law? If I switch channels at an ad break [I know I always do, and so my house mates] am I breaking the law? Because I am obviously watching content - but not "paying" for it by watching the adverts on that channel. If this is illegal - how many times has Mr "high-and-friggen-mighty" Jamie Kellner done the same?
It drives me fscking bat sh1t that we [the consumer] are being dictated to as to what we can and can't do by people want to shovel adverts down our throats. If I dont want to buy something, PUSHING an advert down my throat isn't going to suddenly make want to go out and buy it. Even more when it gets IN THE WAY of my program. What ever happened to delivering a QUALITY product. I can understand the need to advertise but when it gets to the stage where the need to advertise overtakes the product something is seriously wrong.
I am a capitalist by heart - always have been - but I feel that there is something inherently wrong with this situation and where it is leading us [as a group of consumers]. I dont want something for nothing, I dont expect companies to give things away for free.
I am willing to pay - I understand that things cost money. What I want is something that resembles reasonble, and a certain amount of freedom, but from the looks of things, thats not going to happen any time soon, so I think I will drop my trousers and just prepare for the shafting.
chris at darkrock dot co dot uk
http colon slash slash www dot darkrock dot co dot uk
If getting people to watch commercials is so
important to advertisers, why don't they find
ways of embedding commercials into the program
itself? That way, you don't have a choice
*but* to watch the commercial. The program
becomes the ad, and the ad the program.
Whoops. Wait. That's already happened.
Anyone remember the Friends episode that was
sponsored by Pottery Barn, where all the furniture
in the show was Pottery Barn furniture, and the
plot of the show revolved around something that
was Pottery Barn related? Product placement is
becoming more prevalent all the time, with
characters now uttering direct endorsements of
products. Example, the Friends episode
where Joey says something to the effect of "Hey! This guy will make a great father because *he*
brought Twizzlers! [to the hospital]"
The point isn't that I watch far too much Friends (which is true), but rather that advertising will expand to fill the space available, displacing other content when necessary. I fear it will only be a matter of time until the majority of programs are essentially nothing more than ads in disguise.
Think about it - the best ads on TV are the ones that grab your attention and hold it by not looking like ads, but like mini-programs.
The Replay TV 4000 series of PVRs does this too. There have been stories about it on Slashdot before, they shouldn't be hard to locate.
I was under the impression, though this could be incorrect, that they aren't looking a special signal exactly, but rather just a silent, all black, frame at the start and end of the commercial breaks. If there really was a special signal, the networks would just stop broadcasting it and these things would all break. I have a friend who has one of those VCRs (not sure if it's a Hitachi or not) and says it works quite well, so obviously it hasn't been broken by the networks yet. Although even with the black frame thing, it still seems like they could break it pretty easily. There really isn't any reason I can think of that they have to broadcast anything that would give commercials away this way, I'm thinking they do for mostly historical reasons, like the hardware all their local affiliates and cable companies use isn't capable of completely removing the black frame or the special signal or whatever it is before sending it out over the air. Maybe it's even just an aesthetic thing, but either way it will probably change eventually if this kind of recorder becomes popular.
Soon they'll say that if you don't watch enough of the programming you're paying for they'll force you to pay more; to cover their extra costs.
Yup... it is confirmed... it is a thieft... but they will promote it by themselfs when they start to sell the equipment that allow users to do it (they are evaluating it right now!)...
Isn't this a wanderfull world?
If you watch US television for long, you will start to understand the obesity levels. Stuck between 10 minutes of inane rubbish featuring potentially beautiful but dangerously starved people, you are subjected to 5 minutes of carefully crafted manipulation inviting you to go further into debt, then pig out on sugered drinks and ultra high fat junk.
Simply by increasing obesity, TNT's advertising is responsible for more deaths than heroin. See this. One could argue that it should be banned entirely, like heroin. Personally I think dangerous and destructive things (like adverts or heroin) should be regulated rather than banned outright.
One valid argument against legalised heroin is that sometimes people's choices harm others. For instance, if I end up having to foot the medical bills of heroin users, then it *is* my business what other people do in the privacy of their own homes. So, along with legal drugs I would also support education to warn people of dangers.
It would seem a bit off to me if far more effort went into trying to persuade people to take heroin than was being spent telling them it might not be such a good idea. I don't believe in stopping people from doing stupid things, but I do have a problem with relentless propoganda telling them that stupid things are a good idea.
The existence of adverts on TNT effects me adversely even if I don't watch it. For instance, the advertising for PizzaHut leads to increased obesity, the additional burden on medicaid and welfare which increases my taxes. I would be willing to pay money to educate people about dangers of eating high-sugar high-fat diets because education is cheaper than cure. By the same token, I would be prepared to pay extra not just to avoid adverts myself, but to avoid your exposure to adverts.
In general advertising leads to increased consumerism: more roads, driving, shops, stress and pollution. In fact, it leads to what is hilariously called "progress". The direction it leads people in has only got the faintest association with this idea of "choice". The only "choices" proposed in adverts are ones which will make the advertiser richer.
The desires of humanity are being manipulated and shaped by those with a short term money making agenda. If you want a purely capitalist solution, you need to somehow calculate the true costs of advertising. So, by all means: persuade people to buy that new BMW or pizza, that is perfectly fair - just make sure that the full cost of the extra death, pollution, congestion, noise, road accidents, etc is paid by the advertiser.
In summary, PVR's should be subsidised by extra taxes on advertisers, and TNT can go fuck themselves.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
So they are just going to set the stage. They will use a process similar to what political parties do. Repeat something often enough and the general public will believe it.
It is no secret AOL/Time Warner is in a mess. Hence they are bound to do anything which will possibly allow them to setup a future lawsuit.
Think about it. Who has PVRs on the market? Hmmm
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The mice trying to get cheese without having their heads snapped off are thieves too! How are the mousetrap makers supposed to make a profit if the mice won't follow the contract they clearly agreed to by sniffing the cheese? I think we need a "Darn Mousetrap Circumvention Act" making it illegal for mice to figure out or discuss how mousetraps work or, worse yet, making their own cheese. Otherwise, all the mousetrap makers will go out of business and the world will be overrun by mice, causing the earth to implode from the sheer weight of mice upon it.
I read ./ in
light mode. Does that make me a thief?
So...am I stealing if I just get up, walk out of the room and make a cup of coffee? What if the phone rings and I choose to answer it during the ad breaks?
Utter nonsense.
Cheers,
Ian
How about shutting your eyes during the commercials.. Grand thievery! If I'd known it was this easy I would have taken up a life of crime a long time ago.. ..oh hang on, I did.
When you make commercials that are at the very least entertaining, I'll consider watching them.
That means I if I see one more 'less-than fresh' commercial, or any friggin adds in the corner of the screen while I'm trying to watch a show, I'll go right back to resentfully skipping the commercials.
That's right, as a matter of fact it's because the commercials disqust me so much that I feel obliged to skip them. I refuse to watch a 'fear factor' commercial where someone bites a bug and it squirts out at the screen.
All I've got left to say is this: It's their own faults. Commercials used to be a part of our culture. People would ask 'did you see that commercial yesterday'? Now there are many more than ever before, they are far more annyoing, disgusting, and we're subjected to them constantly. Something had to give, and now they're merely having to sleep in the bed they made.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
In the UK we have 2 TV channels that carry no adverts. BBC1 & BBC2. These used to be good channels with quallity programming, but in an attempt to win raittings they have sacrificed quallity for that mince that plebs like.
The model works thus - you own a TV in the UK you pay a licence fee (http://www.tv-l.co.uk/) of £112 (approx $165) wether you watch these subsidised channels or not.
Currntly I watch about 1 hour of TV a month, if that. Which means I pay roughly £10 per hour to watch TV, and I still have to watch the Ads?
No thanks. If ad companies are making enteraining/informative ads then I would quiet happily watch them, I dare say it might even inhance my viewing pleasure.
If you believe what most of these ads say, the product is good enough to sell itself, so why are they wasting money on advertising?
- IWD
Always remember that any time you buy something which is advertised on TV you are paying part of that cost even if you didn't see the ad. So is Jamie going to suggest that in those cases we should get a discount? Is he buggery!
Little Jamie is head of a company that is still using a 1950's business model to try to compete in the 2000's and he's worried. Adapt or die, baby.
In other news: candlemakers protest at light bulb usage in ordinary homes. "These people are just light-thieves!"
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
And here all this time I thought I was paying for what I receive by sending Dish Network $121 (I get pretty much every non-ppv American oriented channel they offer) each month for my subscription.
Personally, I view commercials as conveniently spaced 30 second pee and "grab some food" breaks. I'll start intently watching the commercials when Jamie Kellner starts paying my aforementioned Dish Network bill.
Although I gotta admit, I do like the Mountain Dew commercial where the dude has the fight with the long horn sheep...
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
... that if I send this guy a letter telling him what a bent unit he is, and he chucks it out without reading it, that he's stolen my letter? Can I sue him?
Anyway... I'm off to steal some music. No need for MP3s, I'll just skip a few songs on my CDs and boom, it will be like I never paid for them.
What a complete fscking tosser.
True, commercial TV survives because of the ads. But there is no obligation whatsoever that any person should watch the ads. If someone, commercial TV in this case, chooses to use a business model that doesn't work, it's their own fault and somebody elses. It's simple as that.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
The statement is from the CEO of Turner, the cable provider... er CABLE.
And if you think they're paying costs by charging $50 a month... All that cable laying isn't cheap.
They may pay for the broadcasters payment to the government for use of the airwaves, but they do not pay for the airwaves. The airwaves are not something that needs to be maintained.
802.11 style communications for everybody!
How long until we see overlaid adverts during shows? Captive audiences. There must be one of those screen corners left to show a rotating Coke can during the kiddies' cartoons, or enough space along the top to scroll some translucent pictures of MacD's latest offering...
Or maybe it's already here. I dunno, I don't watch a a great deal. And most of that's BBC.
What about DirecTV and Dish network viewers? All those satellites aren't cheap? ;-)
The reason that PVRs are perceived to be different from VCRs is because VCRs are more established and more socially acceptable. VCRs have been around for at least 20 years, most people know what they are and that they're "okay" to use (even if they still don't quite know how to use them :-)). PVRs, on the hand, are a relatively new invention. Most people aren't aware of what they are and the fact that they are an electronic device lends them an even greater aura of mystery to the average person. I personally find it disgusting that the "content industry", as it's known, is using this ignorance to deliberately misinform the populace about these devices, in order to "indoctrinate" them to their point of view (eg. "file sharing is stealing", deleting commericals from recordings is stealing", "watching ads is part of your contract with us").
Ads are a way for studios to generate revenue to create content (though the cheapness of RealityTV(TM) means that most of this money just goes to the pockets of execs), but they are not part and parcel of the viewing experience. Sorry, Mr Turner, but there is no "contract" and it is part of my fair use rights (not that I expect you to give a flying fuck about that, given the previous behaviour of your colleagues in the industry) to delete commercials from recordings that I make for my personal use. And if I don't watch ads, it's my right. It's bad enough that you try to equate file-sharing to stealing...
----------
When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer our friend.
I suspect that the theory that enough people actually buy the specific product to make the ads pay for themselves is not right (at least in most cases). For example, why am I seeing ads for "International Paper" or IBM or SUN? Will my grandmother buy SUN servers because she saw the ad on TV? Come on!
I think that, just like Web banner ads, TV ads are not particularly effective, but unlike Web ads, it's impossible to measure effectiveness of TV.
This carpet bombing of people with advertisements makes everyone immune to the message after a while and as a result the ads do not have the desired effect.
A new model for marketing is needed and making people watch TV commercials is not it. Unfortunately I don't know what the new model should be...
...richie - It is a good day to code.
I am so freakin' sick and tired of people climbing into my face telling me that if I don't listen and watch attentively to the disgusting drivel they are intent on shoveling into my sensory organs, I have somehow broken the law, committed a sin against man and god, and should be publically disemboweled for undermining the very beating heart of their capitalism!
When some rude waste of human DNA calls me to switch my telephone service, and paves over me with their sales pitch, even after I immediately and with extreme prejudice yell "NO" not once, but a dozen times before slamming the phone on them (and as the phone goes down I still hear them blithering away like there wasn't really a human being at this end of the phone...)
When some hair brained reject from the third level of legal hell, decides that a product should include a license that not only signs away my rights as a consumer, but as a human being, a life form, and finally as a sentient entity that deserves at least as much respect as the machine I'm going to run the program on...
When I see, and read, and hear about greedy, power hungry men with minds and souls smaller than a gnat's navel or a landlord's heart, highjacking our government, getting laws passed to allow them to slice and dice all human art, and history, and ultimately speech and thought into byte size bits, so that they can charge you for the priviledge of experiencing said bits, each and every time you experience said bits...
When I see men who can't seem to distinguish nations, from environments, from cultures, from human dignity, because they seem so bloody adept at raping them all interchageably and simultaneously.
When I find myself disgusted by the quality of the whores that run my country... (where have all the whores with hearts of gold gone?) I would be appalled that such scumbags could be elected, but then of course, that isn't really the case now is it now...
When I see the hogs and the pigs siddling up at the trough, chomping away at the future, because they're only interested in the quarterly return, and how much blood they can suck out of John Q., and when John, smiles his vapid stupid smile, and his ignorant, drug hazed eyes tell you that he's just not present enough anymore to notice that he and his progeny have suddenly showed up as an endangered species...
when I see these things, I simply want to vomit. I am so sick and tired of being used and abused by men with no conscience, no purpose save the fiscal, and no vision except for the bottomless desire to play hit and run with all life on the planet. You just can't club these folks long or hard enough!!! Honest, I'm open to suggestions... how the hell are we going to get these turkeys to cease and desist? What's it going to take???
Genda
- Sick and tired of being sick and tired!!!
You got it! If you pee, you're a thief. I wonder how Coke will feel about aiding thiefs by having their customers get up during commericals and get a coke? Wait a minute, they are the advertisers. I'm confused. Should I buy their products to enjoy with my television or shouldn't I? Should I watch only the commercials and not the show? Dam, what contract did I sign? Liberals.
It's interesting to note how much of what he says can inflame people. The facts are that
1.) No person ever signed a contract that says they have to watch commercials. (Legally, none of us ever signed or had a verbal "agreement" to watch commercials.)
2.) The amount of money spent on programs by commercials is irrelevant to the public. If john q. Business man pores money into advertisements and theirs no return then he is taking a risk and is suffering the consequences of the "risk". Equally, if he spends money in the stock market, he is again "taking a risk."
3.) From a functional point of view there is NO difference between a vcr and a pvr. If a vcr is permitted then a pvr should equally be permitted.
4.) On top of that Turner reserves the right to NOT accept business from companies such as DirectTV which provide and support PVR units such as the integrated DirectTV and TIVO unit. Yet instead, you go to Best Buy and there in Big Ads are all the Turner channels on DirectTV. Why?
Because they want the money.
5.) Ultimately, its an issue of money. They just expect to get more revenue from TV ads then they do now.
So here's the BIG THOUGHT OF THE DAY. I wonder if he is making such a critical CLAIM just so that they GET more PUBLICITY and encourage people to buy TIVO's? After all PVR sales are really not doing that great and maybe this is a way to PROMOTE them. (ie-...by saying they're bad..people will want to buy more of them.)
I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom. But if you formalize it and you create a device that skips certain second increments
I thought going to the bathroom had all to do with excrements!
In much of Europe, commercials never appear in the middle of movies or programs (in fact it is illegal to butcher up movies by inserting commercials). Commercials only appear between programs.
On the other hand there is a tax to be paid for watching television.
This shouldn't be a surprise coming from a network built by a man who made his money in billboards.
"Well there is a certain amount of tolerance for people going to the bathroom..." [etc..]
So what, are they planning on dictating not only what crap goes on TV but when we choose to watch it?
I mean, no, thank you mr. TNT guy for letting me use the bathroom in my house during a commercial.
Another thing I don't get. If you pay for cable, why must you see advertisements? I don't get it. What is the point of paying for the damn cable then on a "CONTENT" basis?
I mean sure paying for the installation [e.g. routing a coax to your house] and keeping the electricity flowing would cost ya monthly but when I want to get the extra non-basic-cable channels I pay *extra*. Not only that but there are still tons of adverts on those channels too!
I think its about time people realize that TV is not all that its cracked up to be. You pay for the cable, they put shit on 99% of the time [friends, nuff said] then to top it off they now want you to feel guilty for not watching the same pepto bismal commercial for the 18th time in a row [because showing the same commercial during the same show is smart, people may be stupid and not get it that a poor diet is cured by some pink liquid...]
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Since I always switch around and never watch the commercials and I have spent half my life watching TV, that makes me some sort of kleptomaniac!!
Maybe Turner and the rest of the TV distributors will get mad at their customers and decide to withhold their precious "content" from us. I can't imagine anything nicer than turning on the TV, seeing nothing but 600 channels of no signal, and going outside to work in the garden.
Does that mean that if I change the channel during a commercial, or even get up to go to the bathroom, then I am breaching some mythical 'contract'???
I'd laugh at this, if so many of the uninformed didn't believe this crap.
If only tv ads were really informative about a product I might actually consider using their product - as it is they're 90% useless, often offensive fluff just trying to jerk your emotions. If I could NOT block all the ads for hyperactive bladder (gotta go! gotta go!), all the quack medicine and sexual dysfunction miracle cures, I wouldn't watch TV or listen to radio at all!
In fact, most of the time an ad comes on and I try to imagine the demographic clientel it's targetted for, I realize I just don't belong here!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Seriously tho, many VCRs skip commercials, granted they arn't as useful or as easy as PVRs, but under his thought, arn't they still illegal? Why doesn't he go after them also!?
The networks might not feel the same if they were in control of the information cos like TIVO are collecting about their viewers habits. Maybe the PVR cos are the thieves, not the viewers.
With a PVR tied to your credit card the demographics they build on you is astounding. It's just a warm up to the next round of marketing tailored specifiaclly to you.
The networks may actually be more afraid of the "Internet effect" where advertisers can learn just how important an ad spot is or isn't since they know about every show not just from random sampling. In that case broadcast ad revenue may crash the way internet banner ad revenue crashed.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
Idiot corporate fools! just because they are evil and want to make us buy things we don't want nor need, it doesn't mean we have to take all this crap from them. Let them go and watch their own adds! Leave us alone. PEACE
Hell NO! the thing to know is ,There isn't a contract !
I know more people now that will not watch TV then ever before. I mainly watch HBO and guess what if it is in between shows I don't watch it either.They day I have to agree to a EULA to watch tv shows is the day I stop watching!
Dr. Suess: 'Gandalf, Gandalf! Take the ring! I am too small to carry this thing!' 'I can not, will not hold the One.
I have just submitted a patent application for the following invention:
Make commercials shorter or longer than 30 seconds.
Then when those PVR thieves skip forward 30 seconds, they'll end up still in the middle of a commercial, or they'll have missed the exciting first few seconds of the actual show! The 30 second skip will be forced into extinction!
Once my patent is granted, I promise to license it to broadcasters on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis.
Every time this comes up I ask the same question.
How is this different than a VCR?
My 1990 vintage VCR allows me to fast-forward through stuff I didn't want to see, my 1998 VCR does as well. I do not see a difference in functionality between what my VCR does and what my Tivo does. They both allow me to fast-forward through things and "jump back" to compensate for reaction time.
I does seem from the article that his main bitch is with the ReplayTV-like "skip 15 seconds" function. But haven't VCRs had that too? Perhaps they see a logical evolution of the devices (to be able to automatically delete commercials? I thought some VCRs did that too!) and they want to stop it before it becomes well established.
I'm not even going to get into his "contract" comment. I certainly didn't sign anything that said I had to watch Turner or any specific part of its content!
Milalwi
<sarcasm>
Well, it had to come.
*smirks* Why, just the other week, my neighbor stopped in during a game and noticed that my great new remote let me quickly change channels during TV commercials.
He of course pointed out that it was theft to do so, and that "when the revolution comes" I'd be hung for it.
Strange, I'd never noticed it before, but come to think of it, he does have an AOL email address at work.
*sighs* To think of it, all this time, when men get the "itchy remote finger" during commercials (don't worry, I know we all do), we're being bad little thieves. Now this, this I like.
</sarcasm>
Am i robbing every other station if i watch PBS?
The cliche for PBS is that you're a thief if you watch and don't contribute. Nice twist.
But what about people who actively boycott sponsors because of show content? Another free-wheeling use of the term 'terrorist'?
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Interesting idea that I once heard:
The idea goes like this. TV executives are not selling TV to consumers they are selling consumers to advertisers.
The people who pay them money are the advertisers not the people who watch TV. And what are advertisers buying - people who watch TV.
Really scary
I know the site is not /.ed but does anyone have a mirror, or an alternate source, for this article? My company's internet filter is blocking me.
The case in question here is Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.
Justice Stevens wrote the opinion which looks at whether the rights of the copyright holder of the show that was taped was harmed, NOT THE NETWORK THAT BROADCAST IT.
The case relies on the codified version of the "Fair Use Doctrine" -- Any individual may reproduce a copyrighted work for a "fair use," copyright owner does not possess exclusive right to such a use. 17 U.S.C.A. 106. As it was noted, you are making a copy of a show for your own personal veiwing after it has been broadcast. this is a fair use.
Notably, the Supreme Court further held that just because a machine could infringe on copyrights didn't make it's sale illegal if it had other uses, however small. "Accordingly, the sale of copying equipment, like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes. Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses."
No One is taking your TiVo just yet.
hehehe
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
I have taken the liberty of modifying it for you, simply cut and paste:
yes i run a ugly skank/pound puppy/wouldn't fuck her with your dick porn site.
Hope this helps!
p.s. Goths are fucking morons.
In summation, an idiot...
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
"Kellner, a launcher of broadcast networks, sits atop the empire built by Ted Turner, who acquired programming libraries and turned them into cable leaders."
new dists list for debian:
cable,potato,sid,stable,testing,unstable,woody
nalfy.
-- Despair is an operating system that ANY human being can run, sort of a psychological JAVA --
The Surgeon General has issued a warning on cable television. Watching television nonstop without ever leaving the room during commercials will lead to severe kidney, urinary, and intestinal problems. Just say no to cable, for the sake of your kidneys.
Now that It labels everyone a thief, then what will happen next? Massive boycott of ad watching, even if it is interesting.
Lately, there's a trend in big media corps to accuse everyone of thievery. Moreover, there's a new definition for thievery, and it is "if you don't buy All of the Shits we produced, then you're a thief." It's sad how money changes people, but this is good for the future. This is the beginning of the consumer revolution. Some idiot execs just won't get it.
I can't speak for Replay's Magic Button, but when I fast-forward on my Tivo I can still see the spots. And, I'm getting the commercials subliminally! (cue Suicidal Tendancies song) :)
I can watch a commercial break at ">>" speed and still tell you what ads are on in it. ">>>" is too fast to be able to stop reliably...
If these people would work with the technology and not agaist it they would lead more relaxing lives.
Tivo (Not sure about any others, don't have 'em) can track what you watch and each button press. Remember the Super Bowl? Tivo was quick to disclose the most rewound commercials. Isn't that a useful technology? Want a better idea about what shows we like? Thumb up or down. This is extremely usefull and accurate information. Much better than Neilson (sp?).
I'm not sure if the other Tivo users remember this but a many months ago I got a message in Tivo about a new contest. Watch these 3 car commercials either in Tivo Showcase or during these shows. Then go to the web site answer a few simple questions about the commercial and maybe win the car. Did I do it? Yes. To support Tivo. . . and maybe win a car.
There are numerous other ways Tivo can be an advertisers best friend and keep the viewer happy. I think they are trying a lot of cool things in the second generation Tivo.
So fellow Tivo geeks. Turn on your tracking. It's a small price to pay. And maybe the Networks and others will stop whining.
-- No Comment
This is at least as relevant today as when Heinlein wrote it about 30 years ago.
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit. That is all."
- Robert A. Heinlein ("Life-Line")
> Give me a break. Next they'll ban remote controls that let you turn the sound off during ads.
Next they'll call it theft if you switch it off.
Comming soon! Chairs with broadcaster controlled harnesses to strap you in during those commercial breaks! We can't have those thieving viewers trying to get a snack or go to the bathroom during a commercial now can we?
... maybe his shareholders should be too?
I certainly wouldn't have a problem with a fundamental change in the economic model of television. If advertising didn't pay for TV, but rather the individuals payed for it, then the producers would have to pay much more attention to what their public wants. Crap low-demand filler shows would be the only shows which would continue to be supported by advertising, because nobody would consider them *worth* taping much less worth paying for. Public television and educational programming would get a boost because parents would pay for it for their kids, even if they wouldn't have paid for it for themselves. People offended by pornography wouldn't have to worry about porn into the house over the television, because nothing would be coming into the house which they didn't explicitly request by paying for it. Everybody would be getting what they wanted if the networks were forced to stop using the shotgun approach. Or maybe people would just stop watching as much TV -- also not a bad thing.
I'm technically comitting a crime?
I guess after I sign that contract to watch network TV, I'll also have to sign another contract stipulating that if I have a conversation about the show the next morning at work, I'll also have to mention the commercials.
What a crock of shit.
Fuck em. Who cares really? Mass media sucks. Record labels suck. These people think we are all thieving stealing scumbags who are born only to consume wares at their mass feeding trough. Fuck them. Really. Stop supporting these people.
It might be a contract. For my part I got sick and tired of watching all the commercials and predominantly crass programming. I got my cable disconnected in Jan 2000 and I have been very happy since. I believe that I was actually pissed off that I was paying $35 a month and they were feeding me 3min of commercials every 15min. I think the networks need to find a better business model.
I can't read the article. My company has it blocked with websense. I guess I'll look at the comments here to see if a KW has posted the text yet...
Constitutionally Correct
Amen to that. There is no reason why a commercial can't be entertaining. I visited the US couple of years back and I was absolutely stunned about the commercials. 99% REALLY BAD QUALITY, plus there is a commercialbreak every five minutes. Show less ads and make them better quality and maybe people will stop hating them so much.
Jamie K. is lucky. Television is so easy. Push a button and shut off your brain.
I wonder how many newspapers would dare make the same comment?
A newspaper must first be opened. Then it must be opened to the correct page to continue reading front page stories.
Nobody would buy a paper that tried to pull that crap.
But there is good news!
AOL/TW stocks have dropped because the rules say that you can't claim the same value of your stock for a very long time. Now it does discourage long term planning for some. Boohoo. It curbs long term market strangling. Me happy.
In other words, the short term becomes more important, kinda like it is for us poor 9-5 schmucks though still nowhere near to that scale. Oh well.
Somebody figured out how to punish companies that try to squeeze the market with long term bets. Hallelujah!
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
"Averts aren't for Slashdot users". The people who make use of technology to skip adverts are the people who wouldn't take any notice of them anyway. If you don't care whether something is a well known brand then TV adverts can't affect you. Adverts obviously work on some people but if you see an advert and think "how can I get rid of this annoying crap" then it hasn't worked on you and no amount of "contracts" and "rights management" will get you to buy the product.
We're seeing an increase of law abiding citizens being treated like criminals in so many parts of our society. Every day we are being combarded with copy protection technology, security screenings, identifications, background and credit checks, etc. I really wonder if someday someone is going to do a study and find that the psychological effects of going through most of life not being trusted is causing all sorts of issues, like incrased stress, depression, family problems, etc... At the very least, one has to wonder if being treated like a criminal would start to make someone act like a criminial.
_______
2B1ASK1
If your kid was crying or needed attention during the commercial would he be an accesory to the Theft?
E
Pretty soon we will all subscribe to on demand content providers. We will watch downloaded or live streams using our X-Box 2 or PlayStation 3. The there will be no commercials or they will be easily skipped.
I like traffic lights
Don't forget that most ads are played in mono. This is another commerical detection method.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
...during a commercial, I'm stealing? Give me a freaking break!
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
Did your father violate your sphincter with a TiVo remote or something? Because otherwise I'm at a loss to explain your hatred and paranoia.
:-)
The data collected is aggregate, not viewer-specific. This, and the fact that once you opt out of sending the data it indeed stops being sent, have been independently verified by TiVo hackers with packet sniffers and a little too much time on their hands.
If a television station really wanted to they could charge a subscription fee instead of showing advertising, of course most stations try and do both.
The advertisements last 3 minutes and tv exec's are surprised that people dont sit obediently watching the ad's.
It is not that particularly object to watching advertisments, often they are the best thing on tv. What bugs me is seeing the same advertisments over and over again for crap i dont want.
In the words of Austin Powers:
Or do they not own any recording device?
Don't realy nead a sig..:o)
I don't recall clicking on an Agree button when I first bought my TV or got Cable.
Using my ReplayTV to move 30 seconds ahead through commercials is no different than channel surfing through commericals like I used to do.
If Tuner wants to keep it up, I'll block thier channels from my Replay, not like I'm missing much.
I wonder if the ability to block channels is also theft, or maybe it's vandalism.
Oh $H1T, I'm going to the slammer big time.
I went and got a Jolt cola during the commercials. I guess that since I didn't watch the commercials, I'm going to jail now.
I can't speak for digital cable channels, because I don't have any, but for old-fashioned cable and over-the-air broadcasts, I can tell you that the "Commercial Advance" feature on my VCR works just fine.
I have no idea how it works, though ... for all I know it could really be using luminance level detection.
The entertainment industry and the software industry have devalued the word 'thief' to the point that it's no longer emotive. So let's agree that we're all thieves, hold a big party for Thief Pride, and invite them to come up with some other term for people that take something with intent to deprive the owner of its value, which is what the word used to mean before Hollywood got its hands on it.
We're living during the transition time between media technologies, where the computer is coming in and disrupted familiar business models, replacing them with something yet unknown and raising fear in the feeble-minded. This is not unlike the transition to the automobile, where some countries legislated that a person waving a flag has to walk ahead of a self-propelled vehicle which is limited to 4 mph. Sooner or later even the thick minds at TV networks will realize that the era of advertising as we know it is over, and they'll have to come up with new ways of making money. Meanwhile we'll be stuck with the metaphorical flag-waving man in front of our PVRs.
If I go out of my way actively to avoid an advert, what exactly are the chances that I would buy the product if I'd watched it? Quantify your answer, please.
Advertising is a crock, an utter crock. Advertising is something you spend between X and Y% of your budget on, because that's what market analysts expect, and if you do something unusual, you're high risk. The only people who pretend to believe that it actually does anything are advertising executives and the people carrying the adverts. Note: "pretend".
Oh, sorry, let's also include in that delusional group "e-advertisers". Because god knows that click-through adverts have really being pulling in the revenue, right?
Once again for luck: overt advertising doesn't work! Actually, even advertisers know this, which is why they are so keen on product placement (place the product with the content, or place the content (e.g. of Britney's brassiere) with the product) rather than trying to actually sell the product on merits.
I'm quite happy for the delusions to continue though: I mean, it's paying for this great free ride that we're all enjoying right now. But for anyone in the industry to actually claim that it matters that we watch commercials is crackpot delusion, pure and simple.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
A lot of new TVs have picture in picture now, which makes channel surfing a breeze. I guess all those companies are just aiding and abetting. I'd love to see the end result of all this being that all remote controls become illegal in the USA. At least that's something that Joe Sixpack can really get up in arms about. "You can take away mah freedom, but you nae can take away mah remote!"
I'm sure it won't take Turner and his slimy little friends long to come up with an even more obnoxious advertising method than the one he currently employs.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
My contract with the broadcaster is my cable bill. I don't know how much an individual channel garners from the fee (if indeed it's anything at all), but I certainly owe them no more. Maybe Turner-wonk would prefer if I just watched the ads and didn't purchase any more Cartoon Network-related items?
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
WATCH OR GO TO JAIL
Students locked up after refusing to watch Channel One
When Ohio teenagers DJ and Carlotta Maurer walked out of their classrooms in October to protest the compulsory viewing of Channel One, a television program with commercials which is shown in schools across America, school officials realized they had a couple of dangerous radicals on their hands. Principal Patrick Calvin invoked the truancy provision of the school's code of student conduct, and 13-year-old DJ and 14-year-old Carlotta were whisked away to the Wood County Juvenile Detention Center, where they had all day to consider their crime.
Since then, Commercial Alert and Obligation, Inc., two national anti-media groups, have taken up the Maurers' cause. The groups wrote to Ohio Governor Bob Taft, urging him to remove Channel One from all public schools.
"When the government sends children to a juvenile detention center because they don't want to watch advertising, that is both Orwellian and more than a little sick," reads the letter. "The public schools ought to be a sanctuary from the noxious aspects of commercial culture."
The governor has not responded to the letter. But the school is in negotiation with the Maurers, who have religious objections to television. It seems a day in the lockup didn't cool their heels enough to keep them from kicking.
- Eliza Strickland
http://adbusters.org/magazine/34/jail.html
Hmm, maybe the television/cable industry should fine anyone who tapes shows on their VCR. Heck, they should probably look into fining anyone that gets up and goes to the bathroom or grabs a beer during commercials. And to those who don't watch TV, they should be fined too for missing those commrecials.
Welp, the remote controls need to be outlawed, too, huh??? ....I guess we can no longer click through channels during the commercials...
Next thing they'll want to do is require the tv to be connected to furniture with electronically controlled handcuffs attached. Then you can't start a show til you put the handcuff on, and the handcuff won't release til the show is over. What a concept!
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
So I skip ALL of his commercials.
BTW, can someone put up "The Osbournes" on Hotline?
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
...running to get something to eat during the commercial break.
why can't I find and download my favorite Got Milk ads for free?
The shareholder is always right.
Am I the only one browsing at a low enough level to read these things?
Death to Argument by Slogan!! (This post twice-encrypted with ROT-13. Replies not using same will be ignored)
Personally, I would like to see the license that gives Network television stations the right to fill my property with broadcast signals over the airwaves.
In lack of such I license, I think, I have the right to do whatever I wish with any unauthorized signal that enters my property.
So according to Jamie Kellner, if a thief enters my house and leaves something of theirs behind, then it is really I who am the thief, and not them? Especially if I alter or move it in any way? This would also include fingerprints, so that when the police come and "reverse engineer" their fingerprint then this fingerprint could obviously not be used against them since it was obtained illegally.
I don't know about all of you, but if I record a show to watch it later, I'll fast-forward through them when I'll watch the show. It's quite easy: you spot the time elapsed since the beginning of the show, press fast-forward, and when it's about to turn to 3 minutes you press play. Check your local commercial breaks for the exact duration.Of course you actually "see" them, but if you don't already know the ad there's almost no chance you can guess what product it is for. And if you absolutely don't want to see them, press stop before fast-forward and you'll skip them even faster!
Same thing on rental videos. There's usually a couple trailers for future releases at the beginning, along with a warning from the FBI. Press that same button on the remote, and they go away! I heard that some DVD players, in coordination with the actual DVD, prevented you from doing that, though.
I prefer: coito ergo sum ;-)
or: vidi vici veni...
Software Wars
A contract? Interesting. I dont recall seeing the specific terms of this "contract". Nope, just went through my dish network contract, no reference to commercials. Paying for content. Don't have a contract with aol/tw/turner.
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
My time is valuable to me. I don't want to spend it watching stupid ass commericials when I just want to watch a missed episode of my favorite show. Lets see, the normal show lasts a little over 20 minutes total, so that less than ten minutes of commercials. What can I do in ten minutes? I know what I can do, take a shit! Anyway, if it is a crime to skip commercials then I just won't watch that show then. With less people watching the show, the ratings will go down. And with poor ratings, upper management gets reemed and possible fired. So AOL lady, if you don't want me to skip commercials, I won't watch the show and you will get fired.
Remeber going to the bathroom during an ad is theft too! You are supposed to stay and see all the ads- no matter how many red hot chili beans you just ate.
Of course they're concerned with anything that impacts their bottom line. If they don't make huge gobs of money, how ever will they be able to afford the huge amounts of crack they are obviously fond of smoking?
Next they'll say I'm breaking the law by not buying the products advertised. If they want it their way, I'm willing to oblige them... How about this for an idea: all the people who are tired of the broadcast networks', the movie industries' and the recording industries' shit simply stop using them. Don't buy them, don't watch them, don't listen to them.
Throw away (or sell if it's too big an investment) all your recorded media. When enough people do this, these executive cocksuckers will finally dry up and blow away, and what a happy day that will be!!!
Send these people a message. Stop supporting them. If enough people do it, they'll beg you to come back. Most new music is crap anyway, just ripping-off old tunes. Most new movies are crap, same bored tired old story lines, new special effects. Whoopie. As for TV, most TV programs are crap. The quality is so ludicrously subpar that it's pathetic. Why not preemptively reclaim all the time you would have wasted watching some sorry excuse for a TV program, and spend it instead with a book. Then, when you're done reading the book, you can shoove it up a TV executive's asshole! Sounds like a neat idea to me, anyway.
The ass calls PVR users thieves... I guess it would take one to know one!
Gotta go, I have a book to read!
~^-Me.-^~
When we subscribe to channels, we agree to pay them a set amount of money per month, and in return they allow us to watch their programming any time during that month.
What Turner is forgetting is that we don't just subscribe to one channel and leave it on all day - so there is never a guarantee that I will watch the advertisements that companies paid to put on the stations I subscribe to. If I choose to "time-shift" the programming I subscribed to, then I can do that. If I choose to empty my bowels instead of watch the latest overproduced Pepsi spot, then I can do that. If I choose to talk to my friend during the commercial, or see what else is on TV, then I can do that.
Kellner (the CEO) does say it's OK to go to the bathroom during commercial breaks. His problem is that the 30-second skip neatly coincides with the standard advertisement length. Well, there are two options that he can pursue without whining to the government (is it just me or does it seem like "content providers" are just fighting technology with government now?)
- Make your programming so compelling that viewers would rather tune in and watch your shows "live," thereby rendering the 30-second-skip feature useless. The benefits to this are the stations don't have to give soft money contributions to government, and their rating go up because their shows are that much better. The downside is that the stations need intelligent, semi-talented people to crank out this programming, and they can't rely on the government to provide guaranteed income (like what Communism was supposed to be like).
- The second solution is to change the length of commercials. What would happen if Turner sent out a memo to all of its advertisers on all of its stations that it is now accepting 40 second commercials? First, we'd get a lot of commercials with ten seconds of junk thrown in (not like the first thirty seconds weren't junk anyway). Then stations could start charging more money for ads. The upside is that this solves Kellner's problem from the 2600 article -- the "Skip ahead" feature is only there to skip the 30-second commercial. It may slightly de-value that feature for the time being.
But I was just looking for a solution that would solve what he claims is the problem - the "skip" button lasts as long as a typical advertisement.The downside is that it would be completely ineffective. I have a DishPlayer 501 which includes this 30-second-skip feature, and since sometimes 10- or 15-second spots are thrown in, it doesn't skip exactly. I end up hitting skip-skip-skip-skip-skip, back-back and watching up to ten seconds of the last commercial usually because after each skip, if I see a commercial I hit "skip" again. If I see programming I hit "back" until I see a commercial.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
In order to make money and stay in business in a PVR world, the networks are going to have to consider different business models. There are a few options that can still generate revenue for the networks
1. Quality Commercials - if commercials were funny, entertaining, enlightening, etc, people may watch them. I have a show recorded on my TiVo that I am saving just because of one really good commercial that aired. (It is that one where death is on that black horse and tried to catch that car...) PVR may just kill all the CRAPPY commercials and leave only the entertaining ones. That would be great!!
2 Another option is product placement. Companies could make contracts with studios and networks to place their products right in the show (i.e. - If Joey and Chandler use Motorola cell phones, you just might too). They do this in movies all the time.
Modern technology is threatening current business models everywhere. I personally think that it is great. Companies need to re-evauluate how things are done. The status quo has been shrinking the American middle class for some time now. It is about time that things change. Techology can help do it. Maybe the cast of all the top shows won't be making 2 million per episode anymore. But those are the breaks.
I don't know about the rest, but I usually in TV breaks, like to switch channels, it's something that I have seen my parents do since I can remember, so it's an old trick too. But now it's illegal to do it, I can't skip the commercials, and I'm legally bound if I watch a segment not to switch channels.
Great, so now I only have to pay subscription to one channel, what's the use of having variety if I can't see them. You would prefer that Kellner wouldn't you?
Now, the only dilemma, which channel do I pick?
I didn't get a copy of the EULA with my TV!!
AOL Time Warner is in the dumper, so they send the guy with the supposedly most independent and legitamate voice (the head of their independent news organization) to float this.
They're big in cable, maybe they'll add it to their terms and conditions.
Hey, AOL, you're losing money because you suck, not because I'm a thief. I resent the implication that I'm a criminal because Steve Case doesn't have more money than Costa Rica.
My father is a blogger.
SXSW Interactive had some interesting talks on this topic, which basically amounted to the SMART advertising professionals are looking at the Tivo phenomenon and realizing that they have to approach advertising in a completely different fashion, because otherwise, yes, their ads will be skipped. It's dinosaurs like this Turner guy who think that a single business model is going to be true forever. What's the phrase for someone like that? An ex-CEO.
I read it, too, and I agree completely. Your dumb business model is none of my concern. As is always the case, changes in content delivery technology and changes in audience viewing habits will, and should, lead to changes in advertising methods. 'Trailers' used to be played at the end of the movie, hence the name, yet when the studios realized nobody was sticking around any longer, they decided to play them before the movie. This was a smart move and an adaptation to a changed viewing habit. What Turner apparently wants to do now would be analogous to these same studios placing armed guards at the theater exits and making you sit down, shut up, and watch the trailers at the end. Ludicrous. They can take my PVR from my cold, dead, and civilly disobedient hands if they decide to ban it.
CW: Have you had any pressure from advertisers?
JK: Our business is so much better this year than it was last year--it's remarkable. Rates are higher.
Doesn't this pretty much nullify and credibility in the whining about how people who skip through ads are hurting the industry? What's very annoying is that they don't "get it": when I'm fast forwarding through the ads, either on the VCR or PVR, I'm scanning to know when to let go of the FF button. I'm paying MORE attention to the ad (albeit in time-compressed space) than I probably would be in real-time.
For example:
"Ad, ugh, where's the remote, , car ad, tampon ad, Miss Cleo, whoa what's that? check out ad, back to fast forward, grow more hair ad, lose unwanted hair ad, Miss Cleo, dog food ad, ad that made no sense and I doubt I'd do better in real-time, Jordan's Furniture ad - stop hafta watch, FF again, car ad, stop for Dean's Home Furniture ad? I doubt it!, Miss Cleo, back to program...
There's probably MORE brand name recognition among VCR/PVR users than the people who have to suffer through real-time ads. If I were in advertising, I'd definitely do a study on this - actually I'd exploit it by making an ad that looks great while fast-forwarded (or one that mimics it in real-time - you'd get 60 seconds of content in 30 seconds!)
Attention Network Executives: Before I had a TiVo, I still never watched your infernal advertisements. Instead, every time they came on I got up and went to the fridge for a beer or checked slashdot on my laptop or changed the freakin' channel for 3 minutes. In fact TiVo has helped me lose weight, and increase my attention span. :)
We all know the networks hate the fact that we don't watch commercials, but let's face it, PVRs didn't start the commercial hatred and avoidance movement among consumers of TV programming. It's been there for years. The problem is that now all the executives for the companies that buy your advertising time have TiVos themseleves and it occurs to them as they skip forward that everyone else is doing it too.
How much of Kellner's spare time does he spend watching other peoples' commercials? That's what I want to know. And although he may not have a PVR (or maybe he does and he's just a hippocrite) I suspect that he has a human PVR that he calls a "media consultant," or "programming director" or something similar that tells him what to watch and filters out the crap that isn't worth a CEO's valuable time. Oh let's see... Like commercials!!!
This too shall pass.
There are merits to this argument.
The contract Kellner speaks of is the implied social contract. It's the same type of contract USENET once had (years ago) which said you can use the resource so long as you don't do things like waste bandwidth, post commercial offers, make wildly off-topic posts, cross-post to every newsgroup, etc.
It was exactly the sort of social contract the Green Card Lawyers broke; not technically a violation of any laws or prohibited by any contract they signed, but (to many, including me) it broke the social norms of the community, and ultimately destroyed the community.
It's the same sort of social contract violation you feel when a telemarketer calls you during dinner (or at all), or when a spammer puts ten "need inkjet refills?" into your email inbox.
In a way, it's related to how the RIAA felt about the people who violated the "personal copies only" norm for music and instead used Napster to share everything with everyone. Again, it may technically not be a violation of copyright law, but it violated the social norms which the music industry executives were banking on.
Think about this; we used to have a social norm in this country which allowed people to carry things like toenail clippers and box cutters with them onto aircraft. That norm was violated on only one occasion (with tragic consequences) and now that social contract is void. We are developing new laws and contracts (social and otherwise) to deal with the new realities, but at a great cost to all involved.
Can you blame the RIAA for the fear that the community (of music lovers) which they based their industry on is threatened with distruction by those CDR-toting geeks who don't understand (or choose to ignore, for their own personal benefit) the social norms of the community?
Can you blame the MPAA for the same (as yet mostly unrealized) fear that broadband internet will do the same to their community?
I've watched the geek community come into it's own during the opening days of the Internet, and I can't say I'm impressed with attitude toward respecting (or understanding, or even recognising) the social contracts they're expected to follow. Part of that is good: some people call that behavior "thinking outside the box" and it was no doubt responsible for much of the innovation we've seen in the technology sector recently. But there's also a dark side to it; that behaviors could lead to the destruction of a community we might later decide we would rather have kept.
Heed this warning: The free software/open source community is founded on exactly this sort of social contract in the GPL. It would not take much of a well-funded anti-GPL element to violate that social contract and destroy this community. There are no doubt forces examining just these sorts of tactics for their own benefit.
I'm not saying it's your patriotic duty to watch the commercials, but think beyond your own personal gain and understand how your actions might eventually come home to roost. If you insist on having a PVR with a 30-second skip function, don't be surprised if communities built around the lack of that function (broadcast television with 30-second commercials, for example) crumble. If enough people get a 30-second skip function, you may find that feature becomes worthless. What replaces the community you lose may be better, or it might be worse. On the other hand, if we write into law a preservation for "broadcast television with 30-second commercials", our act of preserving that community will deny the development (good or bad) of what would have replaced it.
If we had banned ad-blocking technology from the World Wide Web, there may have been less incentive to develop click-behind windows. Then again, if we had banned ad-blocking technology from the World Wide Web, there might not be today any web on which those ads could be displayed.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Yes, they DO! The one REALLY ANNOYING thing about DVD's is that they generally force the stupid FBI warning and other crap like the logo from the producer on you.
:-)
My original solution: Pop the disc in but don't turn the TV on until I see the display indicate either that the menu is up or the movie is playing. If I miss the beginning, the back-chapter button will usually take you to the beginning of the movie, rather than the FBI stuff.
My final solution: I have divested myself of most of my DVD's and CD's. My "watching TV" phase is almost over, soon I will toss my glass-anchor as well. Screw the movie/tv/music industry. They can collectively kiss my ass.
~Me.
but unless you're an idiot, you know that free tv isn't relly free. The shows you boneheads watch cost money. Sarah Michelle Geller doesn't come cheap, Scott Bakula doesn't come cheap. None of them do, also sci-fi isn't cheap. These all cost money, MONEY. I know that /. ers really hate money, but without it these shows wouldn't get made.
/. at one time in my life, until I realized you're all nothing but hypocrites. I think the open source movement needs a new saying:
I know the concept isn't in line with the techno-elite. Sarah Michelle should do this out of pure enjoymemt, the producers of Star Trek should be fair and make these shows for us because we've been loyal "fans".
I was on-board with
"Free as in slashdot" -- def. we're evading the truth that someone produced this, ergo we can just take it.
Unfortunately, most of the human race is little more than drones, and just follow along, and enjoy being little more than slaves. Err, maybe not enjoy, but don't care, they don't want to work anymore than they need to.
While, many of us, who don't watch TV to begin with, would find a book or other reading matterial, these people might whine at the most.
We really need to do something about this new form of slavery. In slavery I meam that we exist soley to pay taxes and be happy little customers. And anything that goes against that marks you as a theif.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
If we boycott, it will have the same effect of not watching the ads, so how would they know we're boycotting?
I don't watch TV as it is, so how can I boycott?
Better strategy: WATCH the commercials. Make a list of who's sponsoring these shows. Write them letterst stating your position on PVR, Fair Use, your "obligation" to watch commercials, and the corporate use of public airwaves, which is supposed to be licensed by the government for the public good.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I don't know about you guys, but I'm still paying for my cable. 50 years later, and the ads still aren't paying for the whole model. So I'll be damned if I'm going to pay to watch advertisements.
Should I feel a moral obligation to not channel surf during commercials? Because they're giving me such a great discount (*guffaw*) on quality programming, by only charging me $49.95/month?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Contractual obligation to view the ads? Rubbish.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I signed a contract with a cable company where I pay them for cable access to tv shows I don't remember paying for comercials
http://Lenny.com
4 great justice!
Source: The Judge in Life-Line
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
You know, watching American Football on video tape is pretty cool.
When you fast forward through all the BS, you can watch a game in well under an hour. The faster pace makes it so much more enjoyable. No PVR required, thankyouverymuch.
Of course my TV has not been on for 3 weeks (when I watched a tape of an F1 race).
I would sooner smash my TV than watch their drivel advertising.
Mr. Man, please tell me how my mute button is theft.
Heck... where have you been for the past couple of decades. IMHO, Dick's been winning that comparison for a long time. At least as far as TV comedies go.
Heh, heh. Then the Nielson (sp?) boxes will just get moved around to households that actually watch the drek that's broadcast so it'll appear as though TV is still popular.
Items: Philips is a producer of PVR's. CNN Center in Atlanta is right next to Philips Arena which houses the Atlanta Thrashers and Atlanta Hawks (both owned by Turner), Philips is a major sponsor of the aforementioned teams, Turner employees get employee discounts on Philips equipment, and just about every new consumer grade (cheap to expensive) TV in the place is from Phillips.
Does this mean that Turner is profiting from this theft? Are they condoning it with their relationship with Philips? Should I, as a Turner employee, be expecting a visit from HR regarding my theft of corporate property using the PVR I bought using my employee discount during a special Philips/Turner 'Employee' sale in Philips Arena?
Hum...
This guy is logically-challenged (or, less politically correctly put, an idiot.) By the same logic, whenever I watch a channel but not the others that offer shows (and, God forbid, commercials!) simultaneously I am committing theft.
Network TV is, for the most part, a lot of crap, anyway. And here in the US they mangle movies to such an extent that watching them (even if they were ad-free) is a grueling experience.
Ads are useless. I haven't bought a product based off an advertisement on television since I reached the age of reason. I never watch the Ads now, I either click over to another channel or get up to go do something for the full five minutes that they run this crap. Do they really think that anyone on this entire planet gives a damn about 1-800 rates, the latest in skin-care products, or what new car they are going to buy this year, all based on television ads? All telephone rates are roughly the same. Skin care hasn't changed in a thousand years, you wash it you don't have problems. Stick to auto-enthusiast magazines for your car info, you'll get better information.
Lo and behold, after fifty years of being inundated with this crap, we developed a way to remove the ads. You know what they'll be doing next? Overlaying the advertisements directly on the picture, like CNNfn does with the stock ticker. just what I need to keep me interested... a constant stream of inane bullshit streaming across the face of the show I'm interested in watching.
I say, let them. We'll create PVRs that zoom in and completely ignore the banners. Move the banners and windows around, we'll develop PVRs that can track the real content and we will still avoid the advertisements. Every trick they can devise can be countered with a technical solution. You can't rule these devices as illegal, because they do nothing that IS illegal. There are no contracts to watch advertisements, and nobody would watch any television if there were.
Let these assclowns go back to a subscription model. You create a channel that has content that I actually WANT to watch, and I'll pay you for it. You can leave the useless ads out, you'll get your money, and everyone will be happy except the advertisers. Good, fuck them. I hope there is a special place in hell just for them, right next to the telemarketers and email spammers.
I have very serious doubts about the ability of the television industry to actually create anything that even remotely resembles quality entertainment. I've reached the point where I frankly have zero interest in watching any television. If the show is that good, I'll buy the DVD releases, ad free, and they can get their money that way.
Or better yet, I'll keep my damned money and go to the library. There's more entertainment in one single Neal Stephenson novel than there is in an entire year of television, even if you count the content from every single damned station.
Someday the artists of this world are just going to have to start giving everything away free. After a few years, when all the big media companies go bankrupt from being unable to compete with the independent media, things will be back on track again.
This is like fighting some kind of fucked up war.
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
In the future, there will only be shopping and jail.
Sayeth the bozo:
"I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom. But if you formalize it and you create a device that skips certain second increments, you've got that only for one reason, unless you go to the bathroom for 30 seconds."
The remote control for my t.v. allows me to set a timer in 30s increments. I can then flick to whatever channels I want, and when the timer hits zero I am sent back to the original channel. The point? My t.v. itself has become the instrument of my so-called theft - no PVR or VCR is needed. It's a feaure I rarely use, but I think I'll use it more, just for the petty feeling I'll get that I'm pissing off t.v. execs
Not only are we not in a contract with them, it is in fact the opposite.
:(
From the time of "public airwaves", broadcasters have gotten a LICENSE (unfortunately not shrinkwrapped) for the privilege of using a public resource.
They routinely violate their license conditions, but nothing ever happens
If this is a problem, these damn networks need
to come up with a way to provide advertisement-
free programming. I would gladly pay an extra
$100/month (total, not per-station obviously)
to have the ads removed - or even to just have
them all bunched at the end of a program (to
keep time continuity with the regular
broadcast). Obviously live events wouldn't
apply, but I can deal with that.
My certain amount of tolerance of overreaching entertainment industry executives has been breached long ago.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Does this mean if I watch a movie on Skinamax and forward to "the good parts" I'm stealing?
The big media industry needs to realize the they will have to place ads directly in the show so that they are incredibly difficult to remove.
I don't have a PVR. But I still choose not watch most commercials, except during the Super Bowl. In addition to choosing not to watch commercials, I will be choosing not to watch the following:
TNT
TBS
CNN
TCM
and (ouch) The Cartoon Network.
For a list of all the things I have added to my "list of things not to watch" today, visit http://www.turner.com/
- Dan I.
What you say assumes that the only function of advertising is to make a direct sale, when in fact it is more often to gain mindshare. The public quickly forgets about a product and advertising is used to keep it in the forefront of people's minds. This is why McDonald's still advertises, even though everyone knows who they are and what they do. (as an aside, McDonald's is really in the real estate business, but that isn't pertinent to my point)
Advertising actually does work, but not in a reliable way. A common marketing mantra is "I know half of my advertising budget is wasted, I just don't know why half." Consequently, they try all sorts of thing, akin to throwing mud on the wall and seeing what sticks. Everybody knows it is a crap shoot and the advertisers and media who sells advertising aren't as naive as you make it out to be.
The fact is that there is some return on investment for advertising or else they wouldn't do it. It may be the case that advertising doesn't work too well on you, but they have already factored in this loss.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
You're stealing oxygen you haven't contracted to breathe so you need to drown in your own kids' blood.
and you have a nice day too!!
Well people have been taking stupidity seriously in the tech industry for long enough, it was inevitable that it would spread. Either by other stupid people thinking its a good idea or by greedy bastards deciding they can make bank by acting stupid.
People need to accept that no one has an inherrant right to have a successful business. It is their job to make whatever method of money making they use work, and only when a law is broken should they turn to the law for help. It's not theft that's making TV ads less effective, it's changing technology. Maybe your going to have to do something differently.
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
Jamie Kellner was the former chief executive of the WB network. We should be charging him for wasting human brains cells.
No problem, the networks will push for product placement over the traditional 30-second spots.
I dunno about you, but product placement B_L_O_W_S
I'm a 2000 man.
If the advertising-supported-broadcast business model is obsolete, good riddance, although I expect it to go down kicking and screaming. We're drowning in ads and crappy programming as it is, and paying for them in the process.
Who knows? If people actually had to pay directly for TV, they'd probably expect a lot more from it, and consume a lot less. Which could mean less programming in general, but much higher quality. With other changes in distribution (built around PVR time-shifting and satellite/digital cable bandwidth) the broadcast model could become nearly obsolete, replaced by something more akin to the magazine and video market.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
... and I erased all my Simpsons tapes.
I was wondering though: What if I need to go to the bathroom during ads? Would that be a felony?
and installs 'blipverts'!!! Wouldn't surprise me if they did... but will TechTV follow suit?
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
I was under the impression that the money I pay to my cable company - Time Warner, which is a Turner enterprise in its own right - is passed along to the cable content providers in licensing fees.
C'mon, let's look at this realistically for a minute.
I pay $50/month for cable. I get over 100 channels. That's $0.50 per channel per month.
Let's say that there are 100 million households in the US that have cable. That's a pot of $5 billion per month, or $50 million per channel per month. Don't forget, the cable companies take a large portion of this for the expense of gathering and retransmitting the signals (cable lines and satellite dishes aren't cheap), but we'll ignore that for now.
Let's say that each channel runs 500 hours of programming per month. That's about 17 hours per day. Of course, it's not all original, but it is available for you to watch.
Now let's do the math. $50 million / 500 = $100,000. That means that for each hour of programming, cable fees can subsidize a maximum of $100,000 (and this number is probably at least 50% less once you take out the costs of the cable companies).
Do you think that it costs only $50,000 to create an episode of Friends? Or any other show out there with the exception of local cable access programs?
Now I know that my numbers aren't really correct because they don't take into consideration that there are reruns on TV 80-90% of the time. If only 20% of TV is original during a month (seems high, but sporting events probably bump this up), that means that the $100,000 per hour is really more like $500,000 per hour. But still, considering how many people go into producing a TV show (actors, writers, producers, editors, etc.), $500,000 per hour of original programming isn't going to buy you much.
Ralph
Below is an excerpt from an article in The Economist about television:
So how is it that commercial American TV can come up with such funny, clever output? The first explanation is HBO. "Sex and the City", "The Sopranos" and "Six Feet Under" are all made by this cable channel, part of AOL Time Warner. "HBO's achievements have had a dramatic impact on the entire media culture; creatively, it's put its rivals to shame," comments Peter Bart, editor of Variety, a Hollywood industry newspaper. HBO owes its achievements to a potent mix: stable management under Jeff Bewkes, who has held one or other of the two top jobs for the past 11 years; savvy, blanket promotion of its shows; and a business model that relies entirely on subscriptions rather than advertising. Curiously, a channel that did not originally chase ratings, because it did not need to, has ended up grabbing them anyway: on Sunday evenings during the summer, "Sex and the City" often beats other network shows. All this enables HBO to take creative risks, which itself draws talent to it. Alan Ball, who writes "Six Feet Under", had previously won an Oscar for the screenplay for "American Beauty", a successful movie. Writers love working there. "On most network TV, once you have a successful formula, you have to stick to it for ten years," says Michael Patrick King, creator of "Sex and the City". "With HBO, we have complete liberty to take the story wherever we want."
The full text of the article is here
Amazing magic tricks
I can't tell you how embarrased I am. I just had a big discussion with my fellow coworkers about which was better: Tivo, Replay, or the PVR that you can get with satellite services.
All the rest of the employees have to say things like "my opinion doesn't necessarily reflect that of Turner Broadcasting", but believe me, no one I know agrees with this opinion. In fact, I have a hard time accepting that even he really believes that opinion - he's just trying to protect a corporate interest for the sake of the "shareholders", who probably also don't agree with his opinion. I can't believe someone is actually taking that position.
But let me also defend the slamming you guys are giving TNT - who gave you B5 when no one else wanted it? Who gives you Witchblade, and the Shield? Who was the first to broadcast The Matrix? I'm not saying Turner has the best channels, they all have crap on them, but it's no worse than any of the others.
FWIW, I don't work at any "station".
So, it's stealing when we don't watch ads on TV. What is it when I have 50 e-mails waiting for me every morning from xnd483@hotmail.com.
Better yet, what if I get called by a telemarketer when during a commercial break? Who is at fault then?
Seems to me that this is all an argument about rights. The people's (hopefully) insert-deity-of-your-choice-here given right to exercise freedom of choice about what we will and won't watch and the broadcasters supposed right to make money. They think, "Hey, we're going to broadcast something that we think will make people watch our channel. Why don't we also put some advertising on in between the parts of the show so we can make some money too. This will give our viewers a chance to see some products and services that they might find helpful. And if they don't find it helpful, it will give them time to go pee or what have you so they can concentrate on the rest of the program and want to watch again next time." Then the people who sell the commercials come in and say "Hey! Great idea. We know most people are too lazy to do anything but sit there when we interrupt their show for a minute." So these lines of thinking go on, pressing the limits of the balance between the viewers drive to want to finish watching his show and annoyance at the commercials which by now don't show anything he's interested in buying. So next week, when our viewer decides to tape his show because he doesn't have time to watch it this week, and he goes to play it and finds "Hey, I could fast-forward though these commercials that I have no interest in." the commercial companies cry foul "No, you can't circumvent us!" Frankly, I think they should be putting pressure on the broadcastings stations to put programs that people are most likely to want to watch but have to tape because of the time slot, into time slots where people could watch them to avoid taping. But again, this is about rights. We as viewers have NO OBLIGATION to the broadcasters to watch the commercials, nor do we have any obligation to web sites to click on banner adds. They are trying to entice is into buying something, if they want us to watch adds, they should damn well make the adds more entertaining!
-Department Head of the Department of Redundancy, Department Head
It's nice that we aren't allowed to potty anymore. We'ce entered into a contract that says, "It is illegal to potty". Oddly I don't remember agreeing to that. I have a solution, however.. Government subsidized toilet TVs. Because, "Everybody Loves Raymond While They're Taking a Crap."
I happen to think that it's illegal that EVERY SINGLE CHANNEL PUTS THEIR DAMN LOGO OVER EVERY SINGLE SHOW. I'm extremely disappointed in the Discovery/Science channel for this. Their logo often blocks important information on the episode. And those damn Nigel's Wild Wild World ads that they run during the show. I think that is breach of contract right there. Discovery is by no means the only culprit, MTV is by far the worst. I think that if you're going to put that damned logo over all of your shows, the FCC should require that you put it over the commercials too.
So I own a tv. I don't use it much. It sits mostly gathering dust particles. Since I'm not watching commercials, I am a thief. I guess I'd better turn myself in to the police, never know when the warant for my arrest will be issued.
Commercial thieft.... puh!
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
If skipping advertising is theft we are in good company. Advertising is mostly lies about products. If they stopped lying maybe we would start watching.
Second theft is removal of something from someone, at best this is breach of an implicit contract.
Wish the Turner CEO had said what he said in the UK as he and his company could have been sued for defamation.
Help fight continental drift.
Now I don't watch the ads therefore I'm a thieve. ;)
Well. My hourly rate for watching ads is.. Hmm.. HIGH
Be my guest. Make me watch the ads and I'll send you a BIG BIG bill!
Privacy is terrorism.
Most of the time in high school, we turned the sound off during the commercials so we could talk about what was just said in the "news" reports.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
So, does this mean that every time I delete a piece of spam-mail I am stealing too? I had always thought it was them who were stealing my time and resources, not the other way around...
Posted from the wireless couch.
To protect the digital world, what we really need to do is start a campaign for the defence of analog. When Hollings introduced S.2048 he made a big deal about the "analog hole", saying that it was a danger because people could convert the analog signal between the digital box and the analog tv back to a digital signal. Now this guy's saying PVRs are evil because they let you skip commercials.
The thing is that they use the newness of digital to paint everything as a new threat that needs immediate and scorched-earth legislative response. Then they use examples like these that aren't really new. Even without digital content being broadcast through the air, I can convert an analog signal into digital. My groovy (but analog!) VCRs with the shuttle controls make it trivial to skip over commercials. There's nothing new with digital added in. Sure, it's easier, sure, picture quality might be nicer, but it's not new, it's just progress.
We must not let them continue to create this perception of newness that requires legislation. Every time they go out and say "this new digital stuff is bad because it lets evil pirates board our ships and steal our gold and then use that gold to fund terrorism", we need to point out that the evil pirates could steal their gold even when it was analog gold.
When they start to spew about how digital makes it easier and makes the stolen gold shine brighter, we need to point out that it's just progress. It's always been that more expensive equipment was easier to use and had better quality. If the "digital revolution" hadn't come we'd just have something different like 12x speed read/write (analog) laserdisks. It'd be expensive and thus rare, but it's still the same thing. Digital made things cheaper and more common, that's all.
Laws are not just for the common things. Every time they say a law is needed, we need to ask them why they didn't need a law for the analog version. They need a better answer than "we tried and failed" or "the amount was too small to worry about," but they won't have any answers.
Digital makes everything cheaper, easier and better for everyone, not just the pirates. Manufacturing is cheaper, customers like the better picture and not rewinding a tape. But it's nothing new, just progress. If they want the advantages of digital, they'll have to accept that everyone else gets the advantages too.
My "contract with the network"? Clearly he doesn't mean that in any technical legal sense, but I don't see how there's even the suggestion of such a contract in my interaction with the network. They place advertising in shows and HOPE that people will watch it; it's absurd to think that people are somehow REQUIRED to watch.
If advertisers decide that everyone is skipping their ads and therefore stop paying to run them, that would certainly constitute a large change in the nature of television. But it's crazy to suggest that it's illegal for such a change to take place. But of course, this is a running theme lately: industries wanting legislation protecting the way things currently work (RIAA, anyone?)
Things are going to change. Preventing that change will require increasingly draconian legislation, and for what? To protect the interests of bodies who have traditionally profited by the way things work now. Whatever changes come down the pike, I'm confident in predicting that somebody is going to profit from them; today's content distributors are just terrified that it won't be them. And they're probably right, given that they seem to be devoting all their efforts to preventing the changes rather than capitalizing on them.
I think it is important to point out that when you skip through commercials, you can still see the product being advertised. You just don't have to sit through a half minute long advertisement about it that some marketing department thought you would enjoy. If I am going through and see a commercial that I enjoy, I will stop and watch it. Chances are that I would do something else during a bad commercial anyhow. If the Tivo came with a commercial skip button, things might be different(I think that is a easter egg however...).
I would love to see the ad-revenue rotated into cost increases. So what if I pay $20/year for Wired magazine instead of $10? (although I like their ad's). I feel like no matter how hard I try, I am simply another pawn in the advertising game. If they grab my attention, they win. If they get me to talk about their product to other people, they win. If I actually buy their product, they have really won.
I want to be able to determine the value of a product from user/owner reviews, and not from advertising fluff. But this is hard to do considering how subliminal some of the advertising is.
So are we obligated to sit through all commercials when we watch a show in real time? Of course not. I personally like to visit the fridge during commercails.
when will the insanity end? arresting whole populations, doesn't, uhm, scale well.
in this particular case, there was NEVER a contract. show me my signature, please. therefore no wrongdoing is ocurring. the stations put on 'free' broadcasting and they really thought thay had us nailed. we now have a workaround and their pissed. well, maybe its time to find a better business model! remember the story about the buggy whips and how, when cars became popular, the BW companies had to find a new business? same thing here. no one is willing to watch commercials (given a choice) and you can either legislate/force people to watch the stupid things or - well - update your business to modern times.
personally, I'd be very happy to see all commercials go the way of the buggy whips. if you want to watch tv, pay for it (eg, cable, satellite). but of course, once we pay for it, let us record and watch the way WE want to.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Okay, first of all how many people don't flip the channel when it comes to a commercial or get up and grab a snack or go to the bathroom. People don't want commercials they are annoying and althought the geico with the squrriels is pretty funny. Soon they are gonna try and make a television that you will be unable to change the channel during commercials.
Wouldn't your time be better spent figuring out how to work, and be profitable in this brave new world of technology, rather than ranting in frustration over the new uses of ubiquitous tools.
These tools are the wave of the future, and PVRs, set-top-boxes and the like are going to be subject to free market capitalism and the whims of consumers just like the tuna fish and femine products you advertise.
Fact is, for programming that you have on your station(s), your biggest concern should be over getting any eyes at all, let alone the viewing habits of thos eyes. My understanding of the industry may be simple, but I believe more eyes leads to more ad revenue and to get more eyes you need programming that draws them. Whether those eyes are watching at air time or later should only give you further opportunites.
Your a bright guy, I'll bet you'll figure it out. You'll have to if you expect to succede beyond Turner.
True friends are hard to come by... I need more money. - Calvin
Instead of trying to accuse people of stealing a program that we paid to recieve and have no requirement to even watch it in the first place, why don't they try and restructure their revenue model to keep up with the changing technology. This is not a new concept but a fact of life that every business has to deal with. You don't see any company's only manufacturing phonograph's do you? No, because they saw that it would be a smart move to keep up with technology rather than sue to force technology to a halt. I think it has become pretty obvious that people ignore advertising as it is constantly bombarded at us everyday and we have become immune to the current techniques. I think the advertising industry is responsible for their own downfall as they have completly satturated our brains with this crap for so many years we have built up an immunity to it.
Just as a suggestion, I know this is done some already, but why not try more product placement in television shows and less commercial breaks. It should guarantee more viewers since the subtle advertisement will be part of the show. When I say subtle I don't mean have the characters stop mid show and do some song and dance to some idiodic jingle. I mean the next scene in the restruant have a Dr. Pepper on every table or something simmilar such as product or service name dropping in the script.
Do advertisers really think their commercials really affect anyones purchase decissions other than making children pester their parents for the new toy they saw on tv? Does Pepsi really believe that I will stop drinking Coke because they have Britney Spears in their stupid commercials? Does Sprite really believe that I will "obey my thirst" and suddenly have a craving for their product because some overpaid basketball player told me to?
This is certainly something I wonder about, as fewer of my friends actually know what's on the t00b than in the past. I expect ACNilesen doesn't just go around and find houses that watch TV and report viewing as a percentage of the entire population, which would be transparent and amaturish, no doubt the broadcasters and advertisers who actually pay for these ratings get the full package, including estimates of % of demographics viewing TV. That doesn't mean your average local TV/Radio news reporters don't get fed bad or misleading information to give ratings false appearances.
i.e. An statistical estimation of viewers on Households with a TV on Thursday evenings from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm could be 40 million. With an average of 2.5 persons per household that expands to 100 million people. 25% are watching All My Circuits, which with a reasonble amount of error would state 25 million people are watching the show. If some doofus gets the 25% number and works that against the last population estimate they heard of the U.S. they could assume that 75 million people are watching. (Then advertisers would like to know why they're not all buying their products!)
It's important to keep raw numbers and percentages separated and understood for such reasons.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Kellner is an incredible dumbass.
Since its inception, advertising has been a game of speculation. The advertisers make a bet that a particular medium (TV, radio, print, Web) can get their message across. They then contract with the purveyor of that medium (NBC, AOL/Time-Warner, CNET) who promises to reach the demographic and numerical maximums that justify the spend of their advertising budget.
That's where it ends. The contract is solely between the advertiser and the carrier of that advertising. The public reaps the benefits as the advertiser hopes to reel in enough of that public mindshare to cover their bets.
Don't get so riled up. IT's PR spin, nothing else.
Ranting about it here is preaching to the converted.
They know it's not illegal. They just want it to be, and if big important people get up in the big media and start saying it is, believe it or not, lots of Americans start to believe it too... which curbs the behavior, which is what they want.
Not to mention radio deregulation which resulted in 4 companies owning most of the radio stations. And now "they" want to destroy internet radio. What we need is a new Jimmy Cliff ("The harder they come"). Personally, I take offense to anything Turner or his goons say, on principle.
And today, Microsoft have announced that they will uphold the new laws that state that users cannot block cookies being placed on their computer because [quote]..the users accepted the agreement when they travelled to the web page that serves the cookie. The user has no say in this matter as they have conciensously agreed before entering the site. We would like to thank our friends at Microsoft for collaberating with us on this issue...[/quote]
Move faster
Ok, got my contract that I signed when the guy put the dish on the roof. Bear with me and lemmie see if I can find the line about watching commercials. Let's see...*thumbing through contract*...bullshit, bullshit, bullshit..."viewer agrees to watch at least one 'Reality TV' show a month"...blah, blah, blah..."must make a living sacrafice to Regis Philbin or Kathy Lee Gifford annually"...blah, blah...something about "network branding" and a "firstborn male child"...
Hmm. Nothing about watching commercials. Unless, of course, you count product placement. There WAS that stipulation about having to drink 10 cups of Starbucks a week every time Niles has one on "Frasier".
As a person that works in the "new media" industy (god I hate that term), I see this kind of attitude from tv execs all the time.
They are totally afraid of the internet as a content ditriubution medium because of revenue losses in their current advertiseing based biz models, redistribution of their content, etc... and they are watching their ad-based revenue model fall apart in front of them, as audiences leave television, or oaudiences make more and more use of PVRs and otehr tech to avoid advertising.
What we are going to see happen in TV, is that advertising as we know it is going to go away.
Two things:
1. Interactive TV with a micropayment/pay-per-view model. When interactive tv actually happens, we will be able to choose and pay for only the shows we want, when we want them, and commercial advertising will be gone.
2. Sponsored content/product placement. You will see more and more of your favorite tv stars prominently drinking diet coke after diet coke while the "show" isrunning. or more of the bugs across the bottom that state "brough to you by...". so if you want to watch the content, you have to see the addvertising at the same time.
I think you've nailed it. Like some one said, technology changes - get used to it. More and more of the big corps are needing the govt to step in and create legislation so they can keep the same business models they've always had, while technology dictates that they are no longer valid moddels. The line between the politicians and execs is so blurry now, that ANYthing that causes the profits increase to SLOW (not even go down, just not increase as fast as they want) results in tax dollars GIVEN to companies to help them. I can't stand it!
So... I somehow signed a contract when I put up that TV antenna, that I would watch the commercials? I don't recall signing anything... And what about when I skip out to take a bathroom break, or make a snack, or whatever, during the commercials? Am I a thief, then, too?
One such advert for a useful product... from a competing company instead.
I think that was the origional posters point, that supported inflated pricing for "branded" products and therefore furthering the advertiser as customer model of the media companies is a bad thing
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
From 7 to 9PM every household member must be fastened into the new TV chairs. They must be restrained so they cannot reach the mute, volume, or channel buttons on the remote. They must use the bathroom and finish eating/drinking at 6:59. They must be muzzled so they cannot drown out the commercials by speaking loudly. They must have toothpicks inserted under their eyelids so they cannot close their eyes. Be happy, and remember; Time Warner is your friend.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
let me interrupt this topic with this excellent product:
Webwasher that is 30 days free for evaluation. (and happens to work just fine after 30 days).
Buy it! It's great
Well, I've been stealing TV shows for the vast majority of my lifetime then, taking bathroom breaks, refilling my drink, grabbing a snack, taking dirty dishes to the kitchen, cheking my email, or whatever else I feel during breaks in the show. I suppose I'm also stealing when I fast-forward through commercials if I've taped a show I wasn't home for.
Besides, a lot of commercials are really annoying, and sometimes outright insulting to me. And these commercials only end up making me boycott the product/service/company involved, so not seeing commercials in my case should usually be good for the marketing guys, and hte networks should be happy that I am not boycotting advertizers' stuff due to watching my favorite TV show on that channel.
I think the statement that users of PVR's are thieves is rediculous for about a million reasons listed below. The fact is, "fair use" is sooo subjective that every argument like this guy's are quickly taken down a slippery slope that results in us never getting to change the channel or leave our couches, or probably even blink.
The thing that is funny is that the networks are upset largely because PVR's make THEM into thieves (or more accurately, liars.) Commercial time is priced based on predicted numbers of eyeballs watching it. They tell an advertiser "hey, we have a million people watching this show, you pay us X dollars." The problem is, if every one of those million people had a PVR, next thing you know, a million viewers may mean only 1000 watching the commercials (extreme I know.) But if you were that advertiser you'd say to the network "hey! that's not what I paid for!" So, the network has to square that with their advertisers - I don't see that the PVR user did anything wrong.
The trouble is, we can all scream about how we are "entitled" and agree that we are. But the networks are also entitled to go out of business as the advertisers are entitled to realize that their ad dollars aren't going very far... Its a kinda viscious cycle. Maybe we do have too many channels as it is. Maybe my $50/month for cable should just give me local, ESPN 1,2, and CNBC and they can split my $50 among them and stop doing commercials all together... But for those of us that want 200 channels for $50/mo - you have to understand you are getting them basically for free paid for by advertisers...
Tim T.
watching Turner Classic Movies. Nor do I remember signing anything when I bought my television that said that I *must* watch the commercials.
I don't watch much TV, but when I do I usually ignore the commercials.
Strange stuff
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
...that when Turner and co decides to start offering PVR services *AT* their cable companies so you can schedule shows at your own times, THEY won't be called thieves.
I think the only prerequisite for being the CEO of a really BIG company these days is a sufficiently jerky knee and an anus wide enough for your head, but retentive enough to hold it.
Just like Micro$oft... I'll care what you think when you produce the *signed* contract I got to *negotiate* with you. Until then, cry me a river...
There is absolutely no legal material to support this nonsense.
Basically, the networks HOPE that we will watch their commercials as we watch their shows.
If we skip over the commercials then it is not illegal, it is merely that viewage was below their expectations.
How many of you get up and do something during commercial breaks? Is this illegal too?
Obviously, if everyone stops viewing commercials then their business model starts to fail. However, they should invent a new one instead of claiming that the inadequacy of the old one is due to non-existent legal infractions.
Not to far in the future, I see DVD that pay for filled with adverts every 15 minutes, with, of course the fast forward disabled.
http://www.ajaygautam.com
You can't say there is a contract unless you have something in writting. Hell, the idiot doesn't even have anything verbal, and that would be a task. If he is going to claim a contract with viewers, I think he is obligated to post it on their web site for everyone to read and review.
Then I bet we could find plenty of space where they have faulted on their side of the agreement, like producing quality shows. HA!
"Your having a bad day when the voices in your head put you on hold"
what a load of balony!
if you skip the commercials you are thieving.
by golly dont go to the bathroom, get a drink of water or check on the wash!
the TV police are watching you
BEWARE!
Eventually, we will win and the devices will be legal. At that point, the industry will respond by using the bottom of your tv set to display ads all the time. Maybe they will move around so that people don't cover them with electric tape. And we might even get endorsements from characters during the show.
Why aren't we told when editors moderate our posts?
if this becomes too much of a problem they are just going to start putting ads at the bottom 1/5 of the screen throughout the entire program (like some do already). The point about a business model wanting legal back up once it's no longer viable was excellent. If I want to put up an electronic shield around my property so that the signal doesn't get through, that's fine and to think that I can't do that is just as rediculous as what they are saying now...
Nielson ratings are not affected by video recorders the same way that actually watching the program live does. When a program is being recorded by a Nielson family, although Nielson sees that and reports it to the network, they also report that it _was_ recorded. This additional information allows them make more sophisticated decisions than simply whether or not to keep a program on the air. For example, if a popular show happens to be one that is most popular with time shifters, the network may try to move it to a different time to increase live viewership, but not actually cancel the program outright.
Dear Jamie Kellner,
I'm sorry for stealing your ads. I hereby return them to you on the tape enclosed with this letter. Hoping you can ever forgive me, I remain,
Sincerely yours,
T. van Erven
If there is hope, it lies in the trolls.
J a m i e --- K e l l n e r
I so thought it was a joke at first. "Contract with the network?" I didn't click on anything?
Sadly, this is the mindset of today's media. They based their revenue so heavily around advertising, that they are addicted to it.
Now, the result will end up being "paid" network TV. But, someone has to pay to have the shows made, I guess.
So since there is a contract that I have to view commercials, does this mean I cant get up and goto the washroom while they are on? or even change the channel when a commercial is playing?
Does this mean that the use of picture-in-picture (PIP) televisions also constitutes theft?
I can think of *very* few uses of PIP beyond skipping commercials. Not only does PIP allow one to largely ignore commercials, but it also lets the viewer go and watch ANOTHER network's programming. I'm stealing content from two sources at once, because I'm not watching the ads on either station.
It is a generaly known fact that television networks show advertisements as a form of revenue.
It is also generaly understood that allowing bringing you your programming is a service rendered to you in return for other goods and services.
Thus a television viewer should understand an implied agreement that, as part of their payment for the services, they should subject themselves to the advertisments.
I know there are a lot of people here with the mindset that any data transmittible should be done unrestricted and available to anyone, and I agree with that ideal, but in the world as present it isn't an acheivalbe goal.
We live in a capitalist state (those of us in the USA at least) which means you have to make money to live.
We can hope that we can someday get our OS for free, our television for free, our food and medicine for free, but for this world to come about, we would have to be willing to work for nothing...
Little Brother, watching the watchers
Before the show starts, the viewer has to get
into a special chair that immediately shackles them in, head, wrists, waist, and ankles, and keeps them in there until it ends. When the commercial begins, little robotic arms keep they eyelids open.
Or how about a quiz-style questionare before
the next segment begins, that the user has to
answer, kind of like the old AD&D copy
protect. Something like
"In the second Toyota commerial that was
aired during the break , what was the third
word in they song they used in the background"?
That should guarantee that the auduience watches
all of the commercials, right?
I've just recently noticed that some rather smart companies have started adapting to the new advertising environment and advertise at the theater before the movie starts. Now, this is pretty commonplace for the "Go buy some $6 popcorn and a $4 soda to wash it down" and advertising slideshow that we've all come to know and love (and show up 5 minutes late to the movie to skip), but the new plan seems to be to drop actual TV-like advertising on the very captive audience. While I see this as an excellent adaptation, I believe that I've already paid my $20 to get in to see this movie, and find it quite offensive when it takes place.
When did it become the legislative responsibility to support your business model?
Show me what you want, and I'll show you how to get along without it...
I wonder if they ever stop to think of some of the benefits of viewers using PVRs. The main example I can think of is how my TiVo records things I might like. When it comes up with something worthwhile, I watch it. Maybe this will introduce me to a new channel, which could lead to me viewing more shows, which would drive up the ratings. The ratings for are what drives up advertising costs. They aren't looking at this from the proper perspective.
BigCat79
"The dead have risen and are voting Republican!" --Bart Simpson
Before the show starts, the viewer has to get
into a special chair that immediately shackles them in, head, wrists, waist, and ankles, and keeps them in there until it ends. When the commercial begins, little robotic arms keep they eyelids open.
Or how about a quiz-style questionaire before
the next segment begins, that the user has to
answer, kind of like the old AD&D copy
protect. Something like
"In the second Toyota commerial that was
aired during the break, what was the third
word in the song that they played in the background"?
This should guarantee that the auduience watches
all of the commercials, right?
I'll watch your commercials when you fill the space between with something less insipid.
Do not touch -Willie
a social contract perhaps?
I might have some ethical obligation to watch the commercials since they pay for the programming. But in reality, what commercials pay for is a "likelyhood" that people will buy a product if it is given exposure, so I am no more obligated to watch the commercial for my programming than I am obligated to BUY THE PRODUCT because I watch the program.
Come on, do you really even think thier audience can work a PVR? just kidding
"I only watch good tv, you know anything with Chuck Norris"
Sorry, but you're wrong. Perhaps some advertising doesn't work in your cultural group, but you can't just say that no advertising works.
My wife runs a newspaper ad every other week to promote her new business (she's a doctor). At least half of her patients answered "newspaper ad" on their new-patient surveys, and many have directly told her that they decided to come to her because her ad seemed professional and she looked friendly in the picture.
So, we have overt advertising, and it's working! I don't pretend to believe this means that all ads are effective, but if you believe that no advertising does its job, then you're absolutely, provably wrong.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Peeing is stealing according to this guy.
Product placement would be great. Instead of having a show that is interrupted every 8-10 minutes, it would be a continuous show. Apparently Hollywood already thought of this in The Truman Show. Remember how the whole show was for sale with products placed everywhere.
I'm not particularly sure how the spectrum licensing works out for broadcasters these days (the networks did earn the right to split one analog 'channel' into 4 roughly analog-resolution digital channels via the ATSC spec, getting 3 'good-as-real' channels for free), but this totally ignores the cost of equipment, and FCC certification for same. A high-quality broadcast transmitter of any sort is not particularly cheap, and any broadcaster is required to get inspectors in every few years and pay for the privilege.
On top of that, consider how much NBC had to pay the cast of Seinfeld for the last seasons of one of the few shows that didn't *totally* suck. Ad revenue really does help pay for that stuff.
Cable and satellite ads are more specious, but they come down to the addition of revenue for the individual channels. FWIW, I sat through Solaris on Turner's TCM, and didn't see a single ad during the movie- recycling the back catalog = direct profit, rather than production + profit.
Turner's comments were bozotic, but the point was pretty obvious- for years, there's been a 'social contract' in the broadcasting business model- you get the big productions (Survivor, or if you want to pick something else that sucked but Slashdotters are more likely to enjoy, Sci-Fi's Dune remake) in exchange for the guarantee that people are watching the ads. Legal or not, an ad-skipping device for the masses kills the business model, and the networks are going to be forced to be more intrusive if they want their fat profits. Popup ads, scrolling ads, pledge drives...
The PVR makers could've avoided this direct conflit if they just allowed for user editing. Mark the ad points during your first (with-ad) viewing, and you can create a personal fair-use edit for later viewing. Unfortunately, everyone's damn lazy, and demands the "skip ads!" button rather than FF/RW/edit controls with 'substantial non-infringing use,' as it were. (Yes, I know it's not actually infringement, but you can see the point.)
Whenever I buy a magazine, I automatically flip past the ads to the articles. This is an automatic process which takes no special interaction on my part. Am I therefore a thief?
Similarly, when a commercial comes on TV, I either walk the dog, go grab a snack, hit the washroom, or change the channel. This too is a completely automated process, handled by the lower functions of my brain without ever entering my consciousness. It's like blinking or breathing, you don't even notice you're doing it.
I suppose I'm somehow violating a sacred contract between me and the folks to whom I have already given my money for the priviledge of doing whatever the hell I choose to with their product , right? I guess I'd better feel guilty now.... nope, sorry, I can't manage it. I'm just a bad, bad person.
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
First, it seems to me that if there is an implied contract between TV viewers and TV broadcasters to view commercials, then there is also an implied contract between readers and magazine/newspaper publishers to view their adds because "otherwise you couldn't get the" article "on an ad-supported basis". So don't go skipping those adds :) (Of course, deep linking at news sites violates the same principle.)
Second, Mr. Kellner desires to broaden the definition of stealing, just as the record producers did. This is a powerful method for generating sympathy. For example people have broadened the work "killing" when they say that American drug companies are "killing" people in third world countries by denying them AIDS drugs. If someone bottles a cure for aging and only sells 10 bottles for high prices, is he "killing" the other 100 million people on the planet that die of age related illnesses?
Both the implied contract idea and the broadened definition of stealing idea are designed to limit the consumer. Let the consumer beware!
...by this logic, changing channels during a commercial break would also constitute theft.
Man, from all the crimes I seem to unknowingly commit these days, I make the Mafia look like a troupe of girl scouts.
I'm just glad I don't have one. The networks can suck my hairy ass.
I've watched the Victoria's Secret commercials plenty of times!
They should have made a fortune by now.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
I pay through the nose for Time Warner cable, not so I can watch assinine television shows but rather for the high-speed cable data connection (1.2Mbps downstream, 384kbps upstream). What I've found is, I really don't like what's on TV most of the time so I generally blow it off. I might flip around for an hour or so if I'm really burned out at the end of a day, but that's about it. And, I haven't been using my home internet connection much either. I mostly just use it for large downloads, and next year I'll be using it to submit coursework for my Master's (emailed tarballs and so on).
Honestly -- I almost never watch commercials. As soon as the commercial starts (assuming I'm watching the boob tube in the first place), I generally mute the TV and pick up a magazine. When, out of the corner of my eye, I see the show come back on I unmute the TV and put my glasses back on. I reject any assumption that I have "agreed" to watch the commercials as absurd. Do you know that here in the States, they've recently started hawking prescription drugs on commercials, without telling you what the drug does? It's amazing. There was a commercial for "the little purple pill" which shows people frolicking on the beach, and so on, and has them saying how great their lives are now, but NEVER SAYS WHAT THE FUCKING PILL DOES!!! This was even satirized in a comedy sketch somewhere, I think -- but the satire didn't even have to go far from the original commercial, it was so wacked out and weird. I think that American television is pure shit. It's morally totally bankrupt, and full of commercials for things you don't need, want, or need to hear about ("Try our new Herpes cream! You can have sex more often!" UGH UGH UGH!). I swear, if I have to listen to one more fucking tampon commercial, with some idiot bimbo talking about "feeling fresh" I'm going to kill my television.
Sorry about that. I'm calmer now.
Ok, basically, it's like this. Television is pure shit. Any news you get on TV, you can get with more immediacy on the internet. If you want to watch movies, you can find those (legally) on the internet at one of the movie sites, like scifichannel.com or atomfilms.com, which now that we can use Crossover, is fully accessible (except for the Star Wars fan movies, which generally crash MediaPlayer's plugin).
The only thing TV is good for (and I'll admit it's good for this) is when you've just come home after coding all day and you're feeling totally baked, and just want to turn your brain off for an hour, so you watch "The Real World" where you can laugh at the indignities liberal arts majors are willing to endure to get on TV. Say, are those retards funny, or what? And, they take themselves so seriously. I find it amazing that someone over 20 years old can actually be such a moron. But I digress. And, I read magazines during the commercials. DIRTY magazines, ha ha! Well... Linux magazines... But then, maybe a nonprogrammer wouldn't get a woody from that...
A PVR is just a device from freeing the viewer from the limits of airtimes, same as a VCR.
Perhaps PVRs tweak them off so much because their home video departments get nothing out of you owning a PVR? Hmm...
Comments about whether or not this would be a good thing aside, the networks and channels like Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi, Food channel, History Channel.. none of these would survive without people actually watching the commercials that run.
I work in TV. Wrongo.
These are even newer models. These stations would have never survived if they didn't have a base that would have requested that those channels be put on. That is a totally different captive audience... and a totally different model. Specific cable channel viewers are much more active. Just look at Scifi channel watchers. I call my friends when I want to catch them right after Farscape... cuz I know where they are.
Advertisers put up with VCRs, because even with those you're still getting a fair amount of the commercial. But a device where you don't even know what commercial aired? The commercial that is paying for the program?
Actually, advertisers should like VCRs. They helped the Cable boom, which really helped advertisers.
(More channels? More need for VCRs... more channels? Less programming you can catch on a fixed scchedule, need to get VCR... Full market saturation with VCRs and cable? LESS YOU PAY TO GET TO YOUR TARGET F*N DEMOGRAPHICS! Also, the more likely they are to change their viewing habits to your real-time advertising.)
Commercial TV needs either advertising, or else they have to become a pay channel like HBO.
Well, how bout a TV channel that runs at 4x speed or better and has a box to decode shows without ads in them and charges a nominal fee? Like a dedicated Tivo channel? Would that be so bad? YOU KNOW SOMEONE HAS THOUGHT OF THAT. Look. All we're saying is that we are not going to pay for them to come in my house and force me to do anything.
THIS KIND OF LEGISLATION IS GETTING OUT OF HAND.
One of the problems we've had in defending Fair Use rights is the difficulty of framing the issues in "Joe Sixpack" terms. Use it as an example of the legislation Hollywood wants to purchase (the point can be illustrated with a demonstration of a DVD that has fast-forward lockouts, if you have one available).
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
...the reason why we don't watch the commercials is because there's so goddamn many of them. In a 30 minute show, there's usually 3-4 2 minute commercial blocks. That means nearly 1/3rd of the show is commercials.
Perhaps they should take their cue from Japan. If you've ever watched fansubs (or even some DVDs) of anime, you'll notice that there's only 1 commercial break, right in the middle. Hell, on the fansubs, I watch the commercials 'cause they're funny as hell.
Less commercials means we aren't desensitized, and ad executives can charge more per commercial, because they're a rarer commodity. Think about it.
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
... a family was arrested a few minutes ago for getting up to make sandwiches during a commercial break. They are being charged with grand larceny for missing the latest ad for AOL 7.0.
Next thing you know, they're going to say that my custom C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file pointing doubleclick ad banner references to localhost is thievery . . . I think of it along the same lines as "ignore the National Inquirer while in the supermarket checkout line" . . . which incidently I now do by boycotting supermarkets which litter their checkout aisles with magazine trash.
So in other words there saying if you dont watch the commercials you are stealing it?
So if i watch something on T.V. and turn it off as soon as there is a commercial and turn it back on as soon as the commercials are over, im `stealing` ?
This is above all stupid i think. People use PVR so they can watch something they missed, or something they like a lot, So now its time to get mad at people that enjoy the shows that you produce ?
- Zac Epkes
I got rid of my TV. I resented paying money to the BBC for dumbed down programs. The TV news used to really wind me up. They would strike poses like "rising house prices are good" (duh, the cost of housing is a cost folks) or "tariff barriers will protect jobs" (That really worked good in the 1930's didn't it).
Now I've discovered message boards. If some one says something dumb, you can post a refutation. No more passive media for me.
It is not hard to fill the hole in your life when you get rid of your TV.
Hiding at the back of the second violins in the
Stockbridge and Newtown Cummunity Orchestra does it for me.
come on editors...
The full interview is
HERE
- "Theft" (of something that cannot be stolen)
- "Breach of contract" (without having a contract in the first place)
- "Piracy" (which is often confused with fair use)
I find it absolutely amazing to see how any unprofitable situation is caused by "illegal" behavior, and the only solution is more laws & government intervention to prosecute the "thieves".The Kellners of the world seem to have their own laws and contracts that the rest of us don't seem to be aware of. It must be really great to draft your own laws and unilaterally enforce unwritten contracts on billions of people. Could we skip all the BS and simply let the entertainment/media industry print as much money as it wants?
This guy is a nutcase! The contract is /not/ entered into by the user and the advertiser, but rather the broadcaster and advertiser. The advertiser will pay for amount of viewers regardless of who watches the ad. Ah well, at least this guy stands as living proof of what [working in] tv does to your brain.
Take it easy on 2600!
Here's the full interview
from here
[inside.com]
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Content's King
Jamie Kellner controls Turner's programming riches. What he does with them could speed up--or slow down--the transformation of television.
by Staci D. Kramer
Cableworld
Monday, April 29, 2002
A big piece of the future of television is in the hands of Jamie Kellner. Kellner, a launcher of broadcast networks, sits atop the empire built by Ted Turner, who acquired programming libraries and turned them into cable leaders. Now Kellner must steer Turner's networks through a media recession and find the best way to exploit the company's vast resources in a new era of television, filled with digital promises and opportunities.
This time last spring Jamie Kellner was at the center of intrigue. The new chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting System was brought in just as the company was reeling from the wave of layoffs and cost-cutting that came along with the AOL Time Warner merger. Kellner, who launched and was running the WB, was handpicked by AOL TW co-COO Bob Pittman to run the company's ad-supported television properties. Pittman told Cable World that, in Kellner, he had someone with "terrific vision for where the network industry is headed," someone who could push Turner forward.
Kellner helped make Fox the fourth broadcast network and created the fifth network, the WB. He was responsible for putting the risque Married With Children on Fox. Kellner also had the sense to put the Aaron Spelling family show 7th Heaven on the WB. His new Turner reports wondered how he would apply those skills and sensibilities. How many more heads would roll? And just where would the WB fit in?
A year later many of the faces on the air at CNN and the revamped Headline News have changed, but most of the people running the show, including Turner Entertainment's Brad Siegel, are the same. Kellner brought with him Garth Ancier and Brad Turell, but Cartoon Network powerhouse Betty Cohen, who left for a mysterious in-house project, was replaced from within. The biggest change came at CNN when News Group chairman Tom Johnson suddenly resigned--totally his idea, says Kellner--and was replaced with Time Inc.'s Walter Isaacson, who brought along heavyweight journalism credentials combined with his rep for energizing Time magazine. The rebranding of CNN was already underway when the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the subsequent war in Afghanistan changed the dynamic of cable news. As AOL Time Warner touted in its mixed first-quarter earnings report, CNN was up 55% in total viewers and 50% in ratings year to year, while Headline News jumped 29% in total viewers. Fox News Channel may be winning the battles for ratings and publicity, but CNN's improvements are considerable.
On the entertainment side, Kellner was given the chance to experiment with spreading the same content across multiple channels. The WB started to feed shows like Charmed to TNT, and the results have encouraged more of the same. He also set up a second in-house studio to create content for TNT, TBS and the WB.
While Pittman focuses on underperforming AOL, at least he doesn't have to worry about Turner. "In just over a year on the job, Jamie has worked with the teams at CNN, TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network and the WB and our other programming channels to further extend these powerhouse brands and foster even closer collaboration within our expanded Networks Group," said Pittman.
In an interview at his CNN office in Atlanta, Kellner discussed the last 14 months and his plans for the future. The following is an edited transcript.
CW: How is Turner doing now?
JK: I think the entertainment networks are in great shape. The growth of Cartoon and hooking Cartoon and WB with the Warner animation studio and Cartoon studio--I think our kids business is going to be strong. I like the kids business a lot, so that's a fun one. We've put a lot of new programming on CNN, and we have Connie Chung's show still to go on and a lot of upgrades in our facilities and other little changes we're making, so I think we're going to keep working really hard on CNN, and with what's going on in this world right now, it's going to be a pretty iffy place for a while. CNN International is an important part of that. We've been trying to get into native tongue, and I think that's a place where we can do it with partners, where we bring in our global newsgathering, our expertise, marry it with their expertise, and I think that's a good strategy.
CW: When you got here did you feel the lines for each network were clearly defined?
JK: From a content standpoint, yeah.... The great thing about the Turner Entertainment networks is by having Ted be the visionary--who in many ways helped lead the cable industry into the cable programming business in a bunch of different categories--we're 'first in' in a bunch of different categories. Ted loved programming, so he was always willing to have the company invest so we were able to get out in front of everybody else. By adding funds, bringing TNT in as well, all of a sudden we had more shelf space, more capacity for programming than any other networks. What's going to happen in the next couple of years at TBS as we add all the sitcoms is there's not going to be anyplace anywhere over the air or cable where you can get as high a concentration of the very best sitcoms as TBS.
CW: Is this like a modern TV Land?
JK: This is different because TV Land took programming from the shelf and said that there's still value in it.... The fact that we continue to step up in the outside marketplace and buy packages is an example of what we have done in the past and what we plan to do: We want to have the best.
On the original programming front we've restructured ourselves into a model we think will be far more efficient and lead to better programming. We have a lot of experience between all of us in making original programming.... The cable industry has a disadvantage because the way you get to the hit shows is by developing a lot of product, and out of that gigantic development process of 100 scripts you'll end up making 20 to 25 pilots and out of the 20 to 25 pilots you may make five to six series and out of the five to six series you may get one or two shows.... The broadcast networks--that's been their model. The cable model has been to start out with a limited number of made-for-television movies, go to 13 episodes from a script, bypassing the pilot process because they haven't had the resources available to heavily invest in program development. There has been less original programming that has succeeded, that has become a hit. Certainly South Park became a hit in many ways and propelled [Comedy Central] forward. I'm not suggesting that there hasn't been a quality effort, but I'm suggesting that the odds are against you that you'll have that big hit.
CW: What are you seeing come out of the studios?
JK: There's a couple of pieces I think are very interesting. We've done a pilot of The Lone Ranger, which is a WB development, but we're doing a two-hour movie. And since the two-hour movie easily fits onto TNT because of the success with the Western genre over the years, that one becomes a natural project where we could help finance the project by selling a couple of runs to TNT. It would have been much harder to do a two-hour movie without TNT there. When we see it my biggest fear about the Western is: Will it play young enough for the WB? If it doesn't and it's still a good show, it could easily play more broadly on TNT.
CW: Can cable networks afford to be more committed?
JK: Wait longer for something to develop? Definitely. The ability to play it multiple times is greater in cable.... In cable you can give it a couple of airings and try to get more exposure for it and the multiple airings will come up a larger audience.
The industry has now experimented with multiplexing, and the results so far say that you can play programs on two different networks and get more new viewers to watch them.... Most industries that don't pay attention to satisfying the demands of their customers fail. You have to realize that television has changed dramatically as much as any other industry I can think of in the past ten to 15 years. American lifestyle has changed dramatically. People are on the Internet a lot, out of the home a lot, having families at a different age than they did ten to 15 years ago. The idea that you can put programs on once a week and expect them to reach their full potential of popularity and their full audience is a joke. If you're interested in satisfying the needs and desires of our customers, we have to offer them multiple times in the week, and that means probably across multiple networks, because the broadcast networks do not have the shelf space to play their program many times during the week.
CW: When you started in your current job, Headline News was on the verge of being remade.
JK: They hadn't really started yet. It was the allocation of resources where they could really make it over versus trying to tinker around with it. The company really hadn't really separated Headline News from CNN, hadn't tried to differentiate the mission of Headline News from CNN, so the two networks had similar demographics, and the resources that would enable them to do what's on the air today weren't available.... The good news is that [CNN/U.S. EVP and general manager] Teya Ryan was someone who was well worth making the investment in, a very imaginative thinker, a very passionate hardworking person, someone who's willing to take chances--and a quality journalist.
CW: Have you had to have conversations with the folks at AOL TW--with Bob Pittman or anybody else--and explain why CNN doesn't have Fox News Channel's numbers?
JK: They wouldn't want CNN to go there. There's nobody who's a better believer in the power of brands than Bob Pittman. I've done a lot of different kinds of television shows over the years--some of them very responsible and respectful [like] 7th Heaven [and] shows like Married With Children and Cops. I think you can put all different kinds of shows on the air.... That's the beauty of television...advertisers are willing to pay much higher premiums to reach certain groups of viewers than other groups of viewers. There's a reason. In the news business, people pay for credibility. They always have and they always will.... CNN is the credible source in this country, and advertisers support it because of that.
CW: Have you had any pressure from advertisers?
JK: Our business is so much better this year than it was last year--it's remarkable. Rates are higher. Our CPM is up above scatter last year. Business is starting to get healthy. Scatter is well above the pacing of last year.... The CPM dropped significantly the previous year. So when you look at the end of the year, scatter is not going to go up enough to mitigate the lower prices for the upfront, so you're not going to end up with a top season. But if you compare scatter this year to scatter last year, the market has definitely firmed. There's more money in the market, and the prices are going up.
CW: The broadcasters--especially when it comes to sports programming rights--say the cable networks have it easier because of their dual revenue streams. Do you feel like you have a certain cushion there?
JK: I don't think so at all. I think just the opposite.... I think our company believes that it has to act responsibly to the cable industry maybe more than other network providers that don't own a big piece of the cable industry. With the basketball contract, I was ready to walk away from the NBA deal. Not that I would want to; it's a valuable franchise. If we couldn't have created a deal that had enough value in it for us and the operators, I would have walked away. The enhancements in our contract--I watch a lot of basketball, but for me when we get to postseason play is when I get really interested--and the enhancements to the package on postseason play are extraordinary. I think by having a multiyear package--the All-Star Game and All-Star package is an event that we will be able to make a really important event on cable, one of the most important events of the year that's exclusively on cable. The fact that there will be no games played against us on Thursday night--we want to focus and promote Thursday night into a basketball event much like Monday Night Football is a football event.
CW: How does the proposed AOL-NBA network fit in?
JK: If the cable operators are interested in supporting another sports network, that with David Stern and ourselves we could over the next three to four years become a formidable competitor in the category. If that's in the interest of cable operators, they'll support the plan; if it's not in their interest, they won't support it. David is out there discussing that with them today--meaning right now.
CW: There's a feeling among cable operators that if the guys who own the teams and own cable systems aren't going to get behind this, it's just not going to work.
JK: This is something David's been talking about a long time. It requires the support of the major cable operators, and if they think the business is worthy of being entered into, I'm sure they'll give David every opportunity to understand the strategy, understand where it's going. And my guess is they would like to be supportive of something the league is involved in if they are in business with them already. If they don't think it makes sense for them, for their other businesses, then they'll say no.
CW: How did you get Time Warner Cable on board?
JK: I think there's recognition in the company of an opportunity. We have a lot of assets and we can afford to invest if we want to in that space. We know we can't do it without Comcast, Cablevision, Charter and others that have to be interested as well. David Stern has a unique relationship with a bunch of his owners. If he can't get them to sit down and say, here's what the opportunity is and it's a good opportunity, if he can't get them to agree to it then who could?
CW: What are the dynamics like now with you and the other pieces of AOL Time Warner?
JK: We're all running our own businesses, certainly, but where something makes sense for one part of the company it's a lot easier to go in with the good relationships that exist throughout the company at this point, because we all sit together every two weeks. I know [Time Warner Cable chairman and CEO] Glenn Britt very well through that. I didn't know [former Time Warner Cable CEO, current CEO of AOL TW's Interactive video division] Joe Collins. Joe was in here for lunch last week, but we didn't spend a lot of time together. Everybody was off running their own businesses. Now every two weeks we sit down together. We have breakfast together, we work together. We share each other's good news and bad news, usually in New York. I think in many ways that has broken the ice...between the divisions. Instead of festering, problems are put on the table, and we find resolutions. I think everybody is certainly rooting for each other. At the end of the day we're responsible for our bottom lines, which means we have to operate our businesses wisely.
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VOD's Ad-Skipping Irks Kellner
Jamie Kellner would be the first to tell you he is no VOD visionary. What he is, though, is the chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting, which puts him in charge of what could be one of the most potent collections of VOD content anywhere.
The eclectic catalogue spans CNN's multiple networks, Turner South's cooking show from Commander's Palace, the TNT library of original movies including its successful Westerns, The Powerpuff Girls, WB hits and sports along with series being developed at two Turner studios. It's a VOD library few, if any, cable or broadcast entity could match.
And yet, ask Jamie Kellner about the opportunities (or challenges) for his company and VOD won't crack the top of his list. He's still too busy making the most out of today's reality: opting for multiplay and multiplex, which he describes as the low-tech way to offer multiple viewing options, creating more network-owned content, pumping up the networks Turner already has (particularly CNN).
If and when Turner gets into VOD in a serious way, it will be pushed there by MSO demand. Think reactive, not proactive.
That doesn't mean Kellner is ignoring the potential of VOD. Far from it. Along with creating and owning content comes control. Outside contracts increasingly include VOD clauses--TNT, for instance, has VOD rights during the windows of some of its exclusive movies.
It's just that he has little patience or time for something that after more than a decade of buzz has finally graduated to trial status.
While Kellner was building two successful broadcast networks--Fox and the WB--and amassing Acme Communications, his own chain of television stations, VOD was on the industry list of next big things (think PPV, ITV, HDTV) that never quite happened. (One network executive recalls graduating from business school 13 years ago when "pay-per-view was just about to explode as a business.") Like the Eiffel Tower, which looks like it's just around the corner even when it's miles away, VOD was an optical illusion of sorts.
Now VOD is part of the alphabet soup that makes up the jargon of cable these days. Kellner talked to Cable World contributing editor Staci D. Kramer about VOD and his concerns about PVRs.
CW: You said earlier that you're getting to know the cable operators better.
JK: This is my second year on the NCTA board, and I've gotten to know some of the guys by going to board meetings and listening carefully, trying to hear more about what their needs are.
CW: What do you hear?
JK: I would say that everybody's focused on costs.
CW: They're looking for alternative revenue streams.
JK: We sell that hard. One thing about our networks is they sell well. They're well branded, so it's easier for the local sales people to sell our networks. And delivering marketing plans and promotions and things that help the operators sell their inventory is important to us.... I think what's going to be on the digital tier is important to them.
CW: Where do you fit into that? Offering alternative product for the digital tier? Making it possible to move material to digital from analog?
JK: I don't think you want to move your product from analog to digital unless you have very narrow networks that are supportable on a digital tier. Most of ours are much broader networks than that. What is the programming model going to be in digital? What can you afford to produce and do with a high enough quality level to satisfy viewers on digital? There's probably going to be a lot of multiplexing and time shifting and things like that that provide a lot of convenience like HBO provides to its subscribers.... Taking our networks TBS and TNT, multiplexing them, taking the sports out, putting the movies in prime time--there's ways you can repackage our networks that would add a lot of convenience for people as well.
CW: How do you do that without destabilizing the current model?
JK: How would that destabilize it? We'd be running the exact same spots. It would all be incremental viewership. That's just one idea. I'm a big believer we have to make television more convenient or we will drive the penetration of PVRs and things like that, which I'm not sure is good for the cable industry or the broadcast industry or the networks.
CW: Why not?
JK: Because of the ad skips.... It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming.
CW: What if you have to go to the bathroom or get up to get a Coke?
JK: I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom. But if you formalize it and you create a device that skips certain second increments, you've got that only for one reason, unless you go to the bathroom for 30 seconds. They've done that just to make it easy for someone to skip a commercial.
CW: What if I'm using my PVR to rewind a story on CNN or pause during Moneyline With Lou Dobbs? That's good for you, isn't it, if I can keep watching the network when I might otherwise miss the shows?
JK: Is it good for me? It's good to make it easier for consumers to watch the programs they want to watch. I'm not opposed to consumers getting a program without commercials in it. But they have to create a new model that charges them for that programming the way HBO charges them.
CW: Operators are putting PVRs in their boxes. A lot of people are getting into this concept and operators are saying, hey, if people are willing to pay for SVOD give us something we can sell. How do VOD and SVOD fit in with Turner?
JK: Our company is working on a number of different VOD models. The question's whether these are going to be head-end-based models or in-home models and whether ultimately there's going to be a license required for use of the copyrighted material, or whether people make a bet the Betamax case can cover this usage. My bet would be the Betamax case is not going to cover this usage. What was a highly questionable decision with the new technology will not stand up to the potential of the digital world. Whether there's going to be a challenge or whether it's going to be legislation, there's going to be some way in the digital world that we can protect copywritten material. I think that that's inevitable.
CW: The New York Times has an electronic edition that disappears a certain time after it's downloaded. Do you see a possibility that I download that show and you give me a license to watch it three times and then it disappears?
JK: Again, I think that whether it's legislation, whether it's new technology, whether it's challenging Betamax, whatever it is in the video marketplace, we're going to have to find a way to protect copywritten material or there will be less of it made or it will not be made available in windows where it's not protectable and that's not good for consumers, so there's got to be some way it's protected. The audio marketplace--Napster and other companies had a great game going. They figured out how to use the Internet to give music away that they didn't own and make it into a business. Everyone was planning on getting rich there at one point. The companies that are financing and own copyrights stepped in and challenged it, and it's not a very rosy picture for them right now. I think the idea of copyright is very important--and it's respected by the courts and our government--and as people realize the potential of what the Internet with digital can do in terms of distribution, I think there's a good decision to be made that will protect the copyright.... Someone's going to have to recognize that once we've entered the digital world people can send out perfect copies without any costs to large numbers of people in many different territories of the world [and] can dramatically disrupt the system that we've built that allows us to produce and distribute content and pay for it and make...a profit in the investment, and that has to be addressed.
CW: Assuming this is dealt with satisfactorily and you feel comfortable with the way content is being distributed digitally, what are some of the models that might work for a Turner?
JK: We have classic films. We have Western films. We have a lot of different things. We have original films every year that could go into VOD. There's a lot of stuff that could go into VOD. We also have exclusive windows for pictures that can go into VOD while we have them. I think there's a lot of product in our networks that could go into VOD.
CW: Would it be a revenue-sharing model that would work best where every time I download something you get money and the operator gets money?
JK: I think that these are new rights that have not yet been exploited, and viewers are going to be moved eventually to the new service. So I've paid money to exploit that picture on my service, so I'm not going to let anybody else do it unless I've recouped whatever loss I would have and make some money. The studio that has the copyright that's licensed it to me is going to say that they need something or they don't want you to do the deal, or they're going to tell you "you don't have a right to exploit this new area," and I would say they'd be right as well. The cable operator is going to say that this is a new service that they're making available and they will be entitled to make a profit. It's going to require a lot of cooperation from a lot of different people to do it. At the end of the day, though, it'll provide customer satisfaction for cable, more use of the cable service and that's good for all of us. It's somewhat inevitable. Hopefully the ad-supported network will be protected...there was one button I heard of that could eliminate the entire commercial pod. That would just remove all the network's promotion, all the sponsors that paid for the film and obviously that's not acceptable to anybody.
CW: If cable operators are putting PVRs in their boxes would you like to see them make a decision that they're not going to put ad-skipping PVRs in?
JK: Yes. Yes.
CW: Is this something you've talked to any of them about?
JK: I've spoken out about this a number of times. Again, it doesn't handle the deal that exists. The only payment for a lot [of content] is the willingness of the viewer to watch the spot, the commercial. That's part of the contract between the network and the viewer. For anybody to step in between that content and encourage the viewer to disregard the payment in time that he's making--I think everybody should fight those people...or let the viewer have a subscription model where they pay for that, in which case the monies can be taken in and distributed back to cover the loss of the ad revenue. This is the time to honestly address it; also, for people to deal with it. If you think it's something that's good for consumers, give them the choice of either watching the commercials or paying incremental money for the service and make sure that people in the business understand the economic damage they can do by licensing this product.
CW: If VOD were delivered with all the commercials intact would that make you more comfortable with the concept?
JK: Yeah. The skipping of commercials is part of it. The second part of it is whether anybody has the right to take product and deliver it in a different way on a subscription basis by getting between the consumer and the network that owns the product with the service.
CW: What if you're cooperating with the delivery?
JK: That's fine. If I've made a decision to do it, I'm licensing them the product.
CW: Have you started to write in VOD rights in?
JK: Right now between networks and studios nobody wants to deal with it because there's no real money there yet, and so it's not worth fighting over quite yet. At sometime down the road when it starts to grow, they'll start fighting over it.
CW: In doing research for this interview one of the few mentions I found of Jamie Kellner and VOD was in a roundup that featured an NCTA session about the future of VOD and a story about Fox adding a third night of programming. Ten years later I'm sitting down to do an interview and we're still talking about the future of VOD.
JK: I can only give you the network side of it. The network side of it is to protect our business, protect our rights. We believe in the value of copyrights and the licenses that we've got. The other side of it is more of the Glenn Britt [chairman and CEO of Time Warner Cable] side, which is probably where you should go for the other side of this because mine is really not trying to get into the VOD business as much as making sure it doesn't adversely affect the businesses I've got.
CW: If operators say to you "we want it," then you're going to find a way to work with them.
JK: I encourage innovation, and I believe that we should try to satisfy the marketplace, make it as easy and convenient for people to get what they want out of their cable subscriptions, so I'm all for that. I'm for multiplex and multiplay because in many ways it does a similar thing, and it doesn't add in the cost of VOD. It's sort of half a step in the same direction for those who don't want to take the full step, and it's something that can be done relatively quickly and easily. But I'm certainly not opposed, and I encourage the idea of exploring new models with new technology that make it better for people. At the same time, we have to make sure we don't damage the existing businesses, whether it's pay-per-view business--what does it do to that on the cable side--and that we don't damage the advertising-supported networks, cable and broadcast.
CW: You were part of the fragmenting, in a sense, of the viewing audience by creating new broadcast networks. PVRs, VOD, even PPV, all of these things, are almost the ultimate fragmentation of an audience. If we're all watching at different times, we can't have that next-day "did you see what happened last night?" Does that change the way you have to deal with things as a programmer?
JK: I don't think it changes the way you make programming. I think it may change the way you market programming. If you have something you really, really believe in and you have a large installed base of PVRs out there, you may be willing to invest a lot more money on the launching and the marketing just to get the PVR/VOD viewer to go home and log in to receive the show because you can probably get a lot of additional viewership. If you're against tough competition, you could put a program against Friends and if there's a large PVR base you could try to pick up people who are still going to watch Friends, but will you watch the next half-hour, the next hour? You pick up People magazine and see this ad for a new show and you see a lot of promotion on the air and if it's a good enough idea maybe you go home and log in on your PVR. You may get very aggressive at promotion because you have two shots at getting people there versus one.
CW: Is there a problem right now because you don't know who's watching on a PVR? Does that hurt you when it comes to advertising?
JK: No. You're not getting any Nielsen credit for it so it doesn't help you. I think they'll eventually figure how to get around that, how to measure them if there's enough of them out there. They'll make sure they have a representative sample of PVR households.
CW: Operators are seeing an uptick in the amount of money consumers are willing to pay for extra services.
JK: You test it and you see if the consumers embrace it. If the consumers embrace it-- as long as everybody can get fully paid for their rights--I'm certainly not going to fight something that's good for consumers as long as there's distribution of the results.
Your TV Imperiled by Pirates
Thu May 2, 9:42 AM ET
By Joe Dweeb Slashdot World News
WASHINGTON, April 29
Network executives were caught scrambling Wednesday as news broke that many commercial advertisers were losing revenue as their audiences fled for the stalls.
"It's a shocking development and terrible problem!", said one vice-president who declined to be identified.
"Our biggest advertisers have been on the phone all night, asking if I had any idea how extensive this problem was."
"I had to tell them that I had no idea. I believe that most Americans are patriotic and have learned to `hold it' until the end."
"Our advertisers rely on the contract we have with our viewers to watch commercials. If the viewers violate that trust by running to the bathroom between shows, then we won't be able to foot the bill to support all of the programming that America has come to love and respect."
"It's a tragedy! My congressional representative was brought to our headquarters at 7:00 am this morning for a three hour ten-on-one meeting to be briefed about the severity of the problem."
"We're proposing legislation requiring a technological solution to the problem that will be transparent, convenient and easy to use."
"All toilets are to be fitted with electroshock devices to prevent their use in unauthorized ways that are in violation of the EULA to which TV viewers are implicitly agreeing by "click^H^H^H^H^H watching through".
"We feel that this will provide an agreeable solution that should meet everyone's needs for the preservation of high quality programming on television."
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I guess going to the bathroom during commercials is out of the question....
I have a PVR, best thing around. I can start a show, and pause at the first commercial break, and come back 10 minutes later, and compress time using the skip button. I can read, build a server, talk to a neighbor, make a phone call, etc. I record show and "turbo watch" them (about 22 minutes per 1/2 hour show).
God bless the PVR, it has broken the chains of watching shows when they are broadcast...
What OS do you want to abuse today?
I wonder if Turner will pay to have someone introduce legislation here in the US requiring the police to come and arrest any person leaving to go to the bathroom during the "spots"??
Or maybe for anyone operating/buying/selling a PVR??
I honestly believe that this is not far from Turner's true vision for our "Brave New World".
Sigh... Sounds like it may be time to throw out the ol' TV, eh??
-- Hey, I just heard this really big CRASH! BOOM! outside my house!
I don't have a tivo or etc but I do use a vcr to tape the few shows I watch. When I am watching my show I fast forward over the commercial spots. Some shows I can watch in 40 mins and others only 50 depending on the amount and length of the spots. ;)
The problem is that they are now pointing out as a 'added' feature that you can skip the commercial. If I remember correctly didn't they have vcr's that have a commercial skip? Mine is 2 or 3 years old so I don't know what is on the new vcr's.
The commercials don't bother me anyway when I watch live (non taped). When I am watching tv and the commercial's come on I just browse through directv's channel guide...the picture is still shown in the upper left corner of the screen but I ignore it while seeing what else is on the other 100+ channels.
"I have gone to look for myself, If I return before I get back keep me here"
Because he sounds like an idiot! First off, PVR's time shift. They don't remove commercials in real time. There is value in the first viewing, after that it loses it's value. If I wait two weeks to watch the commercial, a good chunk of them (like sale commercials...) are worthless. At least the show still gets watched, and it'll make the user more likely to watch it the following week.
Secondly, it proves that he's unwilling to adapt his business model to new market conditions. they act like it's a super difficult problem to look at ads, but it's not. It will be though, one day, because they're trying to place an ad everywhere we go! If I were dyslexic, I'd be going nuts in downtown Portland. The problem is eventually going to spread to the point that there'll be more ads for products than there is money to buy them. Think about that for a moment. Ads just won't work that way.
Third, my life is busier. I'm sure it's busier for a lot of people in the last 5 years. I have a shorter attention span. I can watch a show in 22 minutes instead of 30. That's quite a time savings! I can watch 3 shows in an hour! Why not cater to my short attention span needs? What about extra channels? Cable can support what, 125 channels? I'm getting maybe 60 right now. Why not take the Scifi Channel, and then add another Scifi Channel that does nothing but their TV show marathons? If I get bored watching TV, and I know I can find something at least semi interesting on this other channel, I'll head over there sans PVR. Ooops more commercials that way! But it's okay, since it's something I want to watch.
So yes, I'm glad he said this. It illustrates exactly why the Television Industry doesnt need their hand held by the government. With any luck, anybody who listens to him sees it the same way I do. And if they do, the Television Industry will either fall, or they'll revolutionize.
"Derp de derp."
It's never failed when recording any channel off of DirecTV satellite.
I don't know if it's the same technology but here's what it does: records the show, and after it's stopped (or powered off by the sat receiver) the VCR travels back through the tape and marks the commercials. It may not be using cue tones, but whatever it is (alien mind-rays?) it's worked perfectly every time I've recorded anything. On UPN, FOX, TLC, WB, ABC, etc.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
I might be inclined to watch commercials if they were at least entertaining. Hell, I saw some hilarious ones when I was in Italy.. I'd even watch a channel devoted to foreign tv ads. Why is it that advertising companies in this country think up some of lamest ideas imaginable?
Give me a freaking break. How exactly does a standard VCR not fit the same mold? I agree - overt advertising is nauseating at best and doesn't work.
--
Turner is owned by Time Warner, which is owned by AOL, right? Well, AOL is a major shareholder/partner of Tivo:
s =n o
http://www.tivo.com/tivo_inc/partners.asp?frame
So if skipping the ads with a PVR violates the contract, according to the CEO, can I go take a piss or what? What about getting popcorn, what if the doorbell rings? What if the house is on fire? All "violations" if I dont watch the commercials?
The only contract involved here is that the network is being paid by the advertiser to distribute and exhibit their ad. This pays for the shows. Advertisers do this because they expect that an ad will have a certain market penetration -- i.e. they expect some number of people less than the entire audience to watch the ad, and an even smaller number to remember the message of the ad, and an even smaller number to act on it by buying a product. The only theft that could possibly take place here is if either (a) advertisers somehow forced broadcasters or network execs at gunpoint to run their ads for free, or (b) network execs or broadcasters took advertisers' money without running their ads.
The issue of PVR's, DVR's, VCR's, and whatever else has already been decided in the courts. Anyone who thinks people have a duty to watch ads is off his or her rocker. The revenue to the network is generated by ads, not by viewership. I think this CEO is trying to jump on the Internet "music piracy" issue, not understanding that the individual's tendency to take for granted that which is freely available will always encroach on and overtake the ability of corporations to secure maximum revenue channels for products. And what's more, it's a lot harder to take away freedoms people think they have than it is to deny them prior to their exercise.
Off topic only slightly, that's not to say I believe it's OK to steal music. As an independent musician I haven't been harmed by net piracy, but I do sympathize with those that are. I'm just saying once the cat's out of the bag....
I would much rather pay for programming out of my own pocket than suffer through that idiotic shit from advertisers. Aside from the issue of wasted time, it really becomes a health issue at some point, because my hatred for them gets so intense when I'm assaulted by some fresh piece of shit that reaches new lows.
Some say that broadcasting could not stand on its own if it werent't for advertising. I think I'd be OK with that.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I grew up in 70s in the barren plains of a little backwards socialist country where we had no cable and only a dingy aerial on the roof which on a good day could fetch us all of three channels, two of which were Swedish, and all of them state controlled and paid for with TV 'license' fees, sort of a television tax you pay in those countries (even today) if you own a receiver.
... can't stand them. THey tell lies, they induce fear and uncertainty, they're vulgar and noisy, and they are scientifically designed to maximize their potential for damage. Damage, in the sense of your own sensibilities being "succesfully" replaced with those intended by the people who planted that commercial.
They didn't even broadcast 24/7, if you can imagine. No sir. From midnight until 9am there was just static, no transmission. Then from 9am until noon they broadcast test signals. Then from noon until around 4pm they broadcast a programming guide for the afternoon and evening, starting with children's shows before the evening news and then a handful of shows, some of which were imported from US, UK and Germany.
Things are quite different now with about a hundred channels of programming to choose from, but the thing is - those state controlled TV stations didn't SUCK and don't suck today either. You paid your television tax (~$10/mo), which paid for programming. So there were no ads on TV. Which was really nice! We got yesteryear's seasons of Hill Street Blues, Muppet Show, M*A*S*H and other fine US TV productions, but each of them airing as complete shows where the commercial fades faded right back up again.
Commercials came much later when cable and competition challenging the state television monopoly began to arrive, and I quickly grew to despise commercials and recognize them for the psychological assault, calculated rape on one's sensibilities that they are. Today I can't stand them and I find ways to avoid being exposed to them. I don't have a Tivo, but then I also don't even have cable anymore. PVR devices seems like a sensible idea and I hope things like that will remain legal for purchase. Except for the time delay trick and smart scheduling tricks, a PVR doesn't do anything a VCR couldn't do, and they've been legal for decades so I don't see what the fuss is about.
The way the media corporations embrace legal and legislative action to fix their own stupid mistakes and thuggish business practices, are utterly disgusting. They whine and moan and seek to criminalize their own customers. Why don't they just give us better programming? And what exactly do you pay for with the $40/month basic cable (no premium programming) hookup fees if not content? I think the media circus is just too fucking greedy. How many households have cable in the US? 150 million? If each of those pays $40 per month for a hookup that's six billion dollars. Every month. Where do those money go? In a year that's SEVENTY TWO BILLION DOLLARS. Some of that obviously has to go to maintain the cable network and broadcast infrastructure, but that should still leave EVERY YEAR at least a several dozen BILLION dollars to the media conglomerates (of which there's only a handful remaining) for them to produce shit to toss at the tube. And that's BEFORE the revenue from those godawful commercials.
I hate commercials. If I'm watching something and I'm "engrossed" by it - my brain and attention is tuned to the reality of that production - and without warning the reality is replaced with that of the commercial. It's like rape, a deceitful intrusion and a breach of trust. At the very least they should fade to black like they did in the old days which permitted one's sensibilities to put the shields up and reject the bucket of shit about to be flung at you... the commercials
I'm just saying, if there was any kind of common sense in this crazy nation they'd find a way to MAKE DO with the cable fees. The system is utterly retarded today. Do you know what the real currency in network programming is? It's YOU. You and your eyeballs and your credit are what's being traded and sold in those hollywood boardrooms. The programming is just BAIT to lure you to watch the commercials. The BAIT is just crap, produced and evaluated purely in terms of how well it captivates you so when the split-second break from programming to commercial happens you'll hang around like a good consumer and be exposed to the commercials, have that bucket of shit flung at you, endure that so you won't miss the return of the show after the commercial.
Aesthetic values? Quality programming? Fuck that, welcome to reality! Toss another fucking Survivor show on. Hmmm bait not working, try making it a little bit more lurid! We already did temptation island. Funny: Russia is taking the logical consequence America would have probably followed if not for the hypocritical prudence of broadcast regulations: Reportedly there's a popular news show in Moscow where the hosts are naked chicks.
There's so little on TV worth watching it's completely ridiculous how the new digital cable systems have so many channels. They all SUCK. Sure, some of them have a few okay shows - but nothing seems to ever be created purely for the sake of an artistic vision, a director's worthy pursuit or the quality of the production alone.
And news coverage? Do you trust ABC? FOX? MSNBC? CNN? I don't. It is well known that ABC has been suppressing and certainly not investigatively pusuing bad stories about their corporate parent Disney. The dominating U.S. "headline news" format with "news" cut to digestible and under-analyzed minuscule, context-divorced soundbytes to fit within commercial blocks and not offend corporate parents and associates, is laughable. You want the real news, tune to NPR or BBC world news. I'd trust a news network that answered to no commercial interests and had only one responsibility - to produce and investigate the news, glitzy animated infobars, tacky gimmicks and stunt casting be damned. 60 minutes used to be like that. Commercials ruin everything.
Do you like PBS and NPR? I do. I just hate the fact that they have to beg for bread on the table. Why am I not paying for PBS with my cable fees? I -wish- there was a thing like radio/TV tax here.
Really! Think about it. Have capitalist indoctrination taught you that only cut throat competition between networks to lure eyeballs with lewd and mean bait can produce "worthy" programming? Imagine if there was a pool of money available, maybe a couple hundred millions of dollars gathered for programming from the TV viewers and radio listeners of the nation, and
there was a national network "making do" with that, filling the airwaves with programming paid for with those money. If they didn't answer to commercial interests. If their only mandate was to produce the best they could and cater to as many diverse interests as possible within that budget. I think they could do a LOT. I never felt 'deprieved' growing up in that tiny country where the entire nation's socialist TV tax budget was perhaps a few million dollars altogether, the programming produced for those sums I have fond memories of even today, genuinely good things were made for little money and the multi million dollar glitzy hollywood turds aren't all that.
Perhaps soon once they get digital TV to be the norm, they'll build new sets that force you to continue to watch a station you just bring up until an ad is shown (which the TV set gets through some digital signal) before you can change the channel to a different one. No more quick channel surfing then... I wonder if they would pay you money if all you caught was a commercial and didn't watch any programming if you flipped to a station that was in the middle of playing a commercial. Hmm... Probably not...
The real question is: Are the advertisers complaining or is it just Turner that is upset?
This has some similarities to the RIAA court battles. The RIAA has a problem with loosing money and most of the actual artists could care less.
Did you hear about the new bill in Congress? They're going to require that every consumer television set sold in the US comes with those Clockwork-Orange-like toothpicks to hold your eyes open.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
even if i record the commercials along with the program, when i go to watch what i recorded, i'm just going to fast forward though the commercials anyways.. am i know going to be forced into believing i have a moral obligation to watch sponsorship?
would it be the same if i turned off images in my browser just so i couldn't see the ads? am i steeling web content then?
Slashdot Readers: "Turner CEO is an Idiot"
Does this mean we're all theives if we change channels when commercials come on?
if you go to the bathroom during the commercial breaks, you are STEALING that television show!!!
No matter what, you're still watching the commercials with your PVR anyways. They're just going by really fast. :-) The user has to pick up the remote and press the fast forward button, watch the commercials go by, and then switch to normal speed when the show starts back up again. While you're watching the commercials go by, you still are aware that it's a Toyota commercial and a Tide detergent commercial, etc. Sometimes you even see a commercial that you *want* to watch like a movie trailer and stop the fast forwarding to watch that commercial and then speed through the rest. PVR's are by no means a magical box that get rid of commercials so that the user is never aware they exist.
I've been able to tape show on a VCR for years, and fast-forward through the commercials, and nobody complained. Now all the sudden we have the digital equivalent of fast-forwarding the videotape, and now I'm STEALING?!? Sorry, this one fails the "laugh test" (No reasonably intelligent person could make the accusation and still keep a straight face.)
last I knew I paid Cox to let me watch TNT, and TBS and CNN, and TCM, and um... jeeze... shut up moron. is turner suddenly hurting for cash? last I heard Ted was able to give away billions to the UN. they suddenly can't afford for me to fast forward through a commercial as opposed to what I usually do, get up and get a drink or somesuch thing. do people in the tv industry really think that I watch their commercials? in that case lets outlaw PIP and the "last" button on remotes. morons morons everywhere.
-
When the commercials come on, I run off and get something to eat! :D
Dear Mr. TV Exec:
Please stop smoking crack before your interviews and in your planning sessions. I realize that this gives you a pleasant blending of your desires and reality, but I would like to remind you that you are selling two products: audiences to advertisers and tv programs to the rest of us.
I'm not buying ads from you. I buy TV. In fact, I don't buy TV from you, I buy the feed from the cable provider (or scoop it free from the airwaves). If you don't think you can make enough money from that, I don't care. If you think I'm stealing from you, I still don't care.
After the drugs wear off, please get some counselling. You really need a reality check.
Thank you,
a TV watcher
However, along the same lines, whenever I play the lottery, and I lose, the state is stealing money from me. After all, it costs me money to buy a ticket. When I don't see a return on that investment, I've lost money. The same goes when I lose in Vegas, or a stock I own goes down the toilet.
Rather than this point of view, how about accepting that advertising is a gamble? There is never a guarantee people are going to watch your ads. There is never a guarantee people are going to buy your products. It is all a gamble on the part of advertisers. Just like when you gamble or play the stock market, there are risks. You could actually lose money!
If networks want to start making more money, maybe perhaps they should rework their business models. Maybe it would help if they did not produce CRAP.
There is so much crap on TV that I don't even have any sort of TV subscription (cable or otherwise).
I pay for the movies and shows (through purchase or rental) I actually WANT to watch when they come out on DVD. It actually works out to be cheaper than cable for me.
Another thing they could do is also cut the pay of all the gibbering idiots that they pass off as "talent." I'm sure the cast of "Friends" would "manage" if they cut their pay down to $1,000,000 a season.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I haven't bought music from a major label in a couple years but there are some great indy labels putting out fine music. Some I would recommend would be Eighteenth Street Lounge, Wave Music, and Pork.
They're all mostly acid jazz/downtempo type stuff if I had to put a label on it, but its a genre I never new existed until recently and it ROCKS! I just can't get enough of it.
Check out the "downtempo" yahoo group for more suggestions. Give this music a try even if you don't think you'll like it...you might be surprised.
If skipping the commercials is bad, then skipping the whole show must be even worse. I figure that the networks are broadcasting, the cable is still sending stuff out, and I'm choosing not to watch it. Breach of contract in the extreme.
So, in good faith, I now leave all televisions in the house on at all times, carefully watch the commercials and buy all of the products advertised.
What a load of crap.
I've started keeping track of what I watch, forcing myself to write it down. It's so embarrassing to write down half of the shows on television, that's I've just stopped watching. I have three hours of television left on the list for each week and I tape those three. Turns out, three hours of television, on tape, is only two hours of viewing time.
I feel awful though about missing the commercials.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
So we are no longer allowed to close our eyes during the commercials? Am I allowed to blink? No, don't look away at the cat! The baby's diaper will have to wait! Maybe take a bathroom break? Maybe leave the room for the duration of all commercials and come back when I hear the program on? We are slaves to the tube!
If I'm not interested in the garbage they are peddling, I am under no obligation to look at their pap. I pay them money for the friggin cable access and they are obligated to provide me with a signal. The content is up to them and I will alter the stream to my taste. Maybe I'll sit there and twist the hell out of the cable until every show looks like it's snowing and Christmasy and there will be Christmas specials year round! Will they like that?
Plenty of other things to do in life besides watch TV if that is the tact they are going to take. And the crap they have on the tube these days doesn't hold a candle to good old fashioned low-tech sex, baby!
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
You will be born with implants that can control your thoughts. You will watch what they program you to watch. You are worthless. You're the walking, talking shitpile of the world.
I can't do it. DO IT. I can't do it. DO IT. YOU'VE GOT TO DO IT AGAIN.
I pay hefty ass school taxes, so what are public schools doing accepting money from advertisers? This is revolting.
Christina! Bring me an axe!
by making all commercials fit into 30-second chunks. If commercials weren't a univeral size, it wouldn't be easy to skip them. Of course the networks standardized that to make it easier for them. I hit the mute button to make things easier for me--but would much rather hit the "skip this commercial" button.
did I throw away the mail I got from each network that had my contract in it???
I dont remember SIGNING any contracts, if I didnt sign it I have NO obligation to do what you want me to with it!!!
Hey Ted, I got a BIG F. O. with your name on it
I cant believe that i'm on this soapbox, I dont even watch tv, its all crap, but here I am going to get a PVR just to spite him.
moo.
I keep forgetting to look at every ad in my magazines. Sometimes I just get forgetful and flip to the 20th page where the articles start. Since I made a contract with road & track to read all those ads, I better not skip them. Who wants to go to jail for such a minor thing, especially when I'm so obviously in the wrong? Do any of you contract abiding citizens have tips to help me out? Please don't look down on me for this fault of mine, I am trying to overcome this evil habit!
Since when have we made an actual, physical contract with the government under which we are ruled? The "Government Contract" was the principle idea of the Declaration of Independence, yet no actual /document/ existed. [they just wrote it]
When you watch a show, it's implied that you'll be watching the commercials. That's what the broadcasters are broadcasting for. If you dont watch the commercials, technically, you _ARE_ stealing. There's no law against it, and there can't be a law against it, but it remains that you're watching their show without paying for it.
[this applies more to broadcast than to cable, obviously]
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
That is all TV has become - an advertising delivery system with some other crap in between commercials. It is the corporatization of America and soon the world that is to blame. Spyware, intrusive data collection - Big Brother is not Big Government, it is Big Business.
They must be incredibly pissed at Cox Cable, who preempt their commercials to run their OWN commercials, which basically amounts to stealing and reselling their commercials. Don't hear them bitching about that, though. Pssh...the last thing I need is to hear another multi-billion dollar company whining. Go back to cooking your books, you bastards.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
Ok, so if I get up and go to bathroom during the commercials or change channels does that also make me a thief? I guess only good comsumers are those that dutifuly sit through the commercials.
Funny that Max Headroom is coming back, in that reality it was illegal to turn your TV off, sounds like what the networks want.
So from now on you are only allowed to watch ONE channel when you sit down for TV time, and can only change channels after you have viewed the program and its sponsership in their entirety. Doing otherwise will result in stiff fines and possiblly being sent to "retraining camp".
First, consider that for non-premium and non-public channels between one sixth to one third of all broadcast time is advertisement. That cuts the length of original content to between sixteen to twenty hours each day right there.
Second, consider that in the US most prime-time drama and comedy show will film between nine and twenty new episodes per season. (I don't know how frequently news magazine shows produce new episodes.) Even generously assuming one special event that co-opts a show's time slot happens once a month, this means that for prime time comedy and drama shows, only one quarter to one half of broadcast time is original content. Three hours of prime already gets reduced from 180 minutes to 120 to 150 minutes from commercials. Then we need to reduce that by one quarter to one half yielding a range of 60 (at worst) to 115 (at best) minutes of original content programming each night.
Third consider that Friends and ER are the exceptions. The vast majority of television shows do not cost nearly as much as high profile prime time hits.
Fourth, one isn't counting syndication of programs from series that are owned by a network.
Fifth, networks pay studios so much for high profile prime time hits because the studios can get away with charging the networks so much. Whether or not Friends would still be made at the same quality (*cough*) and sold for such a high price in market driven by subscriptions is an unknown.
Sixth, your division of money is skewed because many of those 100 channels are repeats of the same network. A network only has to pay for a program once, when it purchases it. Your figures would only make sense if 100 channels were actually making 100 different prime time hit programs. As it is, of those 100 channels 10 are ABC, 10 are NBC, 10 are CBS, 10 are WB, 10 are FOX, 10 are independant and 10 are PBS or community access.
Seventh, the thirty odd channels left are by sucscription only. It should be rather obvious that these channels already find subscriptions are more than adequate for producing or purchasing enough original content to stay in business.
Your entire argument is built on verbal flatulence. You may in fact be right, but your numbers are so skewed as to be meaningless to figuring out whether or not subscriptions service only is viable as the main model of television viewing.
I read somewhere where networks are developing real-time ad placement, directly in programming. The example I saw was that of placing a Coke slogan on clothing or superimposing logos on mugs, etc. Think about it, sporting events already have real-time image/ad placement (MLB, Nascar, NFL). the next level is making these ads move, and from what I understand is coming pretty soon. So this revenue model needs to be addressed now, as we would basically be a captive audience to corporate media.
So if Turner decides to pioneer this new tech, what would all of you say then? Not watch? What pisses you off, the interruption of the commercial, or the messages behind the commercials?
These cry-babies are terrible. What ever happened to the american spirit of entrepreneurship? When your market changes, you alter your model to stay viable! If no one is watching the commercials, maybe the network should switch to a completely pay-per-view model.
The reason they won't is simple...TNT knows no one in their right mind would pay for that crap, so their only choice is to extort money from advertisers. Eventually the advertisers will figure out that no one is watching their commercials and pull money from the networks...oh well I say good ridance!
I'd pay for high-quality HDTV content. Not this watered down crap the industry wants to implement. Just think, instead of giving high-quality HDTV signals to the public they want to divide up the bandwith to provide 3-4 low-quality channels in what should only be 1 high-quality channel...why? Because they can sell 3-4 times more ad space.
If congress won't force the broadcasters to do the right thing, maybe economics will.
-ted
You forget that the "powers that be" are trying their hardest to make sure that we actually are becoming criminals by outlawing what we are doing (legally) now.
Doesn't anyone else see this as odd? Let's see if I can summarize.
AOL/Time Warner owns a stake in Tivo, and also in Turner Broadcasting.
AOL/Time Warner is therefore promoting Tivo use, by owning a portion of the company, and integrating Tivo with their AOL services.
Turner Broadcasting, a subsidiary of AOL/Time Warner, is meanwhile making statements calling PVR (including Tivo) users theives.
Turner (and therefore AOL Time Warner) is thereby calling their own customers theives!
The whole thing seems really strange to me. I'm sure it's just an issue of the whole AOL Time Warner corporation being so big that the units function somewhat independently, but this is ridiculous! They're essientially saying that users of a product produced by another branch of their super-uber-megalocorporation are criminals!
Get your message straight AOL Time Warner/Turn/Tivo! At least present a consistent message.
My point is: In response to the earlier poster, the very power of the broadcasters is their ability to control viewers. That is why politicians probably like having the broadcasters around. Since the politicians need broadcasters to sedate the population, broadcasters can probably convince legislators that not watching advertisements is stealing and technologies which enable citizens to skip commercials (harming broadcasters indirectly) should be suppressed.
(And don't forget that Bush & team probably owe the broadcasters big-time for their solid support during 911, and want to receive the same support in the future.)
Oh, great...I suppose the next thing we're gonna see is Fritz Hollings introducing a bill to outlaw refrigerators.
You don't like cable because it doesn't show naked breasts during commercials?
and you have access to the internet?
Why do you need TV to show you naked breasts when you have the internet? Heck, it's one of the few things that the internet is good for!!!
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
CW: Have you had any pressure from advertisers?
;-)
JK: Our business is so much better this year than it was last year--it's remarkable. Rates are higher.
They _always_ have to say that. Whether or not it's true.
BlipVerts!
Okay, they had a rough start, but hey, a few people exploding is a small price to pay.
So, I wonder how this moron's sentiment "dovetails" with the newly penned AOL/TW -- TiVO deal mentioned in this Slashdot article?
Where's a good muzzle when you need one?
When considering the validity of Turner's claims, it mus be remembered that he has no scruples to begin with. This is the same person who lobbied to have the govenment subsidize cable for people who couldn't afford it, so that everyone would have access to this wonderful medium. Of course this would also vastly expanding his customer base, and would cost Americans billions of dollars for the sake of increasing his profits. If his proposal had gone though, *I* would say that he was stealing from *ME*. But that seems to be okay in his book.
Some people just have no clue. For several years before Replay, I couldn't stand watching tv without a remote with a mute on it. On the other hand, I *wish* I'd had a PVR when the Taster's Choice commercial serial was running --- I missed several of them because I didn't always watch tv when they were on. I'd have programmed in shows and skipped over *the shows* to watch those commercials. As I do for the Super Bowl now, well probably not any more, they put them online and there's no point. Many Volkswagen ads have been worth watching for the humor. But the vast majority are SO inane, it's beyond belief that anyone could think that they will make me want to buy their product. They're definitely better off if I *don't* see those commercials.
My VCR which predates PVRs by several years has a 30-second skip.
I finally have 802.11 at my apartment. I never needed it before, as I only had 1 room, but now I have a couch and a TV and a laptop...so is it wrong for me to sit in front of the TV with my TiBook and do stuff during the commercials? Does that make 802.11 illegal?
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
So basically we're going to go to an all pay per view model with no copying , right? Think about it:
I don't see anyway around it. They'll basically go to an all pay per view model and pass all costs (including the profits they want) onto the final customer.
Is fast forward theft? Is closing my eyes theft? Is turning off the TV theft? Is walking out of the room during commercials theft? Is posting a comment without actually reading the article or any of the other comments theft? Oh Lord, when will the madness end?
It's part of the deal the cable company cuts with the broadcaster. As part of the contract they're allowed to replace some of the broadcaster's commercials with ads sold by the cable company. There is no stealing involved.
Reading a book must be double-double-theft. First, you're not watching commercials. Second, you are stealing the IP of the books content by illegally recording it into the memory of your brain! Wait, that means both memory and brains should be outlawed too!
Don't try to stop me! I'm gonna jump! AHHHHHHHHHH!
This just seems so obvious to me (which is probably why the Media Oligarchy has never thought of it):
Make non-30-second commericals.
Make complete commerical breaks that are not 30-second multiples.
Now all of those 30-second skip buttons are useless, because they'll skip into the show and have to rewind and then fast forward again etcetera. That's why I never bothered to fast forward commericals on a VCR--it was too much hassle. Oh, 30-second skip on my TiVo? Cool... zap zap zap done.
Heck, one 40-second commerical to end the break, and now everyone has to rewind.
Pointless additional recollection: For some reason I recall an old Sports Illustrated story from the early 90's (say, 1992) about the "TV of the Future," with 10 second commericals, because you can get a really catchy pitch done in 10 seconds.
can we still change the channel during commercials (to a channel not playing commercials)?
Whats the problem with skipping ads? If you don't want to see them, then you're probably not going to buy any products from them. Most people just ignore the ads. The same applies to online banner ads. Most people that block them, would just ignore them anyway. If an ad is too intrusive, people will actually begin to hate the company instead of like it. For the most part, I don't really think that ads are effective at all towards people that don't want to see them to begin with. Ads really don't do much, for example, if I wan't to find computer hardware, I could care less if its advertised, I'd just use pricewatch.
I'm not saying that ads have no effect, just that the effect can be negative when people are forced to see them.
I think *all* cable companies do this...
I have TCI, and I can't tell you the number of times I've seen TCI/AT&T cut an off in mid-stream to play one of their own for their telephone/long distance/dial-up ISP/broadband/cable TV services...
TCI is its own best customer.
You want me to watch a commercial? Then give me a commercial I want to watch. I promise, do that and I won't push the skip button on my Replay.
There have been a few commercials which have been entertaining enough that, after skipping over most of them, I went "Huh?" backed up and watched it.
Give me commercials worth watching and you won't have to resort to legalisms to get your revenue.
There's always one more bu6
If fast-forwarding through commercials makes me a theif. Then does changing the channel during a commercial on a non-Tivo TV make that person a theif?
Shouldn't I also read every poster in the Airport? Aren't they too supporting the airport?
The logic implied by these media companies is astounding.
L053R
Who is using public right of ways to lay cable?
Are people who channel surf during commercials thieves too?
Arrest us all now, please.
The ultimate irony of this story is another posted on this very day about a TiVO and AOL partnership agreement -- Turner Broadcasting is part of the TW/AOL Family of properties.
Grip
Failure is not an option. It comes automatically enabled in every Microsoft product.
Does anyone find it ironic that, in an interview dealing with what most people would see as overly intrusive advertising, the interviewer specifically asked about the viewer getting up to get a Coke?
The pay-per-view concept for broadcast TV is actually a pretty good one but it should be on a optional basis and done as a micropayment or season pass basis.
Take for example, Friends, and lets say 20 million people watch it on a given week. And let's say that the going rate for a commercial free version is 50 cents, or for a 20 episode season, $10 (possibly discounted for a prepaid full season to say $8).
20 million people have the option to pay for the commercial free (CF) viewing rights. Say half of them do, so the network makes about $5 million on the episode cash. Through the cable box or PVR, those viewers get the CF version to watch, record, rewatch, watch later, pause - all the functions they want.
Those that don't pay, get the normal commercialized version. They still have their fair use of a VCR or getting up an leaving to use the bathroom, get a snack or channel surfing, but the commercials are still there. For this audience, calculated in the normal fashion (ratings) or with cable boxes an even more accurate number, the network gets paid by the advertisers.
Now take it one step further!
What about a get paid to watch commercials or using PVR two-way feedback get commercials you might actually be interested in watching - like I really like movie trailers and music, and I happen to be nearing the end of my lease so I want some car ads/offers. What if you could balance your CF shows by watching a few commercial shows, and mayb even providing feedback or requesting more information.
I think there's room for a new system that can make everyone happy. Everyone just has to try and figure it out. I don't want to loose programming because I don't watch commercials (REPLAY TV ROCKS) and for the shows I love, I'd pay the $.
IANAL, but in Canada there are five prerequisites of an enforceable contract (only three if you live in a trailerpark).
1. Valid Offer and Acceptance.
Question - where in my cable TV agreement does it say I will watch all the ads in exchange for programming?
2. Legally Competent Parties.
- No problem here, although it sounds like the Turner CEO may have a bit o' brain damage.
3. Consideration (or contract under seal).
- I pay my bill, so there is consideration. However, if I steal cable, then I am just stealing cable, not violating a contract to watch ads -- so using a PVR in this situation is OK.
4. Genuine Intention to Create Legal Relations.
- Now unless Turner Broadcasting sends me a letter, or shows me where in my cable rental agreement it says I have to watch the ads -- there is no "meeting of the minds".
5. Lawful Object of the Contract.
- Unless something has changed drastically, it is still legal to recieve a cable signal in my house if I pay for it, so there is lawful object.
So, again, IANAL, but based on my analysis at least 2 of these 5 have not been met -- thus, no contract!
Cheers,
Grip
Failure is not an option. It comes automatically enabled in every Microsoft product.
I love my PVR just like anyone else that uses one. However, I am under no illusion that when I use my PVR to fast forward over
commercials that this is a sustainable system. If everyone had a PVR (and everyone will have them within a few years) then the networks
would not longer be able to sell ads. (Would you buy an ad on network TV knowing that it won't be seen?) No ads=no programs. Even
most cable content is heavily subsidized by ad revenue. (How many commercials were there the last time you watched a program on
discovery?)
The simple fact is that eventually, network programming is going away, or they will figure out a way to charge you for it ala HBO. Your
going to pay one way or another for the value you receive, face it!
American programming is of higher quality because it is ad-supported.
:)
First of all, you're begging the question. Is American programming of higher quality? From my observations, I'd say the answer is no, but I admit that this is highly subjective. Then, to make matters worse, you assume a causal chain for what may be merely coincidence. (A "non causa pro causa" argument.) Perhaps American programming is better simply because America is a wealthy country.
Let me propose a counter-argument to your counter-argument. "American programming is of lower quality because it's ad-supported." I can't prove that any more than you can prove your assertion. But it's every bit as plausible. It begs a different question, and, like your statement, offers no evidence to back up what may be a coincidence. Nevertheless, it seems to me to be far more in line with the facts.
In any case, a refresher course in logic and logical fallacies would seem to be in order here. I highly recommend this list of logical fallacies. IMO, it should be required reading for all slashdot posters.
p.s. I note that the American Film industry, which is not ad-supported, generally produces much higher-quality fare than the American TV industry (again, IMO). I'm not sure this actually proves anything, but it certainly throws more doubt on extra88's original premise.
I don't understand why all the PVR owners continue to brag about not watching commercials. Of course, I skip commercials with my TiVo. But why rock the boat.
PVR owners - please lie and just tell them what they want to hear. Tell them sometimes you rewind and play commercials over again just to enjoy the bright colors and write down all the relevant product information.
...from the NFL if I watch the commercials but skip through the football game during the SuperBowl?
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
There is the concept of fair use, or maybe fair use 'doctrine' where the courts won't throw you in jail, but you can't crybaby about your 'rights' if they encrypt the data or otherwise prevent you from copying it.
Conversely, they shouldn't crybaby if you _do_ copy it or figure out how to copy it. It should be a technical meritocracy bounded by fair use _doctrine_. If you break encryption and make backups, they can't punish you. If you break it and sell it, they can. Should be simple.
We have a TV society here in Queen Charlotte City, BC, Canada. Every year we vote on which channels we want to buy. Next meeting I will be agitating to ensure that we do NOT buy TBS. Kiss my ass TBS.
... is stealing of air from public domain.
You should be obliged to doing community service for this.
;)
What if I use my Tivo to skip the 'content' and just watch the ads does that mean the cable company owes me a credit?
So... does this mean that when I flip channels because a commercial comes on, I'm stealing?
These media execs want to portray hackers and technology as part of a conspiracy that prevent them from really doing great stuff. But, when asked what good things they are doing with a bunch of cable channels, this one comes up with:
1. Lone Ranger Pilot. Jesus!
2. Showing the same show on multiple channels to get more viewers. It apparently took "research" to prove that the same slop on two channels will get more brain-dead viewers than slop on one channel. Welcome to "multiplexing". That is great. I am glad they are paying this guy millions of dollars to sit on top of this crap. And then to say, we are criminals for going to the bathroom during commercials when I can barely keep my food down viewing the "content".
CW: What are you seeing come out of the studios?
JK: There's a couple of pieces I think are very interesting. We've done a pilot of The Lone Ranger, which is a WB development, but we're doing a two-hour movie. And since the two-hour movie easily fits onto TNT because of the success with the Western genre over the years, that one becomes a natural project where we could help finance the project by selling a couple of runs to TNT. It would have been much harder to do a two-hour movie without TNT there. When we see it my biggest fear about the Western is: Will it play young enough for the WB? If it doesn't and it's still a good show, it could easily play more broadly on TNT.
CW: Can cable networks afford to be more committed?
JK: Wait longer for something to develop? Definitely. The ability to play it multiple times is greater in cable.... In cable you can give it a couple of airings and try to get more exposure for it and the multiple airings will come up a larger audience.
JK: Wait longer for something to develop? Definitely. The ability to play it multiple times is greater in cable.... In cable you can give it a couple of airings and try to get more exposure for it and the multiple airings will come up a larger audience.
The industry has now experimented with multiplexing, and the results so far say that you can play programs on two different networks and get more new viewers to watch them....
Is anyone old enuff to remember when cable tv first came out? Cable tv was sold to the public with the stipulation that the customers pay for programming WITHOUT ANY ADVERTISEMENTS. Of course, within two years, ads were sneaking into "special programming". So, now we all pay cable companies to watch freaking ads all damn day. They broke the their "contract" with us, PVR users are just enforcing the original "contract" intent.
Thousands watch porn show after control room slip up. Television viewers in Namibia settling down for the latest instalment of a mini-series got more than they bargained for when control room technicians pressed the wrong button. Instead of broadcasting the scheduled program, the state-run Namibian Broadcasting Corporation relayed scenes from a pornographic film to thousands of homes. The two technicians who were allegedly watching the pornographic film on videotape have now been dismissed.
Move faster
That when I use the "mute" function, switch channels, or go outside to have a cigarette during commercials, only to return again to the program once they have finished, that I am a "tv theif" too?
I always went to sleep right as the bell rang, even though Channel One was sometimes more interesting and intelligent than my government and economics teacher. Come to think of it, I don't think ANYBODY ever really paid any attention to the TV, they all just talked for 15 minutes.
He's just called innocent people, specificly, PVR owners, "thieves". In writing, no less!
Slander and libel laws prevent are supposed to prevent people from telling lies that are damaging to someone's reputation, thereby damaging them financially and or socially.
It can be hard to prove that someone has been "damaged" by a lie -- but some lies are considered sufficiently bad that damage is assumed to have happened. Being called a criminal almost certainly counts as damaging.
Mr. Kellner can't pretend he was speaking figuratively -- he's gone on to claim breach of a fictitious contract as basis of his "theft" charges. Since the contract can be shown to be non-existant, any judge who values his reputation is likely to rule for the plaintif in a high profile case.
When a whole bunch of Tivo owners hit him with a class action lawsuit, and the other networks jump on bad press, I'll bet Mr. Kellner will be sorry he ever opened his big mouth.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Everyone knows lawyers don't give legal advice on Slashdot, anyway. This post void where prohibited by law, and prohibited where voided by law. Don't drink and drive. Play fair. Be nice.
-- AC
Commericals always sound louder than regular programming. (The actual volume isn't higher, but quiter soudns are amplified so that they're closer to the peak volume.) A VCR could detect this, though I guess it would also risk skipping out on loud sound effects, etc. during a program. Maybe it could average the sound level for a minute or two, then retroactively apply some kind of mark to the recording taht would later be used for skipping.
...are you still stealing from the broadcasters?
PVRs can be set to only record the middle 400 scanlines of TV or whatever corresponds to the amount of data being sent. Then, no adverts, and an even easier algorithm for removing them. This is a really great idea...
-=Canar=-
So if we don't watch the commercials, and channel surf, then we are 'stealing' the programming? I am not even sure of what the contract actually is, but could this set the precident for MAKING us read or even go to popup banners, someone puts a thing at the bottom of their site that says that they MUST view the popups? Then if they don't they are 'stealing' the page? This is sick
Tibbon
If it wasn't for the PVR I wouldn't even be able to watch the show in the first place, much less the commericals. Doesn't he realize that if I tape/PVR a show there is a least a chance I will watch the commericals?
If it's a funny commerical, I'll even rewind it and watch it again.
If somebody mails me a MotorTrend magazine, the shit is mine... Doesn't matter if I paid for it or not.
Likewise, if I paid for cable TV, the sh*t is mine to do however I feel, outside of redistributing the content.
How is this like porn on the net? When you go to their site, they present you with a screen asking for payment, blah blah blah.
When I turn on friends, there is nothing that pops onto the screen saying that I have to watch the damn commercials, or hurry and call them on the phone to give them my credit card number.
Usually (not saying in this case) the way advertisement works, is that the advertiser pays the distributor to show their ads, because the distributor is giving them a ballpark figure of how many people will be exposed to their advertisements. It would be kind of stupid to have it work the other way. Its like placing an add in the paper... You pay the paper, not the other way around. So does it mean that if you pay the NY Times to advertise your car, and then Joe Blow buys the paper, and throws away the classified section, he's stealing the paper? Didn't you say that paying for the paper was just paying for the distribution feed, not the content?
Besides, how is it stealing by using a Tivo different then me holding the FF button during the commercials on my VCR?
Now that he's publicly and loudly opened his big, fat mouth, that business model is further threatened. Now he's forced himself into a position where he has to advocate insane things (wait a bit for proposed laws to ban ad-skipping technology and think about this - they're not going to ban DVD-R, they're going to ban analog recorders because they can (try to) control the digital ones).
The really hilarious thing is that his words actually hurt his own profits by bringing the fact that people are skipping ads to the attention of his advertisers.
The business model works as long as people believe they're getting value for money, just like the monetary system works as long as people believe their money has value. Endangering that perception is just plain dumb.... unless what you really want is the collapse of the system.
Think about Mr. Turner's history and politics. He may be playing a more complex game than you think.
And he may have forgotten the rules, because every few generations someone tries that trick, and they never quite get what they want (Les Miserables, Trotsky, Washington, the Shah, ad nauseum).
I'm sure it's been brought up elsewhere, but it is my understanding that advertisers pay the networks in return for space in which to deliver their message. What happens to the message once it gets to views' homes, however, is not guaranteed. Is it not true that people already use ad time for such tasks as, oh I don't know, getting snacks or tapping kidneys or what-have-you? In other words, people are already tuning out the commercials; given that, I fail to see what this man's beef with PVRs is.
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
Since her(his?) statements about PVR users being "thieves" is factually untrue under current law, I think this statement might be slanderous. Do you think it would be possible to file a class action lawsuit for slander against this joker on behalf of all PVR users?
This makes me so damn mad. Jamie Keller is a son of a bitch and I'd like to beat the hell out of him (her?).
As an American, I'm willing to kick in my ten pounds (whatever that is) into the pot.
Seriously, at over $30 a month I would be glad to have it and ditch my current model.
Well, isn't this cute. A contract, you say? Doesn't a contract involve some sort of consent? When did I consent to have TV broadcast into my home? Did I sign something when I bought my TV saying how I'd use it? No -- I'm not bound by any contract, no matter how disappointed the broadcasters may be with their business model.
My deviantArt site
Just the other day I read an article in Business Week mag about how CEOs in this country have gone from 1980/90s icons to being hated in the past two years. And this guy's comments only enhance that hatred.
What an idiot, literally. He probably heard one comment from a lawyer or ignorant board member or failing VP and made this PVR theft statement without any research or hard thinking.
So, if I don't even own a PVR but decide to record my network programming on VCR every night with the intent of watching that programming the next day and fast forwarding thru all the commercials, I am now considered a thief instead of a customer?
The entire media industry has got to take a couple customer service and marketing classes AND start listening to their customers and adjusting to market trends. Instead, they are running to judges and politicians to create laws that keep their ancient business models alive. But, in the end, no new regulations and laws are going to save these media giants.
The wave has already begun. If media companies don't start investing in new technology and new business plans like the telcos did in the 1990s, the media companies will fail miserably.
Perhaps instead of bitching about the public skipping the commercials, maybe they should make better commercials. Wow! There is an idea. A commercial that is entertaining and provides value to the customer. Mr. Kellner might want to re-visit his freshman-level business and marketing books to learn more.
Let's use the same logic:
Jamie Kellner is trying to force pople to watch commercials.
What do they call somebody who tries to force a lot of people to perform certain acts (that they find objectionalble, even disgusting) against their will? A serial rapist.
Let's just hope that the Broadcast Industry lawyers don't take lessons from AFGA Monotype. They could argue that the 1/8 second pause before the commercial is a technological implementation of an access control device, designed to let display units recognize when a commercial is about to be played so that the display unit could disallow skipping or muting. (Hey, the patent office will let anything through...) After they patent this "technology", they could argue that any device which is designed to circumvent this technology would be in direct violation of the DMCA.
This guy, IMHO, has only shown he isn't capable of logical thought let along running a cable network. I, as a cable subscriber, have absolutely no contractual agreement with him, or his network, in any way, manner, shape, or form. I have an agreement to pay my cable service for a package of channels. The cable provider selects the items in the package, pay the provider, be it Turner or others, and it is THEY who have the a contract to provide that for their customers. I am under no contractual obligation to watch this @#$@#$@#$'s programs for 1 second, 1 minute, be it content or commercial. Who IS this turkey? other than, in my opinion and I'm guessing others at this point, a complete laughing stock.
" I swear to God, the year that we perfect a method to endlessly duplicate food will be the year in which half of the US population starves to death "
were you joking ? read steinbeck's "grapes of wrath"
there he's talking about the great depression.
the rural parts of america were producing a LOT of food, still many immigrants were starving.
that method you talked about was then called agriculture, and yes, capitalism made people starve.
(not that comunism didn't, BTW)
Working for necessity's mother.
It all comes to freedom of chice.
I want to be able to choose how my time is spent, and I'm willing to pay for good products.
what you're saying is that by excercising my priorities I don't allow the networks to force-feed me their set of values, thereby hurting them financially.
I realy want the networks to profit; I want them to do this by creating material that has it's own worth, measured by my own valueable money, not by people who wish to poison my mind.
I am completely honest in that: give me the choice, I'll buy it when I think it's good.
Working for necessity's mother.
the rural parts of america were producing a LOT of food, still many immigrants were starving.
Yeah, actually I have. I primarily recall a paper (don't have the source handy) about farmers/distributors throwing food in the river to decrease supply, while the starving were pushed back from the river's edge by police. Lots of food available, people starved. Seems to support my point, and I think we agree. Semantics and language seem to have gotten in the way.
The year in which we eliminate restrictions on supply in a given industry (e.g. can endlessly reproduce food), will be the year in which someone steps in, attempts to re-control the supply chain, and creates an artificial poverty.
What's "wealth" if everyone has it, right? (rolls eyes)
Fuck them and their network. I am going to kick the next person in the shins who calls me a thief.
I'll show them a thief. I think I'll steal a truckload of videos. That's theft.
Recording around commercials is not theft. Its recording around commercials.
If the exclusion of ads by people with video recorders is theft, then the inclusion of ads by cable companies, in my menus, is also theft. I am paying for cable service.
While this is not really the topic here, and is not Ted Turners fault, media companies need to understand that it goes both ways.
This cable service, in the price, includes channel selection menus etc. so that I can find channels, look at a description etc. and also includes several pay channels. This charge is clearly defined on my bill. Is Comcast doing something illegal?
I get very irritated when the cable company is putting ads on my menus. It takes up valuable screen real estate, and, since I am paying for the service, is theft by the cable company. I believe that cable should be free if they are going to shove ads down our throats.
Just my two cents. One more reason to hate cable and phone companies.