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."

Comments

Ha Ha friggin Ha.

[Erik_Kahl]

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.

the future according to the broadcast companies

[Sarin]

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.

The future of TV and commercials

[btempleton]

The bad news is the Supreme Court betamax decision, if you read it in detail, may not protect automatic commercial skipping, though it would probably protect manual skipping like the 30 second button or 60x FF.

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.

disgusting

[gvonk]

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.

Re:disgusting

[dimator]

YOU were the one who decided that the volatile business model of selling advertising would bring you stable profits

Volatile? This is how television has worked for decades. This model is what pays the stars of the shows millions of dollars per episode. It's hardly volatile.

The interesting thing is, does it really matter if you watch the ads or not? Networks' ad revenue is based on how many people watch a show, which is based on Nielson ratings. It is NOT based on how many people buy something after they see an ad, because that is pretty hard to determine.

So if a Nielson family PVR's a show, it will still show up in it's Nielson rating. Who cares if everyone *else* watches or doesnt watch the ads?

Re:disgusting

[Rogerborg]

• So if a Nielson family PVR's a show, it will still show up in it's Nielson rating

With a big old question mark over it regarding whether the ads were actually watched. Advertisers - who have to pretend to believe that advertising has an effect - will happily use any uncertainty to leverage pay deals.

There's an interesting advert airing in the UK at the moment, for the main satellite broadcaster. They're selling a tweaked PVR that also decodes two channels at once. The advert is about how subversive this is. Unspecified Men In Black are aghast that Joe Consumer is pausing live TV and watching one channel while recording another. What they don't say is that you can skip adverts. It's a very intruiging angle on it; the broadcasters are clearly uncomfortable with the idea. It doesn't feel right, even to them, and they backed away from pushing one of the big selling points, the ad skips.

Incidentally, in the UK, ratings are gathered minute-by-minute, so they know if we're channel hopping during the adverts. The ratings households also have their VCR recordings watermarked, so their viewings are registered when they play them back. I don't know if they can detect advert skips in a recording, or whether the watermarking works on PVR's. I do know that they're worried about digital content, as we went a week or so at the start of the year with no figures, when they screwed up the rollout of a new interim system to track figures, while they come up with a complete solution to registering all digital content play through the TV.

Now there's a thought. What's the difference between recording and playing back to my PVR, between me getting that same digital content from someone else, or downloading a copy from the 'net, or for that matter using my TV to play a sports game from my PC or console which has in game advertising?

I can see why this is keeping the advertising droids awake at night. If they want to continue pretending that advertising works, they'll need some pretty smart hardware - or some pretty harsh legislation. And it's that latter thought that worries me. If you thought the RIAA and MPAA were bad, wait until the advertising market wakes up and smells the digital coffee.

FINE!

[gnovos]

Then I'll just take my public airwaves back please... Oh, NOW who's the thief?

Does this mean..

[ShaunC]

..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

Fair use = STEALING

[HanzoSan]

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)

I love these morons...

[MrHat]

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.

Somebody has to pay for it...

[Gordonjcp]

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...

Thieves is a little strong, but...

[Rakarra]

.. 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.

Re:Thieves is a little strong, but...

[johnw]

There seems to be a growing misconception that, because a business model has worked in the past it therefore must be entitled to legal protection in order to ensure it continues to work in the future.

Consider the position of being, say, a musician a few hundred years ago. You could make a living (probably not a very good one) by composing and playing music for other people but, much like a plumber today you couldn't apply any multipliers to that. You play music for one evening - you get paid (or fed or something) a corresponding amount. If you want to be paid again tomorrow, make sure you have another gig lined up. The only way of avoiding that would be to find a rich sponsor.

Along came printing - suddenly there was a way for musicians (and others) to get the multiplication factor in. Write a piece of music and then *sell* it. You only have to write it once but you can sell it lots of times.

Along came audio recording - an even bigger multiplier. Now you don't even have to play it for each listener. Play it once (all right - I know - several times), record it, then sell it lots of times. You're not guaranteed to make lots of money that way but the potential is there and it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do (and it's perfectly reasonable to insist that others comply by the restrictions you choose to put on your material when you sell it - copyright).

What is *not* reasonable is then to expect legislation simply to preserve your business model from other perfectly legitimate business models. If you're producing and selling recorded music you have absolutely no right to insist that others can't distribute *their* music in a different way, even if it blows your business model right out of the water.

Similarly with the question of commercial TV channels. 100 years ago there were no commercial TV channels (bliss!). A particular combination of available technologies made them feasible (TVs available at prices consumers can afford; cameras and broadcasting kit available at prices consumers definitely can't afford; limited broadcast bandwidth available etc.) Now the technology position is moving on. Lots of new equipment is available and people may not be willing to make the same trade-off as before ("I'll watch your irritating adverts because I want to watch the program in the gaps"), particularly as the quality of both programs and adverts goes through the floor. Perhaps an entirely new business model will have to arise but there is absolutely no possible justification for legislation to protect an existing business model just because its window of opportunity is closing.

Re:Contract with the networks

[Golias]

An FCC license in a minimal expense compared to what it cost to run a broadcast station. An FCC license is provided (at a small fee) in exchange for keeping other would-be broadcasters from crouding out your signal, it is not a lease of the frequency itself. Use of the frequency is allowed for free, and in exchange, the broadcaster must agree to serve the public interest. Serving the pubic interest, for these purposes, include doing whatever the FCC says is required, (i.e., broadcasting news updates and station ID each hour on radio stations, playing PSA's, etc.)

If broadcasting rights were parceled out like land, and auctioned to the highest bidder, the would cost an order of magnatude higher than an FCC license fee. The market value of bandwiths is huge.

All this is actually off-topic though, because Turner networks are all cable channels, and therefore are not regulated by the FCC. They can broadcast whatever the fuck they want, and no, there is no implied contract that you will watch their ads, because you are paying a cable company to watch their channel, who in turn pays them, and the requirements of all parties are spelled out in black and white on your cable subscription agreement.

The Turner rep who said this is actually flat-out wrong.

All day long I feel like a criminal

[eyeball]

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.

Let's see...

[Rogerborg]

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.

Hey, this sounds familiar

[mikemulvaney]

It seems like someone else was complaining that blocking ads was stealing services(this was around 15:34):

<hemos> Here's the reality:
You block ads.
You cost us money.
Ultimately, I mean.

-Mike