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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."
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?
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?
If he thinks I have a contract to watch the ads, then he also had a contract: (1) to go back to just showing about 2 minutes of spots every 15 minutes instead of making them every 7 or 8 minutes and taking more than 1/2 of the time; (2) to not have my volume blasted when an ad comes on.
I signed no contract with him or anyone else to watch commercials. But I do question that all seem to put commercials on the same time. Is that collusion between networks???
You are right, the cable provider pay's hefty fees to carry each channel. Some newer channels and the moron channels(tv shopping and infomercial channels) pay the cable system to carry it. While again some channels like Discovery have a regular rate but FORCE the cable carrier to also carry their off-shoot channels.. like discovery-kids, discovery-vasectomy, and discovery-rerun channels.
If any TV network or cable network tries to tell you (Espically the Turner scumbags) they are hurting because of this then you can be assured that is is a 100% lie. Someone needs to go public calling the Turner network anti-american (Duh, it has been for years, look at who turner is married to) and call the CEO a hypocritical liar. Yes, calling him a liar in public will get things rolling.
This Bullcrap has to stop and it has to stop now. Why the hell do these overpaid SOB's get to make bold-faced lies to the public and not get called on the carpet about it?
I think it's time to start forming an angry mob.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The usage is not free of charge, in fact, it is rather pricey. They pay a license fee to the FCC, and have to renew every couple of years....
Now, about this contract..... I didn't sign any contract. I challeng the networks to produce for me the contract I allegedly agreed to, and explain to me through what mechanism I allegedly agreed to this.
Lastly, how about we put together a contract for the networks. Something along the line of the Software Vendor License Agreement mentioned on /. yesterday?
www.wavefront-av.com
Source: The Judge in Life-Line
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
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
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."
Good point but there is a slight difference.
Slashdot is using resources in their end to support you when you access their site. That is not the case for Turner. There is no delta cost imposed on Turner by your behaviour.
Help fight continental drift.
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.