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PVRs and Advertisers' Worries
Jurisenpai writes "Today's NYT has an article on the conflicts between PVRs and advertisers, mentioning the recent Sonicblue case, as well as Tivo and ReplayTV."
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With commercial skippers and channel surfers being thieves and all that, violating their contracts with the networks....
Gee, and I thought that paying for cable in the first place was meant to eliminate the need for commercial spots.
Commercials integrated into the shows. Basically, the commercials will be the shows. (as if they wern't already).
either make them REALLY eye catching so i notice them when i fastforward over them(which works, cuz if i DO see an ad worth watching i slow down and take a look, and am still able to skip over the feminine itching ads)
:) that way you'd see them in normal time FFing over them... sux to be a normal TV veiwer hehe :)
or make them in slow-mo
But how to make money off of syndication? When a show is in reruns the local station, or cable network, makes money by selling advertising. But if the ads are embedded in the show, how will the station make any money? Remembering that, without money they don't show the show. Will the backgrounds of the shots have to be digitally altered to sell new advertising? Or the foreground? Will we see Willow using a Mac on the first run, and a Dell in the rerun?
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Perhaps the answer is for brodcasters to switch to a "sponsor" model, like NPR and PBS do.
Note that this is the model that CNBC is using with "Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser", and it seems to be working very well for them.
John
The drops of water don't know themselves to be a river; and yet the river flows.
They also see fewer than half the commercials they used to, compressing hourlong shows into 40 minutes
That's right. One-third of network television's airtime is dedicated to advertising. And they're wondering why people are getting fed-up with commercials. It seems to be a rising trend as well.
I used to tape the Tick on Fox back when it was first run. The earlier seasons had approximately one more minute of programming than later seasons.
Stop bombarding us already!
I am the evil aardvark!
There's lots of ways to fix this:
* Ads that are *INTERESTING*. I watch those on my TiVo. I skip the boring ones.
* A *VARIETY* of ads. Even I get bored watching the same ad the upteenth time in half an hour. Penalties for those who show the exact same ad twice in one commercial break.
* Pay-Per-Show. Let people buy shows without ads. Problem solved. If I want to watch x with ads, then make it so I have to watch the ads. If I don't want to watch it with ads, I'll buy it.
TiVo, ReplayTV, etc are not the problem. It's the archaic business model. If you require ads to be seen in this technological age, and lots of people have the technology to skip it, well, it's time to rethink the way you do business. Make people pay for shows is one solution. The shows I watch tend to get cancelled all the time (the only TV show I watch that I can count on running it's full length is Enterprise). Other than news, and the occasional movie, I only watch *5* (yes 5) hours of TV programming regularly. If I could pay for the shows that were cancelled, I could set my TiVo up to record them at any inane hour of the day (3:30 AM? why not?). Especially since it'll be commercial free.
Of course, the entire TV industry would be turned upside down now that ratings don't really matter - just making money from the show.
- Especially bitter because of the number of shows he watched has been cancelled or will be cancelled. Heck, the way the TV stations and studios are going, I might not even need a TiVo or TV anymore - there would be *NOTHING* interesting on for me to watch.
You'd think that advertisers would get a clue.
Before I bought my Tivo, I was taping shows. I fast forwarded through commercials then too. Nothing has changed in that regard for most people.
If a commercial catches my eye while I'm fast-forwarding, I'll actually go back and watch it (usually if it has sufficient babe-content).
I think that the music and television industry's current "Greed Fest" is going to come back and bite them in the ass.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
Yes - it's the BBC. For those who might not know, there are no adverts on the BBC. We pay a 'license fee' (euphamism for a tax levy). This fee then goes towards paying for the BBC. In addition, the BBC also has some merchandising and sells off programmes to foreign stations.
But then you know that. It always raises a giggle from me when I'm in the US and I see PBS saying "it's only with your donations that we're able to bring you quality programming like the Teletubbies". Really? Leaving aside whether you believe Teletubbies to be quality (I do, for it's target audience), I could have sworn that the real reason it exists is because of my UK taxes going towards it...
So there's your answer. Directly funded TV is possible, and does exist. Just not in the US as far as I'm aware.
Cheers,
Ian
Did they ever stop to realize that maybe they're not even an industry worth having? Flawed business model perhaps?
Examine the evidence:
#1 Inability to prove that people actually are paying attention, or that they can influence spending in a significant way. Even if they can, are they being manipulative in an unethical way?
#2 Advertising pollution becoming increasingly intrusive, even for products that are directly paid for by the consumer. Can't drive down the road without seeing billboards, watch a movie, even in a theatre. On and on and on...
#3 They use money that might actually be used in more worthwhile ways by companies. Such as increased production, better employee benefits, R&D, planning for consequences... hell, you guys probably have a better idea than I do where the $$$ could go, including places that benefit consumers, employees AND shareholders.
#4 The difficulty of drawing the line between advertising and fraudulent claims. Before you boo and hiss, are Miss Cleo's commercials on tv at 2am valid advertising? How low does she have to go before it isn't? How many in the past have sunk that low?
#5 Existence of products that were market hits even without much of an ad campaign. Word of mouth and quality were good enough, and the product filled a real need (instead of trying to invent a dubious one).
#6 The ability of advertisers to steal people's valuable time from them, even when they haven't expressly or implicitly agreed to give such time (unlike watching TV). Well maybe the ability isn't the bad thing, but their willingness to exploit such an ability is unbounded. Only fear of law and PR backlash keeps them in check, and then not always.
Again, do we need this industry? If it disappears off the face of the earth, will we be so much poorer? The workers will adapt, find new employment, and our country would be stronger. And even if they don't deserve it, maybe a few idiots would get scammed less often.
Upscale clothing stores coordinate shipments of clothing with when celebrities wear them.
Tiger Woods has a staff the schedules when and where he will wear a particular shirt, pants or shoes. These items arrive in stores a day or two before he appears on TV wearing them. A few weeks after that they are shipped off to bargain basement stores like Marsalls or TJ Max.
TV ads are effective.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Does anyone know how Tivo and SonicBlue get the master TV programming schedules from the networks? NOTE: I'm not asking how *my* Tivo gets the schedule from Tivo central, but how Tivo central gets them from the TV networks. Are they sent out from the networks electronically using standard protocols as soon as the schedule is set or do the Tivo guys go out and buy the TV Guide every week and type 'em all in by hand? For that matter how does TV Guide get them?
The reason I ask is that it seems to me that TV schedules function in an analagous fashion with DNS and IP addresses for web sites. Namely, if my Tivo doesn't know when the Simpsons is on, it can't record it for me. Is there any possibility the networks could try to sabotage PVRs by restricting access to their schedules?
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Unless our government is full of idiots or media cronies (and it is, unfortunately), then here's how I see this "problem" shaking out:
The "entertainment" industry, which has been bloated with crap and getting fatter and fatter every year as wannabes climb over each other to get something published, will stop making so much money indiscriminately. The cash cow of advertising, now getting old and sick, will die off, and "free" TV will disappear. (I have not had "free" TV since 1989, when I first signed myself up for cable.)
The money in TV will shift from the producers of shows to the companies that deliver those shows--the makers of the DVRs and the suppliers of the DVR services. These companies, in order to keep profits high and unable to make fortunes on advertising, will charge consumers for their services, and they will use that money to fund programs that consumers will actually watch.
These services will license their most popular programs to the other vendors, and those vendors will probably charge premiums (pay-per-record, premium fees for non-native shows, etc.) for them to their clients.
In this way, the services will compete on overall quality of ALL their content--they won't have 18 hours to fill with crap every day, so they won't have the burden of those costs.
This is a Very Good Thing because it actually democratizes the content industry. Independent producers will be able to produce and license their shows to the DVR service companies. Big studios will still produce and license content, but they won't have the overhead of providing all the crap they do now.
All this assumes that Congress and our courts manage to keep their heads out of their arses and don't play lackey to the Chicken Little studios.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
I disagree. Consider the late night infomercial or latest only available on TV product. The only money they see is if someone watches the commercial and makes a purchase. The expected revenue will be more than the cost of the advertising and manufacturing costs (We call it "capitalism").
Where there's a lot of brand loyalty (Pepsi vs Coke), advertising doesn't cahgne people's opinions, and advertisers know it, but it does increase mindshare among the ambivalent and can increase consumption by the faithful.
Ultimately, though, the price of advertising is reflected in the price of the product. $1 of the average box of cereal pays for advertising. Do you think Kelloggs doesn't realize that? Are they going to stop all advertising so they can reduce the price of their cereals by $1? Nope. You can buy generic cereal for less. Some people do. Kelloggs, et alia, believe the advertising is worth it.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Happening in the UK too - yesterday we got an 'Unmissable viewing from the BBC!' message, with an average new sitcom attached.
My worry is the space requirements. I trust this thing gets deleted if I start running out of space? And I mean, deleted before any of my own programmes or even Tivo-suggested programmes get deleted? The suggestions are based on my preferences. The advert show clearly isn't. I do not want this advert interfering with what I bought the machine for in the first place.
Cheers,
Ian
This may surprise you, but this statement is contradicting itself. By naming a specific brand, you are proving that television does have an effect on you.
... adults can be convinced of anything, given enough time. There was once a study done where an adult was convinced the sky was red through sheer repetition alone, despite knowing otherwise. Although that didn't hold ... their knowledge that the sky was blue was too powerful, and no harsher techniques were employed to break them down first, the subjects of the study had a difficult time differentiating between red and blue for a very long time after the study was concluded. I wish I could find the exact reference to that study, but I'm at work and the name of the study doesn't spring to mind for a handy google search. Perhaps some kind soul reading this will provide a link). Something like, say, a disgustingly flavored, surupy dark brown sugary drink laced with cocain or, when that becomes illegal, caffein. Especially if it has a nice bright, easilly recognized logo that can be plastered about, reinforcing that conditioning in people's every day lives, and especially if it has a short, rythmic name like, say, Coca-Cola.
... George Orwell's nightmare didn't come from government, it came from industry, powered not by some sinister desire to dominate mankind, but by simple, benal human greed. There is a very profound social lesson in all of this, though I'm not sure we as a society are very equipped to learn from it.
schon is absolutely right here, though the actual impact is missed (brand awareness is a very small part of the overall marketing picture).
Repetition is one of the most reliable indoctrination (often called by the misnomer "brain washing") techniques around, particularly if you are working without a deadline (if you do have a deadline, there are other, quite effective means of breaking a person and reconstructing the desired attitude, but while they are faster, none of these are anywhere near as reliable as simple repitition over an extended period of time). If you do not believe that marketing involves the application of serious indoctrination techniques, I suggest you read a couple of advanced textbooks, or graduate level thesis, on the subject. Indoctrination is most definitely what it is about, though that terminology is generally avoided.
In short, you can be talked into liking and desiring the most unlikely of things through sheer repetition, particularly if such repetition begins during early childhood (but it doesn't need to
When was the last time you made it through the day without seeing that logo, or hearing the name, at least once?
Advertisers do not want to allow us to change our viewing habits because doing so takes away one of the primary conduits by which they can condition us to want their products, and advertisers pay top dollar for access to these conditioning conduits. Believe it or not, we as viewers are sold as chattel to advertisers, literally, at a little over a dollar an hour for our viewership.
They have no desire to sell the content to us, to make us their customers. We are the chattel they sell to their paying customers today, the advertisers, and they don't believe they'll ever make as much money selling their entertainment to us as they do selling us to their advertisers.
It is rather a sobering and disturbing thought
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
A lot of people complain about cable, saying "I'm paying for 150 channels when I only actually use 5 of them". With the onset of digital cable and satellite, along with pay-per-view, I think a more sustainable model for the future is "micropayment pay-per-view". Want a season pass to Boston Public? Sure, it's $1 per episode with unskippable ads, or $2 per episode without ads. We'll give you a 10% discount if you order the whole season at once.
Why would this work? For most people, it'd be cheaper or at most the same as what they're already paying. If they go on vacation for a couple weeks, either it doesn't cost them anything, or they'll be able to catch up on the shows when they get back. For the networks, they get fine-grained details of what people are watching, and will be able to easily manage their schedules. They could have special promotions for free showings of good but unpopular shows. And they'd be freed from the competition amongst the other networks for prime slots.
Josh Woodward
I think the problem with television network executives is that there's been a pretty strong warning about changes in TV viewing habits that Alvin Toffler mentioned in one of the most prophetic books ever written, The Third Wave.
The book was published (in 1979) at the time when home videocassette recorders were starting to become popular. What VCR's did was to effectively destroy the whole idea of synchonized television watching Toffler mentioned in this book, where everyone watched TV all at the same time. With VCR's (and now DVR's), you can record a TV program for viewing at a later time; the rise of VCR's was a big contributing factor in the ascendency of David Letterman's success (NBC's Late Night with David Letterman was one of the most recorded shows on TV, according to Nielsen Research).
Indeed, with VCR's being so inexpensive nowadays many people own more than one VCR; it makes even the idea of network counter-programming obselete since the viewer can record multiple shows at the same time and watch it later at their own leisure.
I think the networks will have to really start factoring in the wide use of VCR/DVR devices; in a way, ABC is already doing this by running a number of their ABC network first-run programs as a first rerun on the ABC Family cable channel.
Also, my VCR has some sort of Commercial Advance treatment where, once the recording was done, it would go back and analyze the video. When it determines that you just hit a commercial, it fast forwards until the main show starts. It gave me ZERO false positives, and it skipped most of the commercials.
The VCR also had a one minute skip.
At any rate, the ads fly by so quickly it's hard to determine what most of them are for.