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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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"We've trained people that you can buy things at 3 in the morning in the nude on the Internet and make a call to anyone from anywhere on a cellphone, and the idea that CBS is going to determine when I watch `CSI' flies in the face of that trend," said Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research. "TV networks are going to have to figure out how to make money from a TV viewer that is not nailed to the chair waiting for the commercial to end."
Amen to that!
'ARRGH! Pirate Designers of the Internet, we be!'
Then they should have been bothered for years by such commercial-killers like the toilet or refrigerator. People have been using those for years to skip commercials.
Personally, I channel-surf when commercials are run during a favorite show.
I am the evil aardvark!
The advertising world is rapidly approaching the point when they are going to have to realize that TV ads are not >>nearly as effective as they thought they were. The reason people think (or rather know) that banner ads are ineffective is because you can measure it. There's no such technology for TV ads but between people getting up to pee, fast forwarding their VCR's or just tuning out in general -- I submit that they are grossly ineffective (especially for the price paid). An entire industry (Neilson, Ad agencies, the networks) has sprung up to propagate this lie, but that doesn't make it anymore true.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
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.
is it possible for there to be any kind of media without advertising?
I received my latest National Geographic magazine yesterday, and immediately went for the map included with that issue. It's a beautiful map of Mt. Everest and the various expeditions that have ascended that peak.
I flipped it over and saw a bloody ad for Ford taking up the entire poster. Instead of providing additional information about humanity's accomplishments in relation to the mountain, we get to hear about Ford's support of mountain climbing. I'm less than pleased with this.
Advertising is becoming so pervasive you can't do anything without seeing an ad. Watching a movie? Look for the product placement. Driving a car? Look for the billboards to roll by every quarter mile. I can't answer my phone any more because literally 90 percent of calls to my home are telemarketers.
When will it stop? When will we (consumers) be able to find something to do without being bombarded with advertising?
Commercials integrated into the shows. Basically, the commercials will be the shows. (as if they wern't already).
Right now the only ones that are whining are the CEO's and the other clueless wastes of space that like to make noise and get media attention.
... they cant)
at the sales front, advertising sales are down, why? BECAUSE THE ECONOMY SUCKS. and the CEO's who will be the first to be fired for sales dropping by the board are trying to point the focus of blame elsewhere. it's a simple Cover your Ass move, blame something out of your control.
In reality, companies buying advertising is still buying advertising, they aren't saying, "I dont want to buy TV spots as PVR owners will just skip them, I'll advertise in the newspaper instead" and they wont say it. It does not affect them, they do not lose money no matter what lies they try and create. (Make them show proof of 1 client that stopped advertising with them because of PVR's
basically, everyone needs to call these whiners on the carpet, make them prove it or shut up.
and the bottom line is they cant prove it because the impact is not real.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Do advertisters honestly believe that we sit enthralled by their crapulous offerings? Commercials are the point in a television show where I have the chance to take a leak or grab some cookies.
Hehhehe.. Record a commercial? I don't even do that now. that's what the "Pause" button is for.
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
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should work, i just set it up...
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.
He does have a point. A large amount of the funding of programmes comes from adverts. If advertisers don't use it any more because they're not seeing a return on costs then they won't bother.
Here in the UK we pay a shade over 100 pounds ($150) a year to have a couple of advert free TV channels and a number of advert free radio stations. Yes, they still push out rubbish, but our rubbish is still of a higher quality than elsewhere in the world.
It is worth noting though that it only works because everyone is forced to pay this by law if they own a TV set.
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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!
We've had commercial skip on our analog vcr's for almost half a decade now, but they don't worry about them? Plus now that commercials are done with full stereo soundtracks and studios are removing their analog equipment for commercial scheduling most of the clues that these schemes use are going away anyways. Why is this really such a big concern for the advertisers. Now for the studios I understand as PVR's make the idea of prime time obsolete, but for my money I would think that not tying a popular program to a particular timeslot would make it even more popular eg I haven't watched dark angel since they moved it to Fridays because I always go out with my wife to dance clubs and the like on Fridays.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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.
To bring this video to the box of (just about) every tivo user, Tivo buys time on Discovery Channel around 4:00am. They broadcast the video in the clear and have Tivo record it, but hide it from the list of recorded programs. The trigger to display the icon indicating extra available material is broadcast on a not often used (and masked by the Tivo) secondary closed captioning stream. Tivo intercepts this and acts accordingly.
Unfortunately, Tivo also adds an extra icon and menu item on the main menu, advertising the availability of (and giving you a direct link to) the videos. This isn't the first time this has happened -- Tivo "teamed" with BMW a few months back to do a similar promotion. There is a big debate going on in the Tivo Community Forums on if this is acceptable to Tivo users (who are already paying $13/mo for the service).
Digital successors to the VCR that eliminate the frustration of recording television programs have crossed a popularity threshold, raising alarm among advertisers and TV executives who see the devices as a threat to the economics of commercial television.
the times they are a changin boys. get used to it. brick and mortar stores learned to augment their sales online, now it's time for you to get with the times and learn how to supplement with the pvrs. Use product placement instead. God knows we see enough of it now.
You're not going to hold it back. we all know that. I'm planning on buying a PVR as soon as possible... i never thought i would, but then my boyfriend gave me a dvd player for christmas. It's easier, more convenient, and fun than a VCR, and i'm betting PVRs are even better. i'm hooked on digital TV and now i want it all. ALL DAMN YOU!
Numbers like that have provoked gloomy pronouncements from industry executives. Some even come close to accusing habitual ad skippers of theft.
"The free television that we've all enjoyed for so many years is based on us watching these commercials," said Jamie C. Kellner, chief executive of Turner Broadcasting. "There's no Santa Claus. If you don't watch the commercials, someone's going to have to pay for television and it's going to be you."
Ok, this one pisses me off. So the $50 i pay a month for my satellite TV service is a gift from santa claus? how about the $5 i spend every time i want to watch a pay per view movie? or the $40 when my boyfriend wants to watch one of those silly wrestling specials? And don't get me started on the prices for pr0n!
TV has never been free for consumers. we pay for it, and we pay big. It might not look like a lot to someone who's making a six figure salary to bluster and spread FUD to the media, but to John Q. Public, $50 a month is a lot of money. Multiply that by the number of cable viewers in the country, and you get a nice fat number. I'm not sure how its all divvied up in the end, nor do i really care... if network exec salaries and stars getting $1 million a show are any indication, things aren't dire yet. (i realise not everyone pays that much for cable, and some pay more.. i'm just going by what i personally pay).
And FYI: I've seldom actually watched a commercial since i was 12. the only ones i'll actually stay still for now are those funny blockbuster ones with the guinea pig and the rabbit.. those i love. So maybe you can take a clue from that? If you made commercials entertaining instead of annoying and loud, perhaps more people would watch them.
Speaking of loud, that's another thing that pisses me off. Is it just me or have commercials gotten even LOUDER? I know they intentionally raise the volume a few knotches during commercials to get your attention, but it's at the point where as soon as the program cuts to commercial, i automatically hit 'mute'. Here's another hint: LOUDER ISN'T BETTER!
And that's my rant for today, May 23, 2002.
claudia
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
TV and radio advertising were based on 'sponsorship', not ads. Instead of a 22 minute show bookended and broken up by commercials, we had the "Alka-Seltzer Variety Hour" brought to you by "Alka-Seltzer" with the fizz that says "relief".
We'll probably be back where we started with similar sorts of corporate sponsorship in a few years. I don't really think it would be so bad, mostly I just flip channels during commercial breaks anyway looking for cooler commercials to watch than the ones paying for the show I'm watching.
Remember, in our universe, "Annoyance" is a conserved quantity - those wishing to advertise will certainly find ways to do so.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I've discovered these three talents from commercials. Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" was on the VW Cabriolet commercial. Devo's "It's A Beautiful World" was on a Target ad. Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" was some car commercial. The radio stations around here suck and I never really got into trading MP3s. After getting the CDs from the Record Exchange, I learned that: the chick at the counter *really* likes Nick Drake; that Target ad is the ultimage irony about the "world we live in"; and some car company is using the same song that was on the "Trainspotting" soundtrack. Anyway, I'm just saying that I WILL PAY ATTENTION to commercials... if and only if they're well done. Think about it in these terms -- Carrot-Top: Delete; the Dell Guy: Delete; the Florida Orange Juice commercial with people dancing to a Brady Bunch song: SAVE. You know, advertisers should realise that with PVR and broadband, people will *share* their favorite commercials.
simon adkins
Broadcasters will have to be more creative in placing ads. You already see this on the cable news stations with overlay and sidebar ads. ITs too easy to zap serial ads. You'll have to pay a premium for ad-free channels, just as you have to on the InterNet.
Channel hopping is not zero sum - often the hopper will browse around the channels for the duration of the adverts to hop back to the original channel, having seen no adverts.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Read "The Space Merchants" by Frederik Pohl.
Written in 1952, about a world where advertising is king.
If I were pessimistic about what the advertisers think their rights regarding commercials are, this book would be very prophetic.
sine puella vita suget
Shouldn't the burden fall on the networks in this situation? As a viewer, I have not in any way signed a contract to view commercials. If a commercial is interesting, I will view it. The disturbing prevailing thought of the day is to give the content providers control over the mediums. Mp3 players, PVR's, where does control stop? Same logic behind Sony attempting to enforce digital music "security" in devices--leveraging their weight as a media content provider to "strongly encourage" security technology to prevent playing certain music. By having citizens nodding their heads saying "gee, it sounds fair to me--they should be compensated" means that media corporations already have a strong foothold and have warped the minds of many. Never mind the enormous privacy concerns--media companies seeking to obtain demographics forcefully.
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.
How these Digital PVR's are worse than the 30-second skip button the the remote control for my VCR?
Anyone? Anyone?
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
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
Okay, I'll admit it... I can't stand football, but I watched the Superbowl for the commercials! Why? Because they're interesting and (mostly) sorta clever.
On the other hand, would tons and tons of "intersting" commercials really keep my attention? Doubtful. I don't even remember which commercials I liked from the superbowl, let alone what they were advertising.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein
"The free television that we've all enjoyed for so many years is based on us watching these commercials," said Jamie C. Kellner, chief executive of Turner Broadcasting. "There's no Santa Claus. If you don't watch the commercials, someone's going to have to pay for television and it's going to be you."
Good. I want this. I'd gladly pay for the channels I watch. Then I'd only get the 10-15 channels I actually want, rather than the 100 or so I have to pay for to get the ones I want. The Beeb sustains 6 channels and umpteen radio stations on $9/month license fee. I'd gladly pay another £2-3/month for each channel I actually want, rather than the £35/month I pay now for what is mainly crap.
After all, ads simply cheapen the model for the end viewer.
Television won't go away, but at the end of the day, commercials just make it cheaper, but charging $.25 for each show would make the networks rich as hell. So either way, commercials will be here, and so will pay TV.
There just needs to be a way to pay for your TV and have no commercials, but that won't happen either, because ads are so pervasive.
Even if you pay for a magazine or television with almost complete exclusivity for commercials, then they will still attempt to slip a few in, BECAUSE THE TEMPTATION IS THERE TO TURN A FEW EXTRA BUCKS because now it is more of a tempting target. Cosmo or something similar? You pay $5 an issue and it is ALL ADVERTISING.
Strangely, I have noticed mostly men complaining about the commercials, although that is defenitely not a hard and fast rule. It just appears that women like to kind of shop in their heads when they are watching... after all, not to stereotype, but most women that aren't totally into compiling or racing cars seem to like shopping.
The best thing to do is tape or Tivo it out, but if that doesn't work, then learn to totally ignore it. I work in TV, and the advertising force is the same size as the production force. I guess no one should be surprised by this.
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.
Duct Tape to the rescue!
And, since no show can attract enough conventional ad dollars, no show goes into reruns.
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Bottom Line: this is about control, not where the money comes from.
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
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
Make ads work with PVR You really don't want this, if you think about how abusive pop-under ads and hideous flashing x20 pr0n-cam ads are. Imagine JavaScript/VBScript TV, running along with all your other content, only your PVR sees it and throws crap all over the screen in front of your shows and you have to kill them or wait for them to time-out until you can go on.
To make advertising work, they'll have to experiment with variable length ads (so obvious no-one ever thought of it, surprised?), you get a 23 second ad, a 37 second ad, etc., also placement in shows (which is where radio and TV once were), make advertising in such a way you don't know your really watching an ad (i.e. pretty much any saturday morning cartoon, it's a plug for toys.)
I wouldn't want them farking around with PVRs to make the ad content carried and processed by it, but you know money talks, and even TiVo may be listening.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The solution is simple: If you want people to watch the ads, make ads worth watching. When an ad is interesting or funny, I will go back and watch it a second time with my TiVo's replay feature. When it insults my intelligence or is otherwise annoying, I skip it.
Good ads are out there, you know. If they weren't, AdCritic would still be operational. Instead, it was a victim of its own success, so popular that the guys who ran it couldn't afford the bandwidth bills and had to cease operations [yes, I know it will be reborn soon, but probably in a form inferior to the original]. Though why they didn't try to get a 5 or 10 cent payment from advertisers per viewing/downloading of the ads they hosted is beyond me-- people were willing to sit and wait for a COMMERCIAL to download, for the specific purpose of WATCHING the thing-- probably more than once-- for God's sake.
~Philly
Advertiising firms employ a bunch of people who could be making more X. Since less X gets made, volume is lower, prices rise to fill in the profit margin. Not to mention the huge outlay of $$$ for marketing that could also be rolled into profit, R&D, etc.
Maybe 50 years ago, getting info about your needed products to consumers was a problem, but not now. If the customer even has an inkling they need it, finding it themselves is easy. If they don't need it, then you're just diverting money away from other businesses that might use it for better things.
Advertising is a dinosaur, huddling in the jungle wondering when all the little meteorites will stop.. never thinking that a big one is on the way.
While Joe Sixpack (to whom I am superior) might like watching his Budweiser ads, I feel that television advertising has absolutely no effect on me.
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.
The primary purpose of TV advertising is to create brand awareness - in other words, to let you know that a product exists, and to cause you to remember it. The mere fact that you mention a brand name in your sentence means that not only did the TV ad have an effect, it had it's intended effect.
The previous poster's comment about banner ads shows that he (and the people selling the banner ads) doesn't understand what most advertising is supposed to do - it's not supposed to make you stop everything you're doing and buy the product, it's supposed to let you know that the product exists (although there are exceptions to this rule.)
This is why banner ads are "failing" - they're not ineffective, it's how they're measured that's flawed. (Now, this is orthogonal as to whether people pay attention to them or not - which is a better measure of whether advertising is effective or not - if nobody's paying attention to them, then they're failing... but this isn't the same as the number of people who click on them.)
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'm already working on software for my tivo that will kill most ads, no matter what tricks they use. It md5s the first frame of all ads, and adds this to a database that contains how long the ad is, so that it can blank it out whenever it sees it.
Still needs me to hit the "adkiller" button, but I'll only see it once, and then only part of it. If I get it working, may have to let others use the db...
How many TV shows do you watch in reruns, that you would otherwise have to buy the DVD's for? How long did they run? Even if the disks sell for $4 apiece, how many disks to hold an entire season? Given what the season one set cost, the entire run of Buffy will probably cost $200. X-files around $400. B5 for $200. Soon you're spending thousands of dollars for something which used to be effectively free.
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As a highly placed executive at a broadcast media company let me point out that what we really need is a way to keep the future from happening. We've adapted to the present, yet these futuremongers insist on changing the rules. It's simply irresponsible, how do they expect everything to stay the same when everything keeps changing? The present suits us just fine - Congress should mandate that the market adapt to us, not the other way around.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
This message will doubtlessly spawn messages accusing the industry of lack of ability to change with advances in technology, and so forth along with the usual crapola about "it's our airwaves, dammit" [emphesis added]
... the fact that the broadcasters have used them with relative impunity for 70+ years doesn't change that, and pointing that fact out certainly isn't "crapola" by anyone's definition, except perhaps that of the broadcasters themselves.
How on earth is that "crapola?" They are public airwaves that the broadcaster's are using
It may win on some minor points, but it mostly just gives the broadcasters time to secure settlements with PVR companies and come up with alternate technologies and models.
Based on the demands of Hollywood and the recording industry to date, and the trends in Washington, how on earth can you justify a "don't worry, be happy" attitude like this? Those new technologies and models are likely to incorporate the worst in big brother activity monitoring (perhaps even two way samplers?) and certainly draconian copyright controls, if those industries have their druthers (and it looks like they very well might). In the context of what has been happening a "don't worry, be happy" attitude is absolutey and completely unjustified. Indeed, it such an attitude is likely to insure that one of the more repressive scenerios is more likely to play out.
This mantra of don't get involved, don't worry, relax, be apathetic, go one with your life, nothing to see here, is exactly why we are in the mess we are in today. I really can't believe people were stupid enough to moderate that up to +5 insightful, except that some gullible people hear cynicism and mistake it for worldliness, intelligence, and even wisdom, when in fact it is none of those things, nor does it even imply any of those things.
Yes, the sun will come up tommorow. It rose and set perfectly on schedule over the killing fields of cambodia and the repressed millions in the old soviet block, and it will rise and set right on schedule over the western world, whether that world enjoys the freedoms of the past, or a future of authoritarian rule grounded in the enforcement of "intellectual property" in a society whose technology has long since made that notion incompatible with individual freedom.
If people follow your advice and do nothing, the latter becomes signficantly more likely.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The only ad that has been really good over the past few months was one that came before PBS' Frontier House. Georgia Pacific had one of their non-ad ads before the start of each episode:
[Voice over]
Life on the frontier would be very different if they had products like blah blah bathroom tissue
[shot of kid running into outhouse, sees 4 nasty looking rags on nails]
and blah blah paper towels
[picture of another nasty looking rag being used to clean dishes]
and blah blah plates and paper cups
[kid drinking from a pail about the size of his head]
Even though I had all of Frontier House on tivo, I still watched that ad each time. Well done GP!
Usually, you're right -- but there are exceptions. For example, I usually only watch the superbowl to see the ads (sometimes I do care about the teams also). For some reason, ad makers haven't figured out yet that ads that are entertaining will make people _want_ to watch them. But aparently, they only put thought into their ads when they have to pay millions to show them.
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
Every formerly-Turner station (TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi) has ads for some place called "Sonic". While it'd be great to get a Sonic-Freeze-Melt or whatever they're hawking these days, there are NO Sonic restaurants around here.
On a similar vein, there's also (mumble)wood insurance. Some guy in a cowboy hat is telling you about how cool their insurance is, and the ads finished by telling you there's a new office in Phoenix. PHOENIX?! On a nationally-televised ad? Nothing about AZ, but you'd think that would be better for local ads.
WTF do I want to sit through an ad that is targeted at less than 1/4 of their target market? What use is it? If it's because the rates are so cheap, someone tell Red Hat or SuSE. There's probably a higher percentage of viewers that know what Linux is versus wanting to see some nut selling inurance.
Today, every college bowl game (in the US, anyways) has a corporate sponsor whose logo is spray-painted right on the fifty-yard line and whose brand is mentioned in the same sentence as the game at every announcement. Other stadiums do similar things by buying logo placement in places where the TV cameras usually watch.
Movies have been featuring product placement for years now, if not decades. TV shows have done the same thing to a lesser degree, probably only because the commercials are more profitable. That can and will change because of commercial-zapping technology, whether it's outlawed or not.
And then, of course, there are informercials -- TV shows which actually are commercials, wrapped up as talk show-type entertainment. And they work, astonishingly well. (Ever notice all those George Foreman grills in your local hardware, drug, and grocery store?) Any time you see a product with an "As Seen On TV" sticker, you can bet it's been using an informercial to justify its placement in that store.
Commercials will still continue to exist, of course. But as for "alternate" advertising methods -- you must not be watching with your eyes open to have not noticed them already.
If someone doesn't want to watch their friggin ad, they aren't going to watch their friggin ad!! What do they expect, some kind of Clockwork Orange setup with our heads clamped in a chair and our eyes pried open?? If people were once dolts who beleived anything they 'saw on tv' but have developed sales resistance over time, the advertisters just have to get over it and move on to something else. Wow, just because Joe pays Jim a bundle of bucks he's upset because Fred isn't watching the pitch? Like I said before, I personally find most adverts insulting, manipulative and devoid of any real information on which to base a purchase decision. It's a deteriorating relationship, the more hyper and deceptive they become, the less attention they get (from me anyway), and the less attention they get the more hyper and deceptive they try to become. How about an intelligent "our product is a good deal because.." instead of trying to jerk on our primal emotions and instincts?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Nat Geo does have slightly higher quality printing than Mad.
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[adjective] successors to the [product] that eliminate the frustration of [action accomplished by product] have crossed a popularity threshold, raising alarm among [group or groups of greedy, old, rich white men] who see the devices as a threat to the economics of [industry that refuses to change with the times].
I've got one!:
"Internal-combustion successors to the horse and buggy that eliminate the frustration of traveling moderate distances have crossed a popularity threshold, raising alarm among buggy whip manufacturers who see the devices as a threat to the economics of the entire horse-beating-implement industry."
Now you try!
~Philly
What the hell does Jim do for a living anyhow? He's going to all these places, he's unshaven, and he always ends up at Subway with someone. Are they buying sandwiches for him? I think he's a homeless guy.
Remember blip verts? The "a 30 second commercial compressed into about 2 seconds" concept from the pilot of Max Headroom?
Now, if they could only get around the couch potatos exploding...
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
When will we (consumers) be able to find something to do without being bombarded with advertising?
When they're willing to pay the necessary price for the product. C'mon, do you really think Nat. Geographic costs only a few bucks a copy to produce? Advertisers are subsidizing the cost.
Even "public" tv and radio, supported by those who enjoy it, has to rely on sponsors to a limited degree. TV shows are largely, if not completely, free for the viewer. If I want them without the ads, I can always buy the boxed DVD when it comes out.
Billboards are a necessary evil if you want to drive on a freeway instead of a tollway. Magazine and newspaper ads keep costs down so that you can easily afford them. It's all part of the capitalist structure, in more ways than one.
And it's not all bad, you know. Advertising lets you know when a nearby store is having a big sale, or when a new restaurant opens nearby that you'd like to visit, or when your favorite musician is performing a concert in town. Most of advertising is drivel to you, but there's always somebody who feels it's useful to him or her. It's simply a fact of mass media that you have to digest everyone else's useful ads along with your own.
Don't like Ford advertising on your free posters? Go to the Nat. Geographic store or web site and buy your own, then. It's really that simple.
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
and you pay $10/month for it. How many other stations do you watch, and how much would it cost if you had to pay $10/month to watch each of them?
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Only we do it, by paying more for the products advertised. So it is totally bogus to say, that the folks who skip advertising are "stealing". If they bought a can of coke they already payed for the commercial and thus the show.
Also the stations brought this upon them selves, by allowing adverts to become so annoying that nobody wants to see them, and by letting ads totally screw up their program. I don't have a TV anymore, since any films i want to watch i surely don't want to watch on TV. They're hacked to tiny little bits with the best scenes totally fucked up by inconvenient breaks and glaring blaring adverts.
So the "free television" is neither "free", nor is it fun. I really don't care if their business model goes down the drain. I really prefer to hand it over to the MPAA directly than being screwed twice by paying to the MPAA via Coke for the privilege of being served with annoying ads.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
[sigh]
Where were you five months ago, when this was discussed at length?
TiVo picked up aggregate data on this, from those who have not opted out of having their TiVo send such data.
They ARE aware that a large group of Joe Schmoes rewound and watched Britney bounce around on Pepsi's dime a few extra times. They ARE NOT aware that you, Joe Q. Schmoe, watched it ten more times that night with a box of Kleenex in close proximity, while Mrs. Schmoe was upstairs fast asleep.
~Philly
The accuracy of people self-reporting in Market research is a whole other kettle of fish. As someone said, the respondants are self selecting. Most of the market research reports I have seen just give percentages without errors -- usually because they either don't know or because the standard deviation is so high as to not be useful. It's very difficult to (truthfully) come up with a +/- for how many people lie or a self-deluding. It's the same reasoning behind why the weather forecast doesn't have a standard deviation given.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Just my .02, Advertising costs are added to product costs. Since we're pay for the products why should we have watch the ads that we've also paid for. With the exception of new product awareness and occasional reminders of a products existence this whole vicious circle just ends up costing the consumer more money.
Ads are more than annoyances that people like to ignore/skip, they also cost us $.
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
If they are so worried about people not wanting to watch commercials, then they should create a system that would create a *desire* to watch commercials. The belated adcritic.com was a good example of this. People went to this site specifically to watch commercials.
Although this would not work for all commercials, you could implement a Tivo rating system where people could judge commercials similar with a system similar to that of the slashdot moderation system. A huge database would be amassed and people could essentially go watch the top 10 every week. Not a bad deal...
Personally, I would pay money for a device that muted commercials so I don't have to do it myself.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Run ads in parallel with the shows. Like those tickers on CNN or MSNBC, just shrink the show picture down a little bit, and run thin ads along the bottom of the screen. Heck, they already do this during the credits of most shows.
I figure that if advertisers start doing that, people will either adjust their screen or tape a piece of cardboard over the offensive ad space.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
Unless you're really feature-hungry, buy the cheapest Series 1 TiVo you can find on eBay, crack it open, put a HUGE hard drive (or two) in it, and get the lifetime subscription if the TiVo auction doesn't include it.
Works for me-- 120GB HD = 90 hours of programming at "medium" quality. I've got a huge library of shows I like enough to watch a second or third time if nothing good is being recorded, and I still have plenty of space left for the 'disposable' shows that I just time-shift, watch without commercials, and delete.
~Philly
"...with a box of Kleenex in close proximity,..."
I notices you used a brand name.
MUAHahahaha advertising scored another one...
I would be funny to see Kleenex adds that implied they where better for that kind of clean up then there competitors.
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...actors are making 5000 to 1,000,000 per episode, I don't care about their revenue. Come and whine to me when TV actors make less then teachers.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The only reason I watch the Super Bowl is for the interesting and funny commercials.
If adverisers want us to watch make us interested like that. Don't save the best stuff for one night a year.
For example, why in the world do people pay three times as much for brand-name sodas over store brands with essentially the same formulation?
Our economic system does not promote wise activity, it just promotes activity. Anything to whip up a frothy head on the national economy so the cream can be skimmed from the top by the owners of the entrenched brands, and by those who make a cut every time a transaction of any kind takes place, regardless of what it is.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Actually, modern commericals are broadcast with side (unseen) data. This is used so advertisers can verify their commercials were actually played, as opposed to the olden days, when they had to litearly pay somebody to sit and watch TV all day and manualy record when the advertisers commericals were aired. Automated commercial skipping in VCRs simply look for that, and stop the recording mechinism.
=
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They can place ads right in the show. One of the "Freinds" can easily drink only pepsi & wear only rebok's. There are other ways of advertising than just running a 30 second spot. The TV networks and the advertisers do not want to do that. They can also place logo's on the screen. They do not want to do anything different.
Using a PVR is not different than changing the channel or fastforwarding on a TAPE. It's just got a computer in it and it's digital so we need new laws to make people watch the ads so we can make mony!!
-- Tim
TKrabec Pahh
Competition.
So Ford is only willing to pay $950,000? Well, I'll bet you telling them that you'll be happy to go to Chevy and offer them the spot for $1,000,000 if they don't shell out the cash would up thier ante a bit.
There will always be *some* company willing to pay what you are asking for the good spots, but it may require actually make a phone call or two and actually produce shows that people want to watch. God forbid the networks actually have to do some work now and then.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
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.
Good lord.
... a future in which the freedoms of the past are exchanged for a more authoritarian future.
There is nothing sophomoric in pointing out the foolishness of observing a negative trend in one's society and then calling on everyone to "sit back and do nothing, don't worry and be happy" as you do.
There is nothing "cute" or "niave" in pointing out to people that, if they do follow your amazingly bad advice they and their society will likely reap the worst sort of outcome those trends can lead to
Indeed, the only thing more sophomoric than your elitist stab at uninformed cynicism in this thread is the fallacy that your vacation (or, unlikely but possible, work) in Cambodia somehow makes you more of an authority on what people should and should not be concerned about than someone who has chosen, instead, to spend their vacation in, say, Kenya or Nepal, or has instead worked in, say, China, Japan, and much of Europe, or for that matter someone who has never visited any of those places but has had the intelligence and wisdom to be observant as to the goings on in their own society and even, perhaps, try to do someting about it.
Well, actually, there is another thing even more sophomoric than that: tossing out insults like 'cute' and 'niave' rather than following up with a substantive rebuttal, another fallacy commonly referred to as 'ad homonim', and even more commonly as 'trolling.'
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
There are plenty of premium channels on cable that don't have advertising. And there are many European channels that have little or no advertising and are financed through a television tax.
I think we are better off without manipulative visual content that makes people fat, drunk, and go into debt anyway. The sad thing is that advertising works, even if you know what it is doing. Nobody is completely immune from it. The only way to be safe from advertising is not to watch it.
Paper towels, maybe, but doubtful. Toilet paper? Uh... with the very strong societal taboo against bodily functions in the Western hemisphere do you honestly think any company would advertise on something you're about to wipe your ass with? Very negative association there.
There has been some advertising on the inside door of public toilets, but even that hasn't proven very successful. Plus it tends to get vandalized a lot.
As for the fetus - I don't think anyone's conclusively shown any effect of normal audio levels on the unborn. And since babies don't have the capability to process langugage for at least several months (and more commonly a year or so) after birth, I don't think you have to worry about it so much.
I'm hoping for a brave new world where there are no networks, just content providers from which we will buy viewing rights to shows we want to see and those shows will be downloaded to our PVRs when then become available. Say $5 per episode for something like Sopranos and $.50 for Frasier. Let the market determine what they want and when they want it. No more unwelcomed advertising! Please lets make this happen. OK?
You just use an all-green, blue, etc., box or soda can or restaurant sign, etc. sign during filming, much like shooting an actor in front of the green screen, then in post you add in the appropriate logo.
This has advantages for Hollywood - you don't have to sell all this stuff before the movie is made. You can sell limited-time contracts, so when ET goes to video he's eating M&M's because they payed more, and you can internationalize the product placements more effectively.
For TV shows, the studios can eventually ship the raw show to the TV station, who can put the local-market sponsor's product in just-in-time. The sponsor will have provided a clip-art-like library of their products, and the scenes will be annotated with some sort of scene-description meta -file (say MPEG4) and the software will know how to do the proper translation and warping to make the 'clip-art' fit. That's probably a few years in the future, but they should be shooting that way now so they can be ready for syndication.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The problem is that model the commercials use: they drum,drum,drum the message into your subconscious -- they aren't meant to be attractive or interesting to your conscious mind. I seldom watch TV, but when I do the deliberate and colossal stupidity of ads. They would be an insult to your intelligence, if it weren't clear that the intelligent, critical part of your mind is supposed to tune them out so they can do their work on the receptive, non critical parts.
Well, a new day is dawning, and advertisers had better get with the program.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
From the TiVo FAQ:" In 2.5, there is a unofficial, undocumented way to turn on 30 second skip. This will turn the "skip to end" (->|) button into 30 second skip. However, this means you will lose the current functionality of that button, including skip to tickmark while in RW/FF. To try it, enter the following sequence of buttons: Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select. The code will toggle 30 second skip off/on so enter it again to switch back if you don't like it. Also, after any reboot, the button will revert to original standard functionality."
From the TiVo FAQ:"In 2.5, there is a unofficial, undocumented way to turn on 30 second skip. This will turn the "skip to end" (->|) button into 30 second skip. However, this means you will lose the current functionality of that button, including skip to tickmark while in RW/FF. To try it, enter the following sequence of buttons: Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select. The code will toggle 30 second skip off/on so enter it again to switch back if you don't like it. Also, after any reboot, the button will revert to original standard functionality."
Interesting - is this encoded in the vertical blanking interval in a proprietary fashion (ala actimates) or is standard closed-captioning?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
do you honestly think any company would advertise on something you're about to wipe your ass with?
Speaking of which, there are a great number of urinals in this country where the rubber liner has "Say no to drugs" printed on it. Which you are then expected to piss on...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I find your post idiotic, because my sig is a sig. It tells something about me, it doesn't sell a service.
It is also something you could turn off, if you had the intelligence that 7 out of 10 chimpanzees display in their first 4 years of development.
So, that said, fuck off.
Even *you* can figure it out.
Turn off the f*cking television.
Also known in some circles as "getting a life"
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Twisted to the extreme that you seem to want to go to, posting at all is advertising. You're exposing yourself to a public medium in the hopes that you'll recieve prestige, fame, whatever. So I guess (*best sarcastic voice*) We're all advertising!
I suppose I should have been a bit more polite, maybe you're still shell shocked from sifting through 5000 spam or something. Still, I find it interesting that many can't tell what is and what isn't... if we started a friendly conversation about snowboarding, would you accuse me of covertly advertising for the snowboarding industry? In a way, this is another crime that advertisers are guilty of, blurring the line so completely that no one is above suspicion.
Some things aren't ads, such as sigs. Turn them off if you can't tell the difference.
Interesting - is this encoded in the vertical blanking interval in a proprietary fashion (ala actimates) or is standard closed-captioning?
To be honest, I don't know how they do it. For the longest time I thought it was done by audio levels too, then the technology was explained to me, but I could'nt tell you what it is.
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Here in the USA, the only time where you have to own more than one VCR and/or DVR is during the months of November, February and May, the periods where advertisers closely monitor TV viewship to determine advertising rates (the so-called sweeps periods). That's when you really need to have multiple machines running at the same time; back on 19 May 2002 you had to choose between the X-Files finale, the Cosby Show reunion, the season finale of Survivor and the season finale for The Practice. There was much complaints about this and it appears they may not try this again soon.
You discover new shows by giving away samples of shows for free. It's the same principal of your friendly neighborhood crack dealer: "Ah, I see you watch a lot of Simpsons episodes, try an episode of Futurama on us!"
Josh Woodward
Hmmm. Works on mine, which is a hacked Phillips with dual 100GB hard drives. I loaded the code while a recorded program was running and it gave me a sequence of three beeps that I had never heard before. Then the 30 sec skip worked like the FAQ said. My suggestion - try entering the code WHILE A RECORDED PROGRAM IS RUNNING.