How Could TV Survive Without Commercials?

Posted by Cliff on Sunday August 25, 2002 @08:20AM from the sounding-the-death-knell-of-broadcast-TV dept.

Milo_Mindbender asks: "I'm sure many of the readers of this site know the joy of skipping commercials using a TiVO, Replay or other form of PVR box. I'm sure it has occurred to a lot of us that if someone produced a schedule of commercial stop/start times the PVR could easily make all commercials instantly vanish from a recording. While this would be really cool, if it got really popular it would KILL all the local TV stations and TV networks who depend on ads to survive. Sure, you could say it's their fault for having an outdated business model, but there's a problem: these sources are where A LOT of the content for your PVR comes from. If they die, there's nothing for your PVR to record. My question for this crowd is: 'If the commercials stopped tomorrow, what business models can you come up with that would keep TV content flowing to your PVR?'"

"I've heard a few interesting ideas such as:

having people pick a few ads from a list and watch them before each show...
...giving advertisers a profile of your interest and let them show you a (smaller number) of unskippable ads for things you are really interested in...
...ahaving the products show up in the show itself (product placement). For example: Buffy, after killing a vampire, could then slam down a Mountan Dew.

The most obvious alternative is to send your favorite shows to you via broadband and have you pay by the show. But would you pay to watch Buffy, The News, Star Trek? Would you prefer pay by the show, subscribe to a show/network or be forced to watch commercials? I'm interested in hearing what system would bug you the least, or if you have your own ideas how it could work."

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Re:... (I'm heading OT) [farther] by PDHoss · 2002-08-25 08:34 · Score: 3, Offtopic

It's the same with people looking at their watch. Ask someone who checked their watch what time it is, and see how many have to check again.
It's a matter of getting from the medium what you need. In the case of your watch, it's usually "how long until the next thing I have to do?" Most people don't need the information provided by commercials so that information is quietly discarded. PDHoss

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Re:Video On Demand by scotch · 2002-08-25 09:03 · Score: 2, Offtopic

The only thing you got wrong is thinking "Friends" ever got any better. One of the most unoriginal, trite, predictable shows ever to make it so big.

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