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The State of Automated Commercial Skipping
iskqy writes "Even though attention to commerical skipping has gone down since the motion picture studios sued replaytv for it, I've noticed that it appears to be alive and well in some PVR products on the market. ReplayTV PVRs have it (though different from what they got sued for) in what they call Show|Nav (what a terrible feature name!) and SnapStream's Beyond TV has it in a feature they call SmartSkip. In both cases, the user has to press a button to automagically skip a commercial (vs. the original ReplayTV feature which skipped them without any user intervention) but it's basically the same thing. ReplayTV plays down commercial skipping ("jump forward and back between scenes in a show") but SnapStream is more open about the feature ("Skip commercials and other parts of TV shows"). "
Sorry, but the networks have no inherent RIGHT to make money. It's wonderful if they can, but if they feel they are loosing money due to commerical skipping then maybe their business model isn't viable anymore and they need to think about change. Nothing makes me more enraged than corporations that seek protection from congress rather than adapting to new market conditions.
So, as people switch to skipping commercials, we will probably see a huge push in product placement in new tv shows. Hell, I was watching some movie channel the other day, and the people who introduced the movie also doubled as salesmen, trying to push some random product on me.
Looking forward to seeing bart's room covered in butterfinger wrappers.
no
I welcome the ability for people to skip commercials or advertisements for the simple reason that they fail to deliver on their goal. They only seem to annoy people and motivate them to switch channels.
/ads are repeated over and over again. If I wasn't interested the first time, then I doubt I will be the 100th time. This is the same way with SPAM. I get 3 offers a day for the same useless products. One thing I really hate about Discovery channel (and others) is that they only have about a dozen commercials that they play over and over and over again.
If a commercial / ad actually imparts information or entertainment value, then I enjoy and look forward to it, the first couple times. Too many commercials
It is unfortunate that advertisers believe (and possibly rightfully so) that consumers are more likely to purchase a product if they are repeatedly exposed to an ad that does not actually provide information about the product, but instead annoys the heck out of them due to content or frequency of occurrence.
Much like elections, it usually comes down to name recognition.
"Anything is possible with enough programmers, time and pizza." (Substitute caffeine for time as needed.)
I own a TiVo, and I understand the benefits of skipping ads. However, I don't think this is what DVRs so compelling. Time shifting a show (watching a football almost live from the start after missing the 1st quarter) and season passes (TiVo: Record all new Simpsons episodes and save them all until I delete them. And start the recording a minute early & end it a minute late) are much more useful. When I'm watching something intently, skipping ads is great; when I'm watching TV while doing something else, it sometimes is more of a pain than its worth-- sometimes I fell like I *have* to skip ads.
Commercial skipping is nice nonetheless, although I'm not sure how useful automatic skipping is; I'e never tried it. TiVo also has the ability to skip 30-second chunks of shows. Just start playing something from "Now Playing." Press Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select. You'll hear 3 "dings." Now when you press the "jump-to-live" button, you'll skip 30 seconds at a time. You have to repeat this procedure if the TiVo gets rebooted.
I remember back in the late 1980s listening to my parents and their disgust at commercial television stations now having up to THREE advertisements in ad spots, when before it was one, or maybe two on a slow night.
Now, on pay television and free to air, I'm seeing 8-12 advertisements in each slot, and massive amounts of the shows I watch being cut out. Last time I watched X-Files (only because I know it used to be 43 minutes per episode when first shown) the entire show was cut down to 35 minutes. that's eight minutes of the show I want to watch gone, and over 80 advertisements.
Now. What's the difference? What's so pricey nowadays that requires so many advertisements constantly?
Pricey reality television shows. blah.
Unfortunately, skipping does not mean the end of commercials, just commercials as we know them.
Subtle and not so subtle product placements will ensure that we continue to see advertising every time we watch TV, despite our best efforts.
I suggest listening to public streaming radio (in ogg format no less) as a wonderful alternative to the tripe Madison avenue continues to shove down your throat.
Unless you like tripe. Whatever floats your boat.
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Ads are just an excuse to save money on the production costs needed to run a full hour long show.
Ummm, no. Ads are how a tv station makes money. They have no other sources of revenue. Without money, they go out of business.
If that were possible and it caught on with even mild success, you would simply see commercials integrated with the programs - kinda like back in the what, 40s? Not that the programs are much different from commercials now, anyway.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Of course this is why the media industry sued ReplayTV into oblivion. Cut out the ads and you significantly cut their revenue and ability to produce the shows. Too bad cable/satellite TV isn't more like the current state of satellite radio -- way fewer ads per program hour! Paying for cable TV seems to only get me more ads targeted to my demographic group.
While nearly all of us who have PVR's enjoy the ability to skip screaming car salesmen, corporate drug pushers (pharmaceutical companies), incredibly heart warming financial companies touting their trustwothiness, etc. etc. et. all ad nauseum, eliminating them from our entertainment will be all but impossible. In fact, by eliminating the containerized thirty or sixty second ads, we'll instead get blasted by pop-ups and embedded product placements, etc., AND the traditional commercial. In fact, it is already happening. To wit:
Disney owns ABC, ESPN and the Discovery Channel. How often on ESPN does one see "the stars" of that great new hit on ABC? How often does ABC tout programs on ESPN? And now, Discovery is in the act too, offering us "documentaries" on the magic behind Disney World in Orlando. And of course, who owns Disney World? Disney.
Films made by Sony's studios almost always feature Sony equipment when a given character is using his or her PC. Also, the word "SONY" is often in huge black letters on the rear of a monitor, even though they aren't usually so prominent on the products shipped to Joe Consumer from the factory.
Add to that the PAID product placements like Coca-Cola being drunk by a given character. There are many of those.
And finally, the grand-daddy of product advertising discguised as content: NASCAR. Each car is festooned with no less than twenty different sponsors, starting with the make and model of the auto being raced (even they have exactly one part in common with their street version: the roof panel) plus the major sponsor of the driver, plus the minor sponsor plus all the super-minor sponsors not the least of which is NACAR itself. The whole race is a rotating advertisement, one which the competitors are trying not only to beat each other but also to gain the most exposure time for their sponsors. A higher position on the track means more "impressions" for the sponsors on the viewers. Best of all, when a driver is interviewed, he thanks 1) God 2) his crew and of course his sponsors for painting his "Folger's/Viargra/Ford/Taurus" in their colors. The entire event is, in short, an ad.
That's direction we're headed. Like death, taxes and Microsoft security flaws, one simply cannot avoid marketing. It's simply more malleable than are the viewers or listeners of a given content.
Has anyone ever based a multi-thousand dollar car purchase on a car ad they saw? I'm sure some ad exec would bend over backwards trying to make some tenuous psychological argument about "sub conscious choices" or "product awareness" but I think car makers just waste a hell of a lot of money in the end.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
If you blog it...
I for one welcome the divide between advertising and entertainment. Do you *really* want every show to become like The Truman Show, where "actors" give short spiels about their favourite product to wipe the floors?
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
"If I wanted to distinguish pop-up blockers from replay, I would say that pop-up blockers are different because (1) the commercials are not integrated with the rest of the site (they change by user) and therefore they are not a coherent copyrighted work like a TV broadcast...
Cable stations often replace sections of advertisments with their own local ones. Some shows are repeated on different networks with different ads.
The show is a copyrighted work. The commercials are each individual copyrighted works. I'd keep typing, but you see where I'm going with this...
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Just to claify, a ReplayTV does not "delete" commericals, it just skips over them. This can to toogled by the user and I believe that they are shipped with the box unchecked. Once the user checks the box to activate commerical advance, it can easily be turned off for any given show by pressinga button on the remote. As you can see "delete" is not the correct term so the original show is not altered in any way, just the viewing of said program. I would equate it to pressing mute of adjusting the color contrast or rewinding to rewatch a portion of the show. None of these things are disallowed.
The Tools Of Ignorance wanna be a tool?
Right, like they'll do more "product placement" and more "popup commercials" like they have on Spike TV, FX and E, where right in the middle of a show- there will be a loud noise as some animation appears on the bottom third of the screen.
- Serge
Is to get rid of your television. No purchase or installation required :).
For years I thought television, even cable was crap, but I let myself be held hostage by "that one good show".
Back in June I moved and I decided to leave the TV behind on purpose.
To be honest, every once in a blue moon I miss the tube.
However, in the balance I read more, get more sleep, I get more exercise, see my friends more, study more, go out....in short, I have more of a life.
I still watch DVDs of some good movies....and even "that one good show" on PC.
Steve
Why not use several methods to determine if there's a commercial?
1. The blackout interval. Sometimes though, like on Frasier there's blackouts during the program.
2. The audio levels
3. Closed captioning. Are commercials closed captioned? I haven't goofed off with CC settings for a while. My advent tv seems to have several of them.
4. network bug detection.
Perhaps using a combination of the 4 above can do perfect commercial skippage. Then have it make a small database of which times it skipped commercials a day/week before to give it a general guideline on when to do it again.
Take your anti-spam tech and use it towards tv commercials.
(At the risk of being redundant) How about playback edit scripts for homebrew PVRs? A user could record a show straight through, then download a little script (a couple kilobytes) which instructs the PVR which parts of the recording to play back. It could have some kind of hash of one of the opening frames so that the system could synchronize the script to the show. /. style moderation. You then go downwload the file, watch your show with the commercials cut out, and then rate the quality of the edit. I think the rating system would prevent the entertainment industry from flooding the system with crap, and I think there would be, for lack of a better term, karma whores who would provide the scripts. (It really wouldn't require much more effort than watching tv).
How would they be distributed? Enthusiastic users would watch the shows when they were on, or shortly after, and note the exact time that each commercial break starts and stops. They'd then post these to a forum, where there could be some form of
First, I defer to any lawyers here and hope to hear any rebuttals they may have to the following. Just having completed a copyright course (and thus having a little dangerous knowledge), I offer the following:
Copyright subsists at fixation (17 USC 102), so, as another poster noted, the shows and commercials are obviously separately copyrighted. If the shows are then fixed with commercials interposed, then a copyright would also presumably exist for the compliation of the shows and commercials. This is likely not how it is done as it would seem that the commercials would be served from a separate source in real time. If this is true, the channel stream viewed by the user would not necessarily have a copyright as a compliation. On the other hand, I would expect, if determination of the order and identity of the shows and interposed commercials is done by a file, the file would be copyrightable and thus protectable. [This follows from a case we studied on the Duke Nukem game in which so-called "MAP" files which had no graphics but which controlled the display of library graphics were basically held copyrightable.]
I think this doesn't matter, however. It is a well-known copyright tenet that derivative works are not created by unfixed alterations of performances/displays. For example, if you hold up pink cellophane in front of a television to make everything appear pink, you have not created a derivative work (the pinkified work was not fixed in any physical medium), although photographing the result would. This example was from Judge Kosinski (spelling?) of the 9th Circuit in the Duke Nukem case referenced previously. This is also why people with sunglasses aren't sued for creating derivative works of everything they see. So, blacking out commercials or skipping them would seem to clearly not create a derivative work.
The most likely way for broadcasters to prevent commercial skipping would seem to be under some form of moral rights. Moral rights protects against mutilation or unauthorized modification of works of art. However, first, the broadcasters would have to prove a television broadcast was a work of art, which seems unlikely (I mean, the shows in combination with commercials interposed). Second, in the US, at the federal level at least, protection of visual works does not extend to movies or television (see the definition of visual art under 17 USC 101). So this fails as well.
I have a replay too and it does work very well for most of the shows I watch. I believe that in addition to the sound level, the replay also checks the black level, so that when a show has a fade to black, it thinks the next scene will be a commercial. This causes problems with shows like Buffy and X Files, but work great for the other shows.