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ABC Wants DVR Fast Forwarding Disabled
Anonymous CE Worker writes "The television network ABC is looking to develop technology that would disable the fast-forward button on DVRs, and allow commercials to run as intended on their channel." From the article: "Some research executives — even at networks with sales departments that acted differently — had argued before the upfront that ads viewed in fast-forward mode generated value for advertisers, since consumers were at least partly exposed to their messages. But Shaw said ABC was only interested in finding a way to receive compensation for un-skipped ads."
We can use blipverts! Just watch out for the exploding diabetics.
Why, ABC, do you want people to stop watching your programs?
NEWSFLASH: If your channel is the only one disabling fast forwarding then people aren't going to bother watching your shit in the first place.
So long as it's just blocking fast-forwarding on ABC shows and not other channels, let me be the first to say that I have absolutely no problem with this.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
1) ABC writes a big check to Tivo...
2) Tivo pushes "innocent" bios update
3) Suddenly you can't fast forward things recorded off channels with "ABC" associated with them.
Problem solved
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Thank god we've got the BBC.
When I see an ad even in fast forward that catches my attention I usually rewind and watch it. Maybe I'm just weird, but I dont enjoy watching crap commercials for tampons etc., its not as if I use them! However good beer commericals on the other hand...
More of the same ol' same ol' of screwing the consumer.
-PB_TPU_40 The trick to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
If I'm watching a TV program on my DVR and I catch up to the live program, and am thus forced to watch the commercials, I get a little annoyed, but I live with it. If I were watching a pre-recorded program on my DVR and I was FORCED to watch the commercials because they decided to disable a primary function of my DVR, I would be pissed off, and feel very hostile toward the network and the advertisers involved.
Sure, an important part of advertising is getting people to hear your message. However, it's also important not to inspire feelings of hatred toward you by trying to force your message down people's throats. If the net result of your invasive advertising is that everyone hates you, how is that a good thing for the advertiser?
Because the only reason to fast forward a DVR is to skip commercials. You really want to watch that 20 minutes of the baseball game that is on before the show you were trying to tape. Or if you rewind to see something at the start of Lost again, you really want to re-watch the 30 minutes of the show you've already seen.
Any DVR manufacturer that goes along with making a DVR less useful than a VCR is going to suffer in a huge way. In 1988 we had a VCR with a 30-second fastforward button.
I'm not even going to get into how making someone watch commercials is wrong.
ABC was only interested in finding a way to receive compensation for un-skipped ads
Whoops, time to change their business model!
Let me introduce myself. I'm an olde farte. I was a teenager back in the 1970's when they were laying the first cable around our neighbourhood. Back then people (the They as in "they say ...") said "nobody will pay for what they already
get for free" and "nobody will pay to see advertising." Well... "they" were wrong as it turns out, people now pay upwards of
50$US for the honour of watching bad programmes and watching Enzyte Bob lose his shorts (tell me those floats in the pool
aren't phallic, go on).
Now it's the content providers who are insisting the viewer (those with satellite and cable) watch the advertisements they are already paying to see.
<Stimpy>Ironic, huh, Ren?</Stimpy>
Time for network execs and particularly the viewers to wake up and smell the coffee.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
they should get TV makers to prevent me from changing the channel when commercials start too.
Why don't they look to incentivise people to watch ads, perhaps develop a technology that tracks ads that are played back, and gives a rebate to people who watch a certain amount of ads, or gives them credits towards premium channels or whatever. Disabling the fast-forward button will just royally piss people off, and that is not good business.
Oh no... it's the future.
TFA said:
"He suggested that consumers prefer DVRs for their ability to facilitate on-demand viewing and not ad-zapping"
Well, I CERTAINLY watch all the ads when I use my VCR. Nope, don't hit that fast forward button at all, nope, no sirree... TFA's proof they're on drugs in Hollywood.
Unless you've been living under a rock for the last ten years, this announcement should come as no surprise. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
I'll just stop watching TV... oh wait, I already did.
No commericials, no annoying crap. I get more done, and if there is anything I want to watch, then I download it off of one of the many sources of free video.
Quality and instant (yet horribly scheduled) access is the only thing TV networks have going for them, now.
Behold Technocrats! My mighty VCR powers allow me to FAST-FOREWARD!
Not that I watch, much less record anything on ABC...
crazy dynamite monkey
Right here just proves the theory of big corperations care more about the dollar than the people.... Good thing I don't watch ABC..
Linux, because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
I purchase a LOT of dvd movies. these has DRM content such as the fbi warning and sometimes trailers or just film studio propaganda which is non-skippable on my sony dvd player (otherwise very nice)... what's up with that? we have to first buy the content, then HAVE to watch crap like that?
yes I do understand that if I copy this disc I just bought I will get into trouble, yes, I known this since vhs cassettes in my youth thank you very much
that will probably never change, but I think dvd player fabricants should enable skip option on content you paid for...
I am amazed that the media companies think that they can make more money by making their products suck more. Hence the long list of new media suckiness: DRMd DVDs, Location specific DVDs, DRMd CDs, un-skippable ads on DVDs, more ads in movie theaters, Gigli.
No wonder their sales numbers suck.
I can just picture it now. DVR is going to push TV channels to start putting on-screen ads up during the show (sorta like what you see splashed across every single frickin' page on the internet).
Could someone explain to me how a skipped ad, in which the person has absolutely no desire to ever see the ad, buy the product, or otherwise succumb to feminine hygeine products, is any different than walking away during commercials, or can in any way be construed as "lost revenue"?
If a person skips an ad (or, fast forwards it), they very obviously had no desire to ever submit dollars to that product/company, or would do so already without the ad in the first place.
Most of the people I know mute the commercials to make them easier to ignore. Are they going to disable that too?
The future is becoming more and more like the one predicted on Max Headroom. Some day it will be illegal to turn the TV off.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
This is nonsense. Pissing off consumers is not the answer: they should be looking at determining how many ads were *not* fast-forwarded and only paying the content/service providers for those spots, much like how click-thrus and page impressions work on teh Interweb.
body massage!
I want technology to make these idiots steer their cars directly into utility poles.
So they want to force viewers to watch obnoxious commercials? Here's some news, Mr. VP -- you can't. And the harder you try, the less success you'll have. You see, you have to entice viewers, not force. This is simply Proof #482 that these 'executives' don't understand that pissed off customers don't buy stuff. True, their real customers are the advertising companies, but stations live and die by their viewer numbers ("share", they call it). Fewer viewers = lower billable rate for ad spots = lower revenue = asshat executive retires early to "persure other opportunities".
I'm pretty sure in my entire adult life there has never been a commercial that compelled me to buy a product. Actually, like many others, I've trained myself to pretty much block the commercial from my consciousness. Sometimes it may take 20 viewings of the same commercial to finally realize what the commercial is about. Until then it all seems like colors and moving figures.
So can I sign-up to not have commericals? They aren't working on me it only seems fair. Or is there new technology coming out that will prevent me from blocking commercials internally? Maybe even something that releases endorphins during viewing.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
He might have also later been seen later yelling at the kids to get off his lawn.
Pete/Petri "damn, my chainsaw is clogged with 1's and 0's again." --clyde
I don't have a TV (on purpose, I find it save tons of time for me,) but my parents do, so whenever I go there I end up watching something on TV at least for a little while and I never watch commercials. How are these ABC executives going to prevent me from switching to another channel while the commercials are on? What about my ability to (gasp) turn the TV off or even (double gasp) go away from the box when the commercial is on?
I trully believe that it is enough that my parents already pay for the dish service (ExpressVu in Canada,) and I trully don't care about the networks' desire to make money on commercials.
---
(going on a tangent here)
By the way, I really reduced the number of visits to the local movie theaters, I went to watch the Superman though and it was terrible experience: it was a 10pm show and people brought their 2-3 year old kids, a family right behind us had 4 of these things at the same time and it was impossible to get the parents to shut the little pricks up. And one of the parents at the end of the movie started yelling at me: you can't treat kids that way, what do you have against kids (the guy was from India I think, but it should be irrelevant in principle,) I told him he should have kept the brats at home and not bring them to the 10pm show that ended at 1am. He wouldn't stop yelling, so I asked him if he wants to take it outside, he didn't, oh well. And by the way, the movie was supposed to start at 10pm, but it only started at 10:20, and they went through all the garbage commercials and all the little good drones/zombies were watching those commercials as if their lives depended on them and I was studying the drones, they were almost drooling with those gigantic backets of pop-corn.
I know why I don't go to the movies: little kids, big up kids, popcorn, noise, (oh yeah, one of those parents behind us left his cell on and was yapping on it for sometime during the movie,) commercials for anything, not just movies, then 20 minutes of movie commercials.
---
Fuck the movie theaters. And fuck the ABC network producers, we already pay to watch their garbage and they just have to stick it to us with all these commercials AND now they want to prevent us from skipping the commercials.
Man I am glad I don't have a TV at home.
You can't handle the truth.
-- RLJ
Something to see here! Don't move allong!
Maybe it's ABC, maybe it's advertisers, or maybe it's Nielson, but these guys all need to understand that the whole point of advertisements is to convert customers to their product.
I'm not going to be converted to some life insurance, or a box of cookies, so why am I watching ads for those things? Rather, why are these people throwing money away on me if it's not going to turn into a conversion for them?
I skip any commercial I'm not interested in, and that's an awful lot of them. If I woke up one day and my fast-forward button no longer skipped commercials, it wouldn't equal a new conversion for these guys. So they'd still be out the money for the commercial, and on top of that, the money they gave to the lobbyist to disable my fast-forward button.
This is like saying spam-blockers are hurting the business of Viagra and timeshares. The people using blocking and deleting spam aren't going to buy viagra if just those spam-blockers were somehow less effective, and what's next, stopping the delete button from functioning when it's an advertisement?
Does ABC really think that if only they could get us to watch more SPAM, they'd somehow make more money?
I was watching a Fox show "So you think you can dance" that was recorded on my Comcast DVR. There is a hack to add a 30-second skip feature. The show was completely destroyed and didn't even start properly for 45 minutes, which apparent with a secondary host introduction. I skipped literally 30 minutes of commercials. I rewind for the commercials I haven't seen yet and that looked interesting.
I don't think that requring me to sit through 45 minutes of irrelevant garbage is a good idea. Same with races. I record them and then I have a pre-race show for an hour that I don't care about.
ABC doesn't have me as a customer anyway as I never watch any of their holdings, but this is a terrible idea.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
I've a few reactions to this, feel free to add your own, or elaborate on mine.
1. I already pay $54.99 for cable tv, in my area I have no other choice so for all intents and purposes its a monopoly, they could charge $100, people would still have to pay it. What are they doing with all this goddamn money that they still need to make more by running advertisements?
2. No matter how hard they try, they can't force me to watch commercials. Are they going to come in and tie me down, and tape my eyes open?
3. It still surprises me how many people use Tivo, given free alternatives. I have a mythtv box, lets see them try to shove one of these 'updates' in there.
4. ABC's programming sucks anyway. I can safely say it could cease to be and I would not miss it one bit.
Sorry for the coarse language, but things like this are what drive people to violence, not video games
Check out the cave on the east side of lake Hylia. Strange and wonderful things live in it.
First they come after our PrintScreen keys, and now they want our Fast Forward buttons?!?
Something tells me my OFF button is next...
A series of commercials I was forced to watch, would just be for a series of thing I would vow to never buy.
snip...
He is just wrong here. I don't know anyone that has a DVR for on demand. Everyone I know uses the DVR so they can fast forward through the commercials. I don't even start a show until it is 20 min into it (for an hour show) just so I don't have to watch commercials at the end!
...cars that are pissing me off on the highway.
...cell phones of people in the grocery store with those stupid BlueTooth headsets.
...push-to-talk on cell phones.
...Blackberries.
Is there any reason why ABC should be allowed to disable someone else's equipment that they don't like, and that I should not be allowed?
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
With CableCARD 2.0, the tech would be there to make this possible. They could even prevent programs from being DVR'd in the first place.
Studies show that the net is displacing television as an entertainment option, especially among coveted younger viewers. I love the kind of thinking that responds to this threat by trying to make sure that television remains as unlike (and separate from) the net as possible.
I barely watch TV anymore, and commercials are one big reason why. I'm so used to being able to choose exactly what I see and hear that I find the idea of passively accepting ads unacceptable; the annoyance level spoils shows for me. Note that I *am* willing to pay for programming; I'd just rather do it directly, through subscription fees, than have content force-fed to me on the remote chance it might make me buy something.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
You hit the nail on the head.
When I was skipping commercials for something I had on my TiVo the other day, I caught the end of the new Mountain Dew commercial. I stopped and went back just to see the whole thing. The ending was great, though it loses something with YouTube's slightly-too-long extended version (only one I could find).
Of course, the commercial doesn't influence my decision to buy Mountain Dew, but that's a different argument altogether.
I don't presume to know everybody's reasoning behind either buying a commercial DVR or building their own, but isn't the ability to skip commercials fairly important to most people? IMO the reason you would have a DVR is so that you can either watch one thing and record another or you have a busy schedule and don't want to be bothered by having to watch commercials when you finally do get the time to watch your choice of content. Is that so far off? So if ABC wants to disable the ability to fast forward through the commercials on commercial DVRs, all the more reason to check out something like MythTV which will most likely come up with a way around the problem fairly quick. That or you could just not watch anything on ABC. Just my two cents worth.
Justify my text? I'm sorry, but it has no excuse.
I tend to agree that people record shows just so they dont miss them, not to skip commercials. But the fact that they are "forcing" it on me...that pisses me off. I dont even have a DVR yet, I still use my VCR. Works great, quality is fine (its just TV), and they cant do anything to control what I record...ever.
IMHO, This is a dumb idea.
Commercials are (in the main) short lived entities. I don't mean the time (30secs or whatever) but the product has a very finite life. For example, Joe's Motors are advertising 2007 Fords at Cost price and you view the program that had this commercial playing duting one of its many breaks in 2008! Who on earth is interested in buying one of these intentionally obsolete cars months or even years later even if they were still available.
So, ABC disables commercial fast forwarding then pisses off the viewer who months later catches up with a prog they missed the first time around.
I watch very little commercial TV anyway , as an earliet poster said, thank god for the BBC. Commercials are getting ever more painful to watch. Not only do the TV stations boost the sound and colour contrast but there are more per hour than there were 10 years ago.
The next ideas the will put forward will be
- Stopping you muting the sound during Ad breaks
- Stopping you channel fliping
- stopping you actually switching the damm thing off during a commercial break
- Eventually, the time per hour of Commercials will be longer than the programs they are supposed to be wrapped around!
My 0.02$ from a 'Grumpy Old Man' (If you watch UK TV you will know about this and its counterpart 'Grumpy Old Women') Two of the best progs on TV especially the ascerbic comments of Rick Wakeman!
...are DVRs with special clamps to prevent you from leaving during a commercial (catheters are available as an optional add-on), technology to disable the "off" button to prevent you from turning off your TV, and technology to disable the exterior doorknobs to discourage consumers from wanting to go outside and do things that don't involve watching advertisements. Special five-minute skip buttons will soon replace the fast-forward buttons on DVRs so you can skip directly from one commercial break to another.
Somewhat off topic. I don't have a dvr, but the commercial skip on my vcr doesn't work very well, which means I have to FF through it. Since I need to know where to stop, I have to actually watch the screen. I am more glued to it than if I hit mute and talk to my wife, look at a magazine, whatever. Does DVR commerial skip work well?
I would say I see more commercials while fast forwarding with Tivo than live tv. If I am fast forwarding, I am staring at the tv, noting every commercial, to see when I can hit play. We often stop to watch funny or interesting commercials (like Apple's new ones). If I'm watching Live TV, I often get up for commercials knowing that I have 3-4 minutes (what happened to 2 minutes of commercials) until I need to come back.
And what's with commercials being twice as loud as the show you're watching!
-Ben
-=Down Syndrome in Maine
Why not pause a comercial if the viewer leaves the room while the comercial is on? No one will ever miss a precious moment of comercial ever again.
I want a pony.
Do remember, ABC were the network who originally aired Max Headroom here in the US. Obviously, their execs were none too happy about having all their secret plans revealed.
Block fast-forward first, then on to blipverts and no off buttons!
www.eFax.com are spammers
All theese years, I thought the Twilight Zone was a joke.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Technology frequently affects us in ways that we don't originally intend, and DVRs are no exception. IMHO (and at the risk of being flamed as a consumer whore), the advertising companies should just make better commercials, maybe in the same way that beer companies have been doing for a long time. When I hear a "real men of genius" commercial on the radio, I listen because they're funny. My roommate and I also rewind to watch the "man law" commercials on TV, and lots of other people watch the commercials during the Superbowl.
I don't want to see some crazy guy screaming about how low his prices are for cars or furniture. I don't want to see commercials hyping a drug by its name without saying what it's for. I certainly don't need to see 2 people pretending to have a normal conversation that sounds painfully unnatural.
Adapt or die.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
Because it is DVR! Let's add a button, so that when pushed, the circuit is overclocked by 3x, and return to normal when released. Then, forget about FF button.
http://www.ieaa.org/~adrian/
... to run as intended...
No such thing. ABC broadcasts content. That's it. It's our choice how or when we view it.
Developers: We can use your help.
From the article, an opinion by the ABC tool Shaw:
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong wrong! Mr. Shaw! What a tool you've turned out to be. People are not grateful for the timeshifting of their shows... they're grateful for being in control of their watching preferences. Some will watch commercials and will do so whether or not they can skip the ads. Others don't ever watch ads, don't ever want to, but happen to inadvertantly bump into ads every once in a while -- that's the best you're going to get with them.
You want to piss off the customers? Disable the fast forward during commercials... Plain and simple... there will be a backlash.
What if there were NO ADVERTISMENTS on broadcast television. And to watch, you pay a monthly subscription? Or an annual subscription. Radical?
1) Easy option, make the ads better so that people will WANT to watch them.
2) Advertisers should be paying ME for my time to watch their commercials.
Realistic options:
1) Give me a price for commercial free television that I can pay. Let the consumer see how much money television advertising is really saving them.
2) I pay $90 a month for cable, of which most channels I do not watch. What am I paying for again? Last time I read, part of my subscription fee pays for channels such as ESPN, which charge the cable company to carry them AND run commercials. The home shopping channels pay the cable carriers to deliver their content.
1. Getting a beer from the fridge.
2. peeing
3. repeat as needed.
I'm Peggy.
as my father always said "It's good to want things."
Whenever commercials come on TV, I SWITCH TO ANOTHER CHANNEL without commercials.
I bet next they'll try to disable the chan up/down buttons, the mute button, and the power button during commercials. Then they'll try to mandate all chairs have restraints that are activated right before commercials come on. Ooh, and little things to hold open your eyelids and ears...
However good beer commericals on the other hand...
**scribes your post into large book**
The networks should be the last people with any input into the technology that will define the future of the TV industry. All the decent television is elsewhere
You see, ABC, CBS and NBC are the suvivours of the age of Radio and early Television networks. They were the Passive Pay-to-view means of televised entertainment in the USA. Now they are old and out of touch, their programmes are rubbish, their news is rubbish, but they are still huge and powerful, probably because they are merged or bought out by other companies which made their profits doing something other than grasping straws in a dwindling market to feed a one trick pony (nice combination of cliche's, eh?)
They demand special treatment. In light of dozens of competing channels which now produce excellent and diverse entertainment, they need this old business model to succeed. Otherwise, heavens(!), they'd have to role up their sleeves and get down to the business of creating content worth paying for.
Can't have that, can we? So corporate welfare, let's demand special treatment from hardware vendors, cable/satellite distributors and special laws which protect our vested interests from big government.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When there were 8 commercials per hour, it was not be worth people's time to skip the ads.
With 22 commercials per hour, it is not worth the time to watch the show live.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Just install MythTV...done and done...With commercial skip and time-stretch, I have halved the time I watch TV while watching the same content.
I don't blame ABC for trying this since their primary revenue stream is from commercials. What I can't stand though is how me and most of my neighbors are shelling out close to $100/month for the privilege of seeing up to 30% commercials on cable channels.
> ABC's upscale audience, coupled with a strong performance in "A" counties and in leading markets, made his network a must-buy[for advertisers]
> "... with the programming on ABC that we deliver, are you going to move those dollars to CBS?"
As if this were the 1970s.
He's even alone in the industry:
>competitors at CBS and Fox were so quick to fold the tent and accept buyers' refusals to pay for increased ratings generated from DVR viewing.
Consumers, if given an option, will choose a DVR with a fast forward button. Since the components of a DVR/PVR are pretty cheap, and scheduling services can be pretty cheap to free there is no way some jackass ABC exec will move the market to remove the fast forward feature. Even if he were able to convince the cable co's (not to dificult since they also benifit) and Tivo, market forces would push consumers to alternatives which allow users to fast forward. This guy is just trying to cause a rucus so he can get a little more ad revenue.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Not surprising. The television networks clearly don't know a damn thing.
*) they put their best shows up against the other network's best shows. Sun Tzu said to attack where your enemy is weak. Therefore, when otherwise perfectly fine shows are put up against a category blockbuster, such as Friends, or Seinfeld, they are killed quickly. Altering the schedule to put good shows up against the competition's bad shows would increase the number of viewers for that show.
*) Sun Tzu also said that the place of battle must not be known to the enemy. I think that Thursday night at 8:00 PM is a known place of battle. If the networks were smart, they would have surprised their enemies and aired a good show on Tuesday night.
If Machiavelli is your cup of tea, multiple violations can be seen there as well, such as a failure to heed Chapter XIX: "That One Should Avoid Being Despised And Hated".
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
OK, so now instead of fast forwarding through commercials on my DVR, I just go back to flipping to another channel while commercials are on! Brilliant ABC!
Seeing how corporate owned PVR solutions are subject to lawsuits and the like, it might start making financial sense to build a myth box out, to get the features that the big boys can't give you.
That's assuming there's anything worth watching on TV anymore, House MD not withstanding.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
how a DVR Fast Forwarding through a commercial is any different then a VCR that taped a show doing the same exact thing for the past how many years? yeah that's what i thought.
Yep. Back in the day, I actually wrote to outpost.com praising them for the commercials. My favorite was the wolves sicced on the marching band [disclaimer: I was a band geek 25 years ago in HS].
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
they should enable the technology for the DVRs to keep our eyes from blinking through ABC's commercials! So you can't even shut them out! Or the cuffs on the barcaloungers, so you can't go for a snack or beer while they're showing the commercials about (yikes!) snacks or beer!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Advertisers are relying on a couple of things in their current business model: that inertia will keep a significant percentage of the viewership on that couch, passively sucking up the message, during the ads, and that ads are allowing them to influence the purchasing habits of a significant number of viewers even despite their better judgement. The quite obvious tactics of manipulation in advertisements work. Stoned dude sits on the couch and while he could just get up and walk away, or mute it and page through a magazine, the activity barrier is higher than just clicking through on FF, and so he sits there, and that taco ad works on him. I'm hungry, I want a taco. The whole point of advertising is influencing the decision of the viewer: making them buy something they didn't think they wanted (and probably don't need and will get nothing from). Does it work? Look at the stupid cars people drive, the rancid garbage they eat, the price they pay for bubbly sugar water.
Advertisers are concerned about DVR fast forwarding diminishing the reach of their advertising and they are right to, it is diminishing the reach of their advertising. Advertisers pay networks for that reach so networks are justifiably concerned about the rise of DVRs impacting their revenue. ABC's arguments that people don't have the right and (most amusingly) don't really want to FF through ads are idiotic, but the counter-argument that ad-skipping is not going to mess with the business model of sponsored television doesn't hold water either.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Possible product placement tie-in with 3M Scotch Tape...
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Fast forward this web page till this answer? I'm gonna tell them !!! No, seriously, I think that we have the power of putting our money where our mouth is. Here in Spain five years ago pay TV had almost no ads. Now it is getting quite close the free channels, you can even see competing schedules with Desperate Housewives between "Fox" and "Cuatro" stations, the latter being a free channel. What execs are not realizing is their behaviour (plus the available contents on the Internet) are putting them on the dole: Why would anyone be paying for something they can get for free in a more convenient way? (Downloaded shows use to have the ads removed). People do not like to be force-fed with ads. Sorry it's a fact. Maybe there is not a market for so many ads on TV. Time to move on.
The digital fascism that ABC seems to be supporting would normally lead me to boycott their products. But since I don't watch any ABC shows anyway (teh suck), that probably wouldn't be much of a statement on my part. Nevertheless, I certainly won't be rushing to watch any of their shows now that I know how they feel about my freedom not to watch their ads. I watch plenty of ads already, rarely skipping unless I'm pressed for time. But I'd consider being forced to watch ads on my TiVo recorded shows to be an act of war. Don't mess with my bread and circuses!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Didn't happen, though.
It's time for TV broadcasting to wake up and smell the inevitable sound of history crashing down on their outmoded technology.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
They can alter my DVR when they pry it from my cold dead hands!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
They're making sure that when you do want that chocolate bar or cup of coffee, it's the one advertised that you'll recognise in the store. Then you buy the advertised one because it's already familiar to you, you already know about it. It becomes the safe option, the others are unknown and therefore risky.
Deleted
I don't know, but it seems to me that this really shouldn't be comming from the mouth of guy who is in charge of the broadcast station that is and has always been in 3rd place in terms of viewership.
As much as I hate commercials (and I do), I hate even more paying 50, 60, or more dollars a month for cable TV (or dish or whatever you have). Being able to skip through these commercials is great for now, but what happens when the masses catch on and the companies that want to advertise decide they don't want to do it on TV where people will skip over their ads. Nobody will pay as much for a fraction of the audience, and most stations get their revenue from ads, not cable subscriptions. Think how much we'd be paying just to watch TV if we didn't have to watch ads? 50 is a lot, but the few hundred we'd have to give up just to skip a few ads would be ridiculous if you ask me. As much as ads suck, at least it keeps TV cheap...relatively.
Prohibit your execs from forcing writers to write product placement into their shows.
Otherwise, my next 3-week break from pay TV will be intentional and permanent, not accidental and temporary.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
This is why I only watch movies at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas here in Austin. No children except at special showings (for Superman, no children under 6 and then only with parent). Even then, if they are noisy they will get thrown out. Also, no commercials and special movie-themed pre-show entertainment. (Unless you consider previews commercials, or 60's-era Car commercials before the movie Cars to be annoying commercials rather than fun pre-show entertainment... which I don't).
Also, they have good beer. Hooray, beer!
Seriously, if you like movies, the Alamo is a good reason to move to Austin. Or, at least, to visit.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Maybe they could learn something about their target audience. If they put on a pilot for a new sitcom, and notice that tampon commercials get fast forwarded much more often than beer commercials, they could infer that the sitcom attracts more male viewers than female.
'nuff said.
ABC is a bunch of pikers compare to this lot. I've stopped watching the first two completely. The last 45 minutes of any movie is more than 50% advertising breaks with at least 2 breaks in the last 15 minutes alone. And while History Channel (and TLC and Discovery) don't have as LOOOOOOOONG breaks they have more of them. Every 3-4-5 minutes on average.
Who care's, I would rather sit in a coffee bar and read a German translation of "The Lord of the Rings" or "MySQL and Perl for the Web" (in English). I wouldn't tape a show with people on a desert island throwing up because they ate a posionous lizard anyway, let alone watch the commercials.
Over 60% of kids surveyed recently noted that computers were indispensible in their life and used them accordingly. (UK story on Drudgereport.com yesterday noted this)
TV's were rated indispensible by something around 40% and dropping.
Networks are BEHIND THE CURVE, & still trying to save the sales of buggy whips.
Time for a mass cleanout of Network Execs, to be replaced by people who have grown up with computers, as the new era is already here.
I've owned a S2 standalone Tivo since 2002, it's worked flawlessly the entire time.
In spite of all the "changes" Tivo has made, the only two things that feel even remotely invasive are the advertisements that periodically show up as a menu option on the main menu, and the "integrated" online stuff they squish into the Music & Photos server selector.
Nothing they have done has appeared to interfere with the primary DVR functions -- browsing recorded programs has actually improved along the way with some changes to Now Playing.
I guess it's just lack of familiarity, but Tivo naysayers get caught up in some weird made-up problems that have just never been real problems. 30 Second Skip was never an actual feature (there was some keycode to turn it on, I've never bothered and have never missed it when FFing commercials).
I guess this all makes me an apologist, but I don't really understand what I'm apologizing for...
I think that it's very fair for ABC to disable fast forward on my DVR... after all, I've disabled ABC on the DVR already, along with NBC, CBS and Fox.
With a company such as TiVO, it's simple enough to do. Otherwise, how can you disable a fast forward button on software that you don't control? You'd need to transmit a virus continually that can exploit weaknesses in all DVR systems and disable that feature.
Of course, this would be entirely illegal, and ABC would go down in flames. Are they simply mad, then? Will they attempt to stop me from changing channels during commercials, too?
Because they have more money than god, and you don't.
QED.
(Ducks; runs)
From the Sony Bravia EULA in the not-too-distant future... By turning on this television, you hereby agree that television shows ("CONTENT") are paid for by advertising and that avoiding advertising is morally wrong. Fast forwarding, skipping of commercials using technology (PVRs, Tape Recording Devices, Time Machines) is prohibited. Talking to your loved ones during commericials is illegal. Going to the washroom during a commercial is stealing. You hereby agree not avert your eyes or plug your ears during commercial breaks. Deaf and/or dumb people found to be in proximity of this television set while it is turned on will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
"Shaw also threw cold water on the idea that neutering the fast-forward option would result in a consumer backlash. He suggested that consumers prefer DVRs for their ability to facilitate on-demand viewing and not ad-zapping--and consumers might warm to the idea that anytime viewing brings with it a tradeoff in the form of unavoidable commercial viewing."
Bold statements like this backed by speculation always give me a slightly queasy feeling. Suggesting what consumers want and how they will behave when some grand scheme is put in place to me smacks of hubris. It seems like every time a guy like this says consumers won't be upset about something it pretty much guarantees there's going to be a mob out for blood somewhere just around the corner. Just a thought...
Quis custodiet custodes ipsos?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well then I recommend that they MAKE THEIR OWN DVR (one without fast forward) and see if anybody wants to buy it.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
well, lucky you. I live in Toronto, Ontario, north of the border, and I don't know if we have any theaters where kids wouldn't be allowed. You know what those people told me in the theater? It's a public place, we can do whatever. Well, a movie theater is not a public place. It's private property and it is really stupid that 2-3 year old kids are allowed on that property after 10pm.
I remember sometime ago I went to a movie theater to watch Team America: World Police cartoon, and it was clearly not a kids show. However even then some people came with kids. There was a couple right in front of us with 2 9-11 year old kids (I don't even know why they were allowed into the theater with them.) I suppose they didn't realize what kind of a show this was going to be (even though it was clearly labeled,) and if I made that mistake, I would've left the theater within the first 10 minutes. The adults were just looking at each other with a surprised look on their faces but it never occured to them to get up and leave. The kids had a great time though, they were laughing at all the dirty words, it was wonderful for them I suppose. Especially the last monologue about the pussies and the dicks and assholes and shit and fucking etc.
Oh well, there is no personal responsibility any longer.
You can't handle the truth.
I have a DISH DVR on every TV in my home specifically to eliminate the need to watch commercials. I no longer watch live TV for anything but sports and even then I try to miss about the first 20 minutes to try to at least miss commercials in the first period/quarter. If given the choice of not being able to FF thru commercials or not being able to watch ABC programs, Ill be changing the channel. Whatever planet the bone head is from who thinks people are NOT buying DVR to eliminate commercials has his head up his backside.
The Dish DVR has the 30sec. FF button. push.push.push.push. No more 2 minute commercial break. The day Dish network disables the feature is the day I will eliminate Dish from my home. DirectTV are you listening? You would be my next choice (and in fact Im seriously considering the switch from Dish to DirectTV now as I contemplate the cost to upgrade all of my Dish DVR to HD DVR.)
Commercials suck. I pay a premium to my media provider to receive their media stream. Unless the networks want to PAY ME for watching their commercials, I have no interest in wasting my time watching them. Don't blame DVRs for your stupid business model. Just because you get paid for running them doesn't mean that I have to watch them.
You want me to watch your content, make it compelling for me to do so.
Eliminating my ability to avoid watching your content isn't going to make me want to watch it any more. It will only make me look for a technology solution which will again deliver the ability to avoid it. If that means I build my own DVR on a pizza box PC without your FF block, then that will be a solution I will consider. If TIVO continues to function without the FF block, it will probably be my first choice and will help me select my media stream provider. I prefer an "appliance/off-the-shelf" solution over "build your own". I can guarantee you that if the commercial DVR makers are stupid enough to comply with ABC or any other media providers request to disable FF, there will be countless alternatives lined up promising the FF ability who will not comply. They WILL get my $$$.
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
- Tash
Vroom...
ABC are attempting to have a new US law enacted which makes it illegal to get up and go to the bathroom during commercials.
Fine by me, I'll just build my own DVR. Simple enough.
I will forever be a student.
...and like Br'er Rabbit, we'll get away from them.
They could be shooting themselves in the foot with this one because it so clearly subtracts a capability that everybody has had for nearly 25 years with VCRs. I imagine even FCC commissioners and congressmen fast-forward now and then.
And if they succeed? TV becomes less watchable and just buying the show, more desireable. More and more people will give up on anything not enhanced by it's "live" nature (sports, Idol, etc) and just get the download (legal or not) or of course buy or rent the series on DVD a year later.
Which means the production company still has a business model, but the TV network, not.
"It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper."
- Rod Serling
Without the 'fast-forward' function, why even own a commercial DVR?
Wouldn't people just switch to DVD recorders or a media center capable system, whether it's Linux or Windows or even custom made?
Removing features from an established product like DVRs would only infuriate not only your veiwers but the owners of the products who bought them for the very features you intend to disable. Millions of DVR owners would just stop watching ABC, and download the commercial free versions of their favorite shows online - bypassing any revenue you would intend to make over this change.
I believe I'll go sell all my Disney/ABC stock now, I want no part in such idiocy nor the loss in profits if it actually happens. If I were a financial adviser, I'd advise others to do the same.
I find extremely little value in anything on television. It's purely contrived crap. This kind of "demand" by big media players is insane. What kind of value does their programming have that I should be forced to watch the advertisments to pay for it? Frankly, most everything I've watched and enjoyed over the past two years have been podcasts. The music I listen to comes from places like opsound.org and creative commons. When I do, rarely, flip on the TV or radio it takes about five to ten minutes before I flip it back off again. There is nothing there worth seeing or hearing. At all.
Because of this, I doubt I'll even consider buying a DVR.
Say bad words about my book, in cold oatmeal, or I shall sue!
Anyone ever seen General Electric's one second theater? It's an advertisement aimed directly at DVR users. They're one second spots at the end of a regular GE comercial that use one frame per still image. You can only read the contents if viewed using a DVR going frame-by-frame. The contents are usually odd or funny enough to make them worth looking for. It may not be the answer to the DVR commercial skipping problem, but it's certainly creative thinking that doesn't infringe on anyone's rights. I think GE should be praised for the idea.
Should this ever happen, I will be cancelling my DVR and cable, and not watch any more TV.
;-)
I can't tolerate live TV as it is, and I have occasionally rewound an ad which looked funny which I had skipped. (Like those great VW ads about unpimpin' your ride
I won't watch yout (*&#^ Kotex, McDonald's, or Huggies commercials because I can guarantee I will ever be a consumer. Your ad contract with ABC does not extend to me.
I wish advertisers would outgrow this belief that I am somehow morally/legally bound to watch the stuff I don't want to see that they paid someone else for. Pay me a few hundred extra/month, and I'll personally watch all of the ads during all of the TV I watch. Otherwise, go away!!
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
...for me to skip annoying ads such as that Taylor Hicks Ford commercial that is being ridiculously overplayed lately and now drives me into a frothing rage, will be tracked down and violently assaulted.
OK, I start watching a show, and something comes up that I can't finish watching it just then. Maybe someone else in the house comes along in the meantime and watches somethign else or even that same recording, and loses wher eI'd paused the playback. Eventually I get back to watching it, but don't want to see the portion I've already viewed for a second time.
I'd like to fast-forward to the point I left off last time around and begin watching there.
I'll have to skip over parts of the show, and also skip over the earlier commercials to get to my desired begin point.
What the heck is wrong with that?!
Or maybe I've recorded something with a really cool event in the middle or toward the end that I want to show someone or just enjoy all by myself again, without having to wait through all the less interesting stuff before it? Is that wrong too?
Listen to that interesting sound: the sound of someone fighting against reality... sad, really...
not gonna happen, buster. The DVR people are competing against each other. Can you see "NEW generation Tivo! Now with an inability to FFWD ads!" How would that sell? How would the marketing guys feel about that feature?
Jeese. That's the best thing about my Tivo. Take it away and I'll use my PC to do the same job.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
Fox News also wants to have the fast forward disabled so that their "consumers" will quit fast forwarding past "Fair and Balanced" in order to watch the commmercials...
The same will happen with digital books eventually, in the middle of reading, a commercial will appaar on the digital paper.
Think im kidding? Give it time. Same old same old.
I have a really bad feeling that someday the government will mandate that everyone have access to cable television so that we can be properly mind controlled by our federal and corporate overlords. It will become a sort of social stigma. You will have trouble doing business and getting jobs if you don't watch TV. Job interviews will include questions about the latest episode of such and such, as well credit card applications, bank loan interviews, etc.
Yes, I am a tinfoil hat junkie. I don't watch any television and I read too much, which causes me to be well informed, pessimistic, and paranoid.
Will someone please explain to ABC that a 1956 business model might not work in 2006.
Maybe it's time to adapt to the era in which we are currently living.
Yeah, and I want NO ADS on cable TV that I'm paying for. If every US resident chips in five bucks, that'd be $1.5B. I bet that's enough money to pass a legislation against ads on cable and satellite.
Anyway, this is more of a theoretical discussion to me, since I have neither cable nor satellite.
"ABC wants DVRs to act just like regular TV"
// This is not a sig.
He comes off as yet another low grade intellect that somehow got a high paying executive position. He must be the kid or brother of some muckity muck.
Anyway, to paraphrase Lois Lane in the animated Superman series, I will *personally* lead the army against anyone who disables my fast forward.
In related news. ABC wants closing your eyes during commercials deemed illegal.
Shaw also threw cold water on the idea that neutering the fast-forward option would result in a consumer backlash. He suggested that consumers prefer DVRs for their ability to facilitate on-demand viewing and not ad-zapping--and consumers might warm to the idea that anytime viewing brings with it a tradeoff in the form of unavoidable commercial viewing.
In my case at least, WRONG! And isn't this at least part of the problem with ABC programming? Mr Shaw, et al, are all too willing to speak for their customers instead of listening to them!
One more facet of current technologies I won't take part in, anymore...if this happens. Which is doubtful. Stay out of my house.
surely ABC have already been paid for those adverts to be placed in those slots???
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Magazines will now require you to read the adds, before turning the page.
I like my blend of "Olde School" Books, along with the net.
I'm not a Now-Freak, so I am just as happy watching an entire season on DVD the following year because that, too, has no commercials. Books used to have ads, but someone stamped them out 40 years ago.
--TaoPhoenix
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Wouldn't ABC doing this constitute some sort of violation of FCC interferance rules?
Yeah, if only 40% of kids see television as a "must-have" then the end is surely near for all television companies.
I mean, 40% of 70 million people is only 28 million children in the USA!!! TV is clearly about to become a minority market!!!
ABC has filed a lawsuit against the "Channel Up" and "Channel Down" button.
If this happens, I promise you that it will be a matter of hours before the class action suit against Insight, Comcast, Cox, Directv, Echostar or anyone who plays along for false advertising the DVR capabilities.
Haven't these people ever heard of Blipverts? It might be as effective to have people zoom through the commercials as see them "live".
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
DVR user wants to disable ABC.
I use Sage TV with a Hauppage encoder. Sage TV offers a third-party plug-in that scans my recordings, identifies commercial segments, and then completely skips those segments when the show is played back. Fast forward is obsolete. The "downside" is that people often talk about funny commercials and I never have any idea what they are talking about...
But seriously, folks. It's amazing how pervasive advertising has/is becoming. Just about every popular channel:
- has the volume jump up every time commercials are played.
- cuts, fast fowards or squeezes credits on most channels these days just to squeeze in more commercials.
- have huge obnoxious pop-ups in the middle of a show that take up a third of the screen.
- has their logo superimposed on the right corner blocking content from shows.
- actually embeds ad fragments into certain TV shows (I'm looking at you, FOX with Ice Age 2, *wags finger*)
While you're holding your breath, consider the following: 1. Why don't you ask the ad directors to make ads we actually might want to watch. For example, Volkswagen made some great ads that became popular as standalone downloads. Miss Helga has even become a cultural icon and even has page. The ads were some of the most popular downloads on YouTube.com The advertising model has changed - get over it and get on it. If an ad can attract more viewers than some of your regularly scheduled shows, you need to take a good look at why. The old model is no longer applicable and one could gamble and say the writing was on the wall with the advent of VHS recorders and remote controls.
"Question everything, including this!" - http://technoracle.blogspot.com/
Yeah, ABC may be successful in doing this either through technology, litigation, or bribes to congress but it sure as hell is gonna piss me off even more and continue to make me even less receptive and more resourceful in avoiding this crap.
"technology?" I love how it is called a "technology" for a product to build intermittent failure into an existing feature.
If ad-zapping isn't a highly-desired feature, then the users must not be using it, and therefore there is no reason to disable it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Comes from overproduction. That is why all the forcefeeding. What in the past was happenning only on the market: sleeve-grabbing, looking into the eyes, sugary smiles of oily faces of merchants, now happens in the house, on the street, at work - everywhere.
This is because we produce more than we need.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
What sort of company tries to invent such a obviously and irritatingly anti-customer technology.
Not one that values its customers anyway.
Personally I take serious offence at someone trying to force me to watch adverts for their product.
It is like living opposite a large advert - not something that many of use would want to do. That's why we have planning laws.
Likewise, there should be laws against corporate attempts to control us in this way.
I don't expect that ABC will ever get this to work. Not to mention, good luck getting anyone to surrender their old DVR box. You can't come to my house and take it. The cable networks would lose revenue from consumers who stop using DVR. The only advantage of DVR vs just buying a DVD Recorder for your tv is that you can setup season schedules to record the same show. If you take away my fast forwarding I will cancel my DVR and go out and drop $100 on a DVD recorder. I just might do that anyway.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
I think i'll read a book.
Gads, this is already getting stupid and they want to pile on more crap?
As if having ads every 5 min now (usually for their shows) and running a little ad in the corner for their next show and a logo that seems stuck to my screen just isn't enough....
I used to get DVDs instead but even those are getting too annoying to bother with. I mostly buy/rent older stuff, much less annoying crap on em. People pay big for convenience, why keep making your stuff less so ?!?
I made an interesting discovery when i was home during the day last week. Perry Mason must have a 100-year distribution agreement for no cuts...the commercials weren't even enough to go pee. I swear there were like 4 60-90 sec breaks the whole hour.
I've been using my MythTV box for six months now, and I love it. With the latest update (.19), I've not had to reboot or restart or kill a process yet.
The networks need to figure out that making new technology LESS useful than the previous generation of technology is stupid and makes enemies of their own customers. If I could use the fast-forward button on a VCR in 1985, I damned sure want one in a digital recorder in 2006. And, with a MythTV machine, nobody can tell me what it does.
Illegitimi non carborundum
There's no way anyone will be able to effectively stop consumers from fast forwarding through commercials. I believe eventually this will bring about a massive change in how commercials are displayed on television. We'll probably end up with 1/4 of the screen constantly displaying an ad. Or perhaps a picture in picture that displays a commercial. Or maybe just a quick five second transparent "pop-up" that displays an ad. Or Madison Ave will go even further and just embed ads right into the show itself. Billboards and constant product placement in each show? Characters pausing every 10 minutes to remind us to "Ride the Walrus"? Plenty of movies already feature this kind of product placement, so why not television shows.
Maybe they should make commercials 8 times as slow and make them 8 times as long so when you fast forward at 8x speed their commercial plays at a normal rate. That would solve their problem and be asinine enough for them to like.
Oh please do this! I hope all channels do this!
There would have to be some signal that "commercial starts here" and "commercial ends here," otherwise how would the DVR know when to disable fast forward? The OSS DVRs, such as MythTV, could key in on the signal and outright block the commercials entirely. Wow... sign me up!
TV viewers want Fast Forward speed increased to 11...
1) run all commercials at 8x slowdown to catch the fast forwarders
2) run commercials for 1 second, 30 seconds apart to catch the 30 second skip crowd
Problem solved!
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Honey, gimme that darn remote back!
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
Just slow the commercials way down so they play at normal speed during FFWD!@
I was thinking about this too, and what would (seem to) work for me, a la carte programming.
Wasn't congress trying to force this issue with the major cable and satellite providers? If I could choose to have only certain channels (each seperately priced) then I think I could personally cut down on my cable bill significantly. History Channel, National Geographic Channel, and Cartoon Network - I would gladly pay for these seperately so I didn't have to subsidize crap channels like Soap and E!.
On a program called "The Soup" on "E!", during a commercial break they insert a ten-second snippet of the show between the commercials. Until I got wise to this trick, I would stop fast-forwarding to catch it (usually just a quick throwaway gag), after which the commercials would continue. I thought this was a pretty clever way to catch us fast-forward junkies, but I don't really fall for it any more.
Seriously, if you like movies, the Alamo is a good reason to move to Austin. Or, at least, to visit. :)
I second that. I only go to other theaters if Alamo doesn't have the movie I want to see. And the food is pretty good too. And the special events - they'll often have themed food to go along with the movie, like white castle burgers when showing Harold and Kumar. I love taking guests from out of town to show them what they're missing in their own towns.
Check out DRM-free movies at http://www.bside.com
12 year old hackers find way around newly developed system in 4...3...2...1
"But this one goes to 11!"
Why do I think that DVR owners will just stop watching ABC shows? This is as stupid as when some baseball field tried to ban peanuts because they made a mess.
No, I will not work for your startup
That's ignoring one small fact about publicly traded businesses. There really is no method in place for scaling back income... first the execs decrease their costs (I.E. lay off everyone or kill all their benefits) and run before the stockholders get wind of what's happening. Hell, not meeting posted growth expectations is enough to bring stockholders in with torches and pitchforks. Projecting a loss? You're gone.
I say go ahead ABC and DVR mfgs. If this is the future for DVR technology, it will create a market with a demand for DVR's with commercial skip and fast forward buttons still enabled. Anyone up for designing a DVR with a big fat FF button on the remote?
Oooooh, and you could advertise your super-swank DVR with the extra large FF button on ABC so all those suckers that are forced to watch it will ask themselves "Why the hell don't I have one of those?"
Just an idea...
# man tar
Like I, a guy, want to be force to watch female hygiene product commercials.
Put commercials on that I actually do not mind watching or have some relevance to my life and would not mind them - IE I usually do not mind most of google's ads.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
My TiVo often picks up on signals during commercials for certain shows which asks me to "Press to Record" while I'm watching live TV or a recording, or even when I FF through the commercial.
Instead of blocking FF (which makes it take way longer to watch most shows), why don't the networks figure out how to display the highest-paying ad as an image that's right below or above the little time track meter WHILE I'm fast-forwarding?
That way I'm exposed to their silly advertising in enough time to view their ad message clearly, but I'm not wasting my time watching full-length commercials.
As soon as it passes the commercial segment the image goes away and life remains happy.
"It's amazing how much crap exists."-Costas Apostolakos
I've long believed that we need a law that requires - under penalty of life in prison if they don't - all members of the board of directors, and all exectutive staff to watch every single commercial, every single time it plays for any product or service their company sells. You want me to watch your screeching, fuzzy turds singing racially offensive crap (yeah, you Quiznos) 800 times a day, you watch it the same number of times.
If we had such a law, and it were rigorously enforced, commercials wouldn't make me want to murder every single person involved in making them any more. In fact, I'll bet they'd be quite entertaining.
...ABC makes a show worthy of my Tivo's drive space, I'll worry.
How you see the world is how the world sees you.
...they want their bad ideas back.
I am happy that ABC is trying to develop technology to solve their problem instead of running to the government to do it for them. (Even if they also tried that and just failed)
The intarweb is better than TV, especially when you're able to watch TV on it as you can now (torrent). Various networks are also putting their TV shows online, where you are forced to sit through commercials... but at least the content is there. Old-style television is going to go away [eventually] and we will be left with free-per-view with commercials, pay-per-view without commercials, DVD sales, DRM'd legal downloads, and non-DRM'd illegal downloads. Obviously there will be some exceptions but there is little to no reason for terrestrial TV to exist today except for momentum. Eventually everyone who grew up without computers will be dead (at different times in different nations, natch) and TV will fade away.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Product placement within shows is the only way that advertisers will be guaranteed viewers will see it. I hate product placement, but I guess someone has to fund my favorite shows. With modern computer editing techniques, they could in fact replace the in-show ads to keep up with changes in advertisers and localization.
Reminds me of the TV show "Max Headroom", where it was a crime to turn off a television, and everything in society was based upon TV and Ratings...
Clearly what they are telling us, is they just want us to download everything. Fine by me.
How can they possibly expect to enforce something like that on the PC-based DVRs? My SageTV with DirMon and ShowAnalyzer automagically generates a skip list for CommSkip, so I never see ads on timeshifted stuff. Before, when I used MythTV, I had similar functionality. I never watch live TV anymore because I lack the patience to pause the show long enough to build up a sizeable ringbuffer to be able to manually FF through the ads.
But I still watch ads. I was so tickled by the new VW Rabbit ad (seen on the gym TV) that I found it on YouTube and watched it over and over again-- emailing it to family and friends. So that's the way to get people to watch ads-- interesting content in the framework of the ad. I guess it's the end of those poorly made Budget Bob's Bargain Warehouse local spots with the clown suits and balloons.
This sig is exempt from disclosure under the privacy Act of 1974.
Well, I will fly against the grain, and I'll say that at least ABC is somewhat consistant. So far they are the only network that allows you to watch their shows for free on the 'net. All you need to do is watch the ads that are interspersed in the content. You can skip segments of the show, but you have to watch the commercial directly preceding the segment you do want to watch. It works very well - I watched the whole Commander In Chief without any problems (except that the show isn't very good).
(Or I should rather say, they allowed you to watch - appears the site is down till fall)
I understand that networks make their money from advertising. And I channel surf with the best of them, so their advertising does not reach me for the most part. But if there was a way to design DVRs the way they designed their show streaming, that would be OK with me, and their advertisers would actually get more exposure than they do now.
And in case anybody wonders, I do use a DVR right now, and I do skip all the commercials, and I'm loving it. But I'm also realistic in realizing that if everybody did this, we'd end up with product placements that are even more annoying than they are today, making the quality of the programs much worse.
m
Some of the DVDs we got for the kids are so bad I ripped them, eliminated the cruft, then burned a DVD that actually starts playing the movie when inserted into the player. The kids are happier, I'm happier, and the original is safe in the cabinet.
That's right. Thanks to DRM and the DMCA, I can't skip/FF all the junk on the original, but I can easily make a full quality copy without the restrictions.
At least with VHS tapes I could use a marker to write the time point where the movie started on the tape. Then I could FF there before hitting play. I thought technology would save me from that tedium.
When it first came out, the promises of commercial-free broadcasts were to be our reward for paying a monthly fee. DTV/Dish echoed this in their early days. I'm disappointed - but not surprised - by this move at all... Just like MTV used to play music videos, things change into new an creative ways to gouge us and subject us to advertising AND monthly fees. To echo another post, I still have a VCR and PC-based DVR, and more power to em if they figure out a way to disable my ability to FF my own non-proprietary digital media source.
I got it. How about a split-screen for advertisements? For all wide-screen tvs sold in the US, you would keep your 4:3 ratio for television viewing. The other side of the screen would have flashing ads and such, and a webcam pointed at you to make sure that you didn't cover that side up with a blanket. Somehow this sounds familiar-- doesn't it?
When I get sick of comercial television or just want to watch something with actual merit I switch over to WPT (Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin's PBS station) or to TPT (Twin Cities Public Television, in MN). They have short little recognitions for sponsors/donors but thats it. The pledge drives can be a little annoying but on the other hand if its for a show you like you get a good 6 hours worth of episodes to watch. And yes I do donate to WPT and to WPR (Wisconsin Public Radio), I'd rather pay for high quality shows then have to sit through commercial breaks that seem to be lasting longer and longer.
/. ;D )
Just my two cents,
(I would expect lots of geek and nerd comments but I am posting to
~Petaris "The world is open. Are you?"
When I catch up to live TV on my DVR I get up and go the the fridge or pantry. Not becasue I am hungry but because I hate commericals. So by stopping me from fast forwarding my commercials I will gain weight. Move over Mc D's here is ABC...
(My Commercial) Tired of gaining weight, does your life seem to be slipping by while another commerical about not feeling so fresh. Well we have an invention for you, the (insert DVR like Myth) commercial skip feature, just press the button and get back 15 minutes every hour of your life.
The finest shade.
And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.
And several channels (cable channels) are already in the habit of talking over the credits to a movie or squeezing them into the left third of the screen while they show mini-mercials. While I have no pressing desire to see who the 'Key Grip' was, occasionally I do want to see the name or artist of a song played. Anyway, it's just damn annoying and is making me want to watch those channels less and less...
Ultimately I think they'll find (the hard way for us) that they're decreasing their viewing audience with all these shenanigans. I mean, I'm willing to put up with 30 minutes of damn commercials in a two hour show because they're providing us valuable content. Once they diminish the value of that content enough, then they're going to lose me as a viewer.
I'm trying to imagine what would qualify a chicken as "un-natural"?
"Here, it's good chicken but remember not to pull the wooden toothpick out of the chicken breast until the last bite is in your mouth..."
Is "NATURAL" an FDA reserved word? If they'd explicitly said "free-range" or "no antibiotics or steroids added", then I would be confident of their claim...
According to http://www.arbyschickennaturals.com/ they just claim it's completely 100% real chicken (other restaurant chicken could be up to 29% not chicken!?), that "hasn't been poked, prodded or altered.."
Is advertising great, or what?
Never completely happen. The only fix is the following. An a la carte pay TV via Internet or Satelite. (can't use Cable because they have to much of their own content and will always try to force garbage TV they created on you) The problem today isn't commercials, it's the fact that TV sucks. If a channel was great people would pay for it without the need to be inundated with commercials. It's the reason I know so many people who pay for NFL Sunday Ticket. I hate garbage shows as much as I hate garbage commericals. I watch pretty much only four families of stations. History Channel(s), Science Channel, National Geographic, and the ESPN Channel(s). Any other stations my viewing habits are spotty at best. I used to watch the Discovery Channel, but it's filled with a ton of garbage now too. (those biker shows were cool the first 10,000 times...)
My only question is: how long before the rest of us can come together and inform our legislators that we have lots more votes on our side than ABC owns, and we'll use them if necessary. Government was never intended to protect outmoded business models, and enslave its citizens to them!
Hey, we're supposed to own the airwaves too!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Since I've gotten into watching Vale Tudo/MMA (most people know this as UFC, which is really just a brand name) all other sports seem boring. I just can't get excited about how well a guy swings a bat when I can watch what I consider to be the ultimate competition.
We grab all the regular shows we watch from Bittorrent - sans commercials and usually in HD.
We have cable - we have capture cards - it's faster to download then to rip it myself.
Being on the west coast of the US, I can often have a show downloaded before it's actually been broadcast in my area.
Those of us who choose not to view commercial advertisements will continue to avoid them. There isn't a damned thing that the networks can do that wouldn't be worked around before the first commercial break.
Additionally, for them to attempt to coerce viewing of commercials gives cover to intellectual property thieves like me.
ABC is responsible for the creation of a great deal of top-quality intellectual property. Wonderful shows like Extreme Makeover and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. If they want their IP protected from common criminals who simply want to steal from them then that's their choice. I intend to help them. On my machine I have not only disabled FF on ABC, but rewind, recording and even the ability to watch them at all. All I had to do is go into the "Manual channel programming" option in the menu and disable their channel.
Only together can we fight the corruption of copyright infringement. We should stop calling it copyright infringement and start calling it what it is. Terrorism.
Does anyone recall the old Max Headroom television show in the '80's? You know, where a future was portrayed where TVs, by Law, could not be turned off... or silenced...
Speaking of DVD annoyances, why oh why does each DVD have to have its own cute menu system. I often have trouble deciding which option the cursor is on, let alone which option I really want.
Let's disable the mute, volume, channel, and power buttons while the commercials are running too!
Here is a simple solution if ABC gets there way (other than not watching ABC). For every commercial you are forced to watch because your fast forward button is now disabled, send a letter (not email) to the company with something like the following:
Dear sirs,
I was forced to watch your commercial on my dvr last night because ABC has taken it upon themselves to somehow deactivate the fast forward button function. They state they do so to benefit their advertisors. Why your company and ABC believes it has the right to break a piece of equipment that I worked very hard to save for and to purchase, I do not understand. However, since that is your position and my dvr is no longer functioning correctly, I am no longer going to purchase the products you manufacture. Not only that, I am telling my friends and family to boycott your products as well.
Sincerely,
Then follow through on it. Most likely, you will get a letter back saying it is not their policy to do this, but ABC and that they have no control over it. However, companies take serious the threats of boycotts, particularly when they are on grounds such as these. If they have enough complaints, they'll pressure ABC to quit or they will pull their advertising. Either way, in the end, ABC will have to change the practice.
How about the KFC superbowl comercial??? Nobody has mentioned that yet! KFC ran a special comercial during the superbowl where ONLY if you had the ability to go frame by frame you could find the secret password to get a free Chicken Snacker from KFC! If ABC wanted to cash in on comercails and DVR's just use "special" tactics! I claimed my free snacker!
I don't see now ABC can disable MythTV on my Linux hardware. Sure you can make me go throw the inefficient analog data stream, but you can't disable it.
For those posters that say the networks need to switch to a subscriber business method like HBO or Showtime, keep in mind that the majority of people out there probably don't enjoy the shows you like. Most Sci-Fi, like Stargate SG-1 and Firefly, would have never been created in such an environment. Despite those shows being popular with most of us, the production costs would exceed what those shows would bring in subscriber revenues. Hence, we'd end up with cheap-to-produce dramas like Desperate Housewives and reality shows like American Idol while the gems that took a while to catch on, like The X-Files and Simpsons, would have never been made or would have been canceled early on.
Not that I agree with disabling fast forwarding... just something to think about.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
I suppose it's a good thing I don't watch ABC anyway.
Seriously though, if something like this goes through then other channels will likely follow suit. I'd still pay to have my DVR since my schedule makes it impossible to be there to watch the few shows I like when they are on but I would expect to pay less since I would no longer be able to skip commercials.
Ultimately I don't think this adds anything, I can still see the commercials zipping past and have stopped from time to time for the interesting looking ones. Even that is relatively meaningless because I can't think of a single time that a TV commercial has influenced my buying. I shop for groceries that I need and if something looks good at the store I buy it, I've never seen an ad and thought "gee I better go buy that" and I never write anything I've seen on TV down to go look in to later. I research electronics I buy and often wind up finding that an obscure, rarely (or never) advertised item is better for me.
I'm sure it works on some people though, but I really wonder to what degree. Most ads suck, are too long and repeated too much. If they have to do anything to screw it up, why not make it optional for the companies advertising? If they don't want their ads to be skipped let them pay more for that feature. Granted for me that would backfire because then I could pinpoint which companies are ruining what little television experience I enjoy.
Presently here, but not there.
I think they should try the approach where you make a creative commercial people will want to watch. Not only are you more likely to get people's attention but people probably distribute your commercial for you if they like it (free advertising). Of course there's the whole issue of actually making programming worth paying attention to... something most networks seem to be struggling with these days.
Long before there were DVRs, I was ignoring commercials with the mute button. The fast forward just wastes less of my time in the process. I'm with the guy that said basically, if ABC wants to do it fine, I'll watch other shows instead. There's too many good ones anyhow.
this is just another reason why programming will continue to get pirated to the 'Net via BitTorrent (or insert newfangled filesharing technology here).
Ok, hold on a second here. Let's be accurate about something. Anything, and I mean ANYTHING that is shown over the ABC airwaves that is recorded and shared via the internet IS NOT piracy. Over the air television, HD or analog, is free for the taking.
"...the shortest distance between two points may be straight line, but it is by no means the most interesting."
Next time you see a "downloading a movie is theft" commercial, just turn to the people around you and remind them, "This is coming from the same people who accuse you of theft when you fast forward through the commercials."
How long before even the average man on the street (i.e., not the Slashdot crowd and our ilk) realize what a complete joke these people are?
Get a clue, ABC. You can campaign against movie downloaders, at least for now. It's like campaigning against immigrants or homosexuals. They're minorities, they're generally perceived as different, and you can find a sympathetic ear when you tell the average person that these minorities are to blame for Mr. Average's problems. However, when you attack Mr. Average in a way that he's going to feel, he's going to make sure you feel it, too.
Another idea that has been bounced around is keeping a picture-in-picture window open during ads during car races. I think this is another good idea.
There are more consumer friendly alternatives out there that make people happier while keeping your eyeball count high. I fail to see why they need to take such an aggressive step.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
God the greed of hollywood and the networks are amazing, they are almost as bad as the RIAA. The fact is I fast forward through ads only if I'm really enthralled in the story. Most of the time I just use the ads to go take a leak or check out what's on my computer because I'm too lazy to fast forward through them. Especially if it's a short commercial. The fact we have to sit through about 20 minutes for every hour of tv viewing is bullshit. cut the titles and credits for most shows, and you're down to under 40 minutes of show. That's not a good number.
Are we also going to disable fast forwarding through product placement, ABC commercials for it's own crappy line up (I watch Lost, I have yet to have any interest in Grey's Anatomy, Desperate housewives, or house, no matter how many times I see their commercials)
It's just another sign that ABC is farther and farther from being the highly regarded network they were just a few years ago. This is obviously a grab for more advertiser dollars (hey look these guys want to help us). But it's just going to cause lower ratings if people find their nightly Lost recording can't be run through to find that one scene they wanted to see again. Why watch it on tv, when you wait around a year, and get it on DVD where you can get the full show, no commercials and the ability to fast forward and back. Compare that for around 40-60 bucks, instead of having to sit through (20 minutes X 26 episodes, 520 minutes of commercials!!!! that's 8 hours of your life.) and can own the tv season instead of however they define what you get from watching it on TV (you don't have the right to record it except for yourself, you don't have to right to digitize it in any way, you can't download a copy of it even if you have seen the show except if they approve)
Let's also create a system where ads get removed from the show after the first play through (btw that means all we have to do is when we go for work, just play through last nights' sports program and tv show if we can) That way they don't get too much exposure for their buck.
I'm all for watching ads, especially clever ones, I don't mind, however I'm still going to look away, ignore what you say and play on my computer. The idea behind a DVR is nice because if you get home at 9:05, you start your DVR, speed through the ads and the slow parts and the flash back and the rest, and you'll be able to catch up to your friends who watched from the begining by 9:15. ABC just wants to take it away, and not to help the fans at all, but to grab more money where they can.
Question for ABC, for those who watch the program with out going to dvr are they also going to be forced to watch them or can they too move around and still continue to ignore the commercials just as they always have?
The minute you do this, you remove the usefulness of a DVR. This will not only create problems, it will damage any revenue model for DVR companies in the form of sales and lost membership payments - I for one won't pay for a service that has these limits.
ABC: sorry, you lose.
>
> Something tells me my OFF button is next...
No, not the Blipverts reference. That was another episode.
Max Headroom, Blanks, aired May 1987.Max Headroom was only 20 minutes into the future, but 20 years ahead of its time. Out of the 14 episodes aired, the dystopian "science fiction" premise underlying just about every episode has come true.
...doesn't have ads. I know this may not be the kind of TV you watch, but it's proof that it can be done.
What occurs to me is that the networks should charge more for the commercial slot right before the show comes back. I often watch at least part of that ad as I don't want to miss the beginning of the show. If the networks did this they could offset some of their "losses". They could action that space off the the highest bidder in an Overture fashion and the runners up would get the less desirable middle slots.
Anyway product placement in the content is the wave of the future. People are more likely to believe an actor not necessarily associated to the product endorsing the product subtly in the context of the show AND we can't easily fast forward over it. Funny thing is that this is how they did commercials way back when everything on TV was live.
Yeah, thanks, dude. Like we need anyone ELSE moving here.
Come here and visit, please. Then GO HOME.
Way to win over your audience - start with "I would love it if..." Very congenial and welcoming to sell your plan by stating a personal desire.
If 'everybody's skipping everybody's' ads, doesn't that tell you that the long term business model of force-feeding commercials down viewer's throats sucks to begin with?
Ok, so the whole issue of commercial avoidance isn't really one of commercial avoidance? Makes perfect sense now...
Later in that paragraph:
So, you're taking a stance of "this is the way we (the business) wants to do things, so fuck you consumers who are (ultimately) paying our salaries." How customer-friendly you're sounding.
Fuck him, fuck ABC. Kill your television and put these assholes in the poor house.
Unedited ST-TOS episode run-time: 50 minutes.
Unedited ST-[any other series] episode run-time: 42 minutes.
That's eight minutes of commercials per hour added between the mid '60s and late '80s.
Turning off FF will just piss me off. If they get that passed, then I think that there should be a function that is "Pause at the end of the commercials," so I can go pee while the crap commercials are on, but come back to the beginning of the resumption of the show that I'm trying to watch.
I read somewhere that a 30 minute program has only 22 minutes of content. Three commercial breaks is pretty much the standard. Sitcoms are written in 3 acts to support this. I have never actually measured the amount of "content" but my gut tells me it's less than 22 minutes.
I happened upon an old VCR tape of a TV show I taped back in the early 80s. The ravages of time have degraded the tape to a nearly unwatchable level of quality, but it wasn't any worse than a 128k video stream. The 30 minute show I was watching had two very short commercial breaks. I was almost in shock at how short they were and the fact there were only two of them. I think each break must have been no longer than 90 seconds, maybe 2 minutes at the most. And back then that seemed like a long time. I wonder what I would have thought if I was watching a TV show nowadays with much longer breaks, and for there to be three of them in a half hour show! (Four if you count the ads in between shows)
I propose a fairly simple solution. Let's say that right now a nationally televised TV show takes in $1 million of ad revenue in a half hour (I have no idea whether or not this is true or not, just pulling a number out of the air). That's three commercial breaks, a total of 8 minutes. If each commercial is 20 seconds long, that's about $42,000 for a single advertisement.
Why not roll back the amount of advertising to 1983 levels but keep the revenue the same? If back in the early 80s you had 26 minutes of content for each half hour slot, you could charge $83,000 per 20 second slot and still make a million dollars per half hour timeslot. The advertisers would get a lot more exposure since they wouldn't be "lost in the shuffle" to the degree they are today and people would be more inclined to watch them.
The television industry needs to understand that technologies like the VCR and DVR were adopted to the degree they were because of the increasing nuisance of commercials. If you reduce the pain (commercials) to a more reasonable level, the problem will go away.
So, since my Dish Network DVR has 30 second skip (and has had it since the first DVR I got from them years ago), wouldn't that mean they didn't copy Tivo? Cool!
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
effin' a! I love that place. Last time I visited there I saw something like Mystery Science Theater 3000 an it was freakin' hilarious. I would love to move to Austin, I just need to get my job to transfer me and I am there in a heartbeat. The music scene is great, the cafes are cool, the city seems very hip compared to other areas of the country and feels like the Bay Area without a lot of the nastyness.
In Soviet Russia, commercials fast forward YOU!
I would agree with you except for the fact that they own ESPN :(
By all means, move to Austin! Omigawd, they're sooooo innovative there.
.)
(Writing from Portland, where the McMenamin brothers opened the Mission Theater as a brewpub/moviehouse ten years before the Alamo Drafthouse was conceived of...
If ABC forces me to watch the commercials on their channels, then they damned well better make sure that EVERY SINGLE ONE is unique and is NEVER repeated...on ANYONE ELSE'S CHANNEL!
I *DO* watch commercials on my TiVo, but I also fast forward through them (30-second skip). If I see a commercial I haven't seen 10,000 times before, and it seems like something interesting, I will back up and watch the commercial. Once I have seen that commercial, I will fast forward through it on ALL channels because I already know what the commercial says.
If they force me to watch all commercials, I'll be looking for hacks to fix this new bug.
By ripping that original and making a new copy of it without the restrictions, you have bypassed the copy protection and therefore broken the DMCA, a federal law. I obviously don't think doing that is wrong; I'm just pointing out that it is against the law. I'm just bringing up that both of the actions you described are technically illegal.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
With MythTV, I am able to skip or trim out all commercials regardless of what ABC and the MSOs do.
In a similar way, I strip out most/all of the online ads via Firefox and AdBlock.
My time is valuable and these tools allow me to view what I want to see without distraction and delay.
... unskippable 'commercials' on DVDs that I actually shelled money out to buy. I understand they do it because of the rental market, but I bought the disk and I hate having to sit there and wait for the commercials to end before I can even get to the main menu. Either make this kind of thing illegal, or allow commercials to be skipped (or better yet, give people who purchased the DVD a second blank DVD that they can copy & burn the original without commercials to it).
Those DVRs better have +100 Fire Resistance and high armor against physical attacks.
ABC makes money selling commercials, which they use to fund themselves and their programs. Why is anyone surprised that they don't want to lose their source of money.
I can't understand the selfishness behind most people's surprise and disgust either. It's like they don't think ABC has a right to earn a living. Ok, so it's the people employed there, but the point is the same. People want to keep eating.
Producing a TV show isn't like open source programming. A programmer can use his work in his own employment, and other than a small cost in distribution (which can be passed on to others, as for example, Linus doesn't pay the costs for distributing Linix), has nothing to lose from sharing. At least, sometimes.
That is not true of a TV show.
Sorry, but I understand ABC on this.
Yet another reason for ala carte cable choice.
ABC does this, I will choose to not purchase ABC, ESPN, Disney programming from my cable provider. (As soon as ala carte is available)
Period.
How many others will choose the same route?
ABC, just deal with it. Somebody moved your cheese. If ABC somehow does get a magic demarcation of the "ad content" on the airwaves then they have just made the perfect signal to delete that content. And I will be dammed before I pay my good money for a DVR/VCR that supports ABC's business model.
Now more interesting for ABC is: Where is your cheese now? Product placement is at least one place it has moved to. Another, bordered IPOD video downloads for free.
Come on now, knowing he is president of advertising sales at ABC, you don't actually expect him to say "why yes, the fast forward button is very useful and our viewers are gonna be pissed", do you?
Television as we know it today is dead to me. It is extremely annoying to everyone who wathes a 30 min program to have to watch half of it on commercials. My inlaws who come to visit from Europse can't fathom how this is possible. Here's how it goes over there: 15 minutes (at least) of program, 2-3 commericals, then the rest. That's it. People actually watch the commercials becuase they're short enough and they don't want to miss the return of the show.
In fact, that would be the perfect solution here. 99% of the time, when I DO watch TV, as soon as the commercials hit, I flip to another station, because I know that for the next 7-10 minutes, I'm gonna be extremely bored, extremely annoyed, or brow-beaten. If programs would be interspersed with short, concise commercials, I might stick around to watch them because (as you might guess) I WOULD BE AFRAID TO MISS THE RETURN OF THE SHOW. There's also far too much spread of the target demographics for these ads. It's like they're taking a buckshot approach. Why the fuck would I care about Maxi with Wings or Gerber baby food if I'm watching Star Trek??? And if my wife is watching Lifetime, why would she give a shit about Gillete's newest Super Double Quintiple razor?
I realize that the networks need (want) to make money, but that is the wrong way to do it, and that is why these devices are coming on to the market. It's getting so that TV isn't worth watching anymore - it's all slashdot for me now baby!
ABC can do what they want but I want to keep my DVR. Also what I really want is to choose my channels ala carte so then I dont have to deal with the lame networks.
As rough-around-the-edges as MythTV can be as compared to a commercial offering, any tecchies on here that are sitting on the edge of Tivo-versus-Myth, I would suggest might want to make the extra effort in getting MythTV up and running (which KnoppMyth makes far easier). Every bit of popularity this package gains, will help keep DVR flexibility more open and available. If the commercial DVR's (and PVR card manufacturers) choose to bow to these silly demands by broadcasters, simply don't buy their hardware.
I was very close to tossing Myth and switching to a Bell Express VU PVR, but with the threat of broadcasters putting pressure on to lock things down to a greater and greater degree, I'll stick with the odd pain of the open source solution, thank you.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Let's be accurate about something.
Yes, that would be a nice idea, wouldn't it?
Anything, and I mean ANYTHING that is shown over the ABC airwaves that is recorded and shared via the internet IS NOT piracy. Over the air television, HD or analog, is free for the taking.
Bullshit. Sorry, but that is complete and utter bullshit. "Let's be accurate about something." Just because something is shown over the airwaves does not mean it's free for the taking.
Unlike you, I will back up my claims with evidence.
It is not "free for the taking" in the USA. See this statement from the US Copyright Office website, which says "anybody who wishes to retransmit copyrighted broadcast programming--whether over the Internet or by more established means of transmission such as cable or satellite--may do so only by obtaining the consent of the copyright owners."
It is not "free for the taking" in Britain, either. See the official guide to UK copyrights.
I don't know about other countries, but I suspect you're based in the USA, in which case you are simply wrong.
I use the fast forward feature to remove all the damn fluff and rehash of just about all the shows. I don't care about the recap from the previous episode, I've already seen the title sequence, and for some shows, I'm more interested in the meat, especially when it comes to reality TV.
A perfect example came with the results show from Rockstar Supernova (or Idol for that matter). I'm watching it to see the singing and that's it. End result, I watched an hour long show in about 15 minutes.
Funny how PBS hasn't said anything yet as I have yet to sit and watch a pledge drive in the middle of a show.
My second thought was when StarTrek writers alternate future predicted the death of television that now we know how it died. The Television companies committed suicide. But my first thought was if they limit fast forward in the commercials and I can still fast forward the main program material, then the content has to be marked as being a commercial. This means the technically inclined can then extract that information and very quickly skip past all the commercials in a segemnt with a zero second window on restarting after the commercial. So boot-leg, add-on, home-built, etc., commercial zappers will very accurate. No more skip 30 seconds etc. and guess at the shows start or time the fastforward out of third stage (TiVo has three speed FF) back to normal time the jump back just right syndrome. It would just work. Skip the commercial and it is skipped...
... lots of people watched the first few seconds to see if it was a new installemnt. Make the ads tell a story. And of course the last few frames commercials already are on TiVo supplied feeds were the whole audience exposure is so short there is a compelling feeling to see just what that was. Smarter ads not restrictive hardware. Don't play with MY HARDWARE to make up for your miserable ads.
Of course the (or at least a) correct solution would be compelling commercials. Like the old Folgers romantic series
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
...and you will find about 20 minutes per hour are dedicated to non-content programming. Most talk stations use the first 3 or 4 minutes of the top of every hour for a news/weather/traffic segment.
The rest of it are commercial spots and station-promos.
A typical program clock for any talk station will usually look something like this (in a pie chart):
xx:00-xx:06 - news, weather, traffic, spots
xx:06-xx:20 - show segment 1
xx:20-xx:24 - commercial spots (this break will float as needed)
xx:24-xx:29 - show segment 2
xx:29-xx:36 - commercial spots (some stations instead play a newscast, traffic, weather etc)
xx:36-xx:48 - show segment 3
xx:48-xx:52 - commercial spots
xx:52-xx:58 - show segment 4
Libertas in infinitum
And you don't know what you are talking about.
For every hour, 20-23 minutes are allocated for non-content (news updates, weather updates, commercials, and other misc stuff etc).
That leaves about 40 minutes of actual content per hour. When you slice and dice those 40 minutes evenly into 4 segments, there are only so many ways it can be done. Thus the appearance that 'all stations take commercials at the same time' tends to come through. There is obviously a lot of overlap between stations as they all have to fit 20 minutes of non content in. But there is no conspiracy or collusion that all stations, or even any stations, have an agreed upon format for commercial breaks.
Now during sporting events or other live events, yeah most, if not all, media outlets covering the event usually take their commercials in unison on cue at pre-determined times.
Product placement, if done tastefully and correctly, is unobtrusive and I personally don't mind it. What bugs me is when it is blatantly obvious and detracts from the storyline because it is done poorly. I am sure there are many examples of both cases that can be cited.
Libertas in infinitum
What they need to do is just have more product placement. As long as its not as blatant as "Gee, honey, I sure do love this new [product] that I picked up for only 5 payments of $19.95!" Advertisers could pay based on how much screentime their product has. Think of things like Dr Pepper placement in Spiderman movies. I noticed it, but it didn't take anything away from the story. Remember that movie, The Truman Show? Since the show was on 24/7, all advertising was done via product placement. I don't see why a similar model wouldn't work on today's network television.
I think what we REALLY need is a "uber-fast-forward button" so we can GET to the commercials!
That's what the broadcast flag is for. You won't be able to watch anything but the adverts.
Free media is going to eat their lunch.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
How is this worse than having shows that start 1 or two minutes early or late? This totally messed up shows I watched on my Tivo for a while. I came up with the solution that if it starts at an off time (to prevent me from watching a show on another network), I won't record it. Netowrk executives: I KNOW YOU WERE DOING THAT TO PISS ME OFF, AND IT WORKED. I DON'T WATCH YOUR STUFF ANYMORE. THANKS.
Oh, I FINALLY got that off my chest.
When it comes to issues like this, videohelp.com has a lot of good information on how you can "deconfigure" some of these features on your DVD player.
Yes, it was called "Commercial Advance" and ReplayTV gave in to lawsuit threats & disabled it on their last series of units (55xx Series instead of the 50xx Series). I swear by Commercial Advance, as I own 4 units, 3 active and 1 a hot-spare in case a hardware failure occurs.
You're right, and the parent is wrong. That's true.
But you're both missing the point of the article. Current US law*, as I understand it, allows you to make a copy of a broadcast for your own personal use with no restrictions whatsoever. No restrictions, that is, except to prevent what common sense would agree is non-personal use - public display, retransmission, etc. So basically, once you're recorded it, you're free to use it as you see fit for yourself.
Now, the clown in the article wants to take it one step further. He wants to control what you do with it for yourself - either by using technical means to extend his control (a "no skip" flag, anyone?), or economic/political pressure to remove your means of doing it (banning PVRs, outlawing FFWD & skip buttons, etc).
(* I'm Australian, and I was going to write something here about what our laws will look like soon - as revealed in another FPP a day or so ago. But it's a bit difficult to explain simply, so I'll just say this - our forthcoming laws will leave out the "fair use" step, and jump straight to "fair use, as long as they use it the way want them to" conclusion. The same thing you'll be getting if clowns like this get their way, except we won't have had the "fair use" holiday in the meantime...)
((Yes, clowns. Clowns are evil. It's something to do with the greedy, lecherous, self-satified look on their faces...))
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
I mean, 40% of 70 million people is only 28 million children in the USA!!! TV is clearly about to become a minority market!!!
Based solely on those numbers and ignoring 20 odd other things, it already *is* a minority market.
But Shaw said ABC was only interested in finding a way to receive compensation for un-skipped ads.
Sure thing, I'll pay... But you pay for your free giant swatch of the RF spectrum first.
What is going on in society? I don't remember people complaining that people could fast forward on their VCR's. Why all of a sudden is it acceptable for companies to make these outrageous claims and demands? Just because the technology is "new" or confusing to the average person?
Or am I wrong about the VCR thing?
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
I do agree; the possibilities with computers are much greater than those of a television.
What I really wanted to point out was that the statistic was stupid.
You must b^Hnot be new here.
"How are these ABC executives going to prevent me from switching to another channel while the commercials are on?"
/. :). Most if not all of this, it seems to me is a good thing. :)
It seems to me that most of the channels on my DirectTV service have the commercial programming times synchronized. Or maybe it is just that the commercial time/program time balance is so screwed up that the odds just favor hitting a commercial on any channel change at any time. The majority of what I watch is non-typical, PBS, IFC, CSPAN, the History or Science channels all which have fewer or no program interrupting commercial content. However whenever I watch SciFi, FX, MSNBC, CNN, etc the commercial/programming balance is ridiculous. And to me the slots do seem synced.
This is like the DRM/DCMA mess, all it has done here is that I spend less time and money on this type of time wasting activity and more time in the real world. If you sit down a figure a bit you will find that they produce 25% or less of decent programming/music/fantasy anyway. So for a large part I'll keep my time and money and they can keep their crappy content. I'll bet they will miss even little ole me more than I do the news/music/fantasy they produce. More time working at making money, more time reading, more time outside in the garden or at the grill, more time visiting and talking with friends, even more time rattling on here at
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Your problem will be solved in a few years. Your personal viewing, surfing, purchasing habits will be complied and analyzed. The ability to FF through commercials if lost will be restored and used in the analysis process. Most marketing content will be targeted to your apparent interests, with occasional plugs from outside as a chum test, or chump test as it applies. :)
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
If this gets in, simply write to the companies that advertise in shows marked "unskippable", and inform them that you're now boycotting their products because they're supporting this.
Better yet, form a pressure group with a catchy name to organise letter writing campaigns and boycotts. Get the campaign sufficiently high-profile and you'll get the non-geek audience's interest, too — then you'll enough letters coming in that, provided people actually follow through with the boycotts, it won't be worth marking an ad break as unskippable because nobody will want to buy the space.
If religious groups can get shows they don't like pulled by boycotting the companies that advertise in them, we can get companies to demand that their ads aren't put in breaks marked unskippable. At least it would be using their tactics for something useful :)
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
I wouldn't mind watching the commercials if they were new more often... the first time or two that I see one, it's sometimes mildly entertaining, if it doesn't make me feel dumber for having seen it (see subject line)... but I have to see the same spot 4 times during a half hour show during every episode of that show for months, and I just want to shoot the TV.
Though I have a DVR, I probably let the commercials run more often than I skip them... that's when I pay attention to the laptop screen or get up to go to the bathroom or the fridge.
Linux Australia is running a petition in australia to present on the issue of how we implement our FTA obligations at http://www.linux.org.au/law and also has the feeder sites http://www.iownmymusic.org/ and http://www.iownmydvds.org/
.... which is why people vilify them.
There are few things as vile as sneaking into my brain real state.
I don't think I am alone in saying that many people make a point of not buying a product that has used intrusive advertisement techniques.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But that does not give TV broadcasters rights to dictate how I record and replay what I am legitimately recording.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Comedy:
Little Britain.
Dead ringers.
Have I got news for you (were current affairs are made fun!).
Drama:
Dr Who (enough said really).
and many one off programmes.
Documentaries:
Walking with dinosaurs. No private company would have undertaken such a project.
and so on and so forth.
Just a couple of weeks ago they showed a series about silent cinema, Worldcup histories with a very interesting histories about the teams that have won the Worldcup, a programme with the best goals in Worldcup history and now is the PROMS season.
Belive me, the BBC may very well be the best TV organization in the World, I have watched TV in at least 20 countries, in 4 or 5 for more than a month in a row (US included) and franly only the BBC has always to pique my interest.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.