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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."
Whatever. I don't care what they do. Until my fiance moved in I had bunny ears that picked up PBS, CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox, and the only things I ever watched anyway were Nova, the local news, and Simpson reruns. I don't care what they do. Hopefully more people will wise up and stop plugging into the boob tube every night and send their stupid little marketing schemes into a death spiral with or without DVR.
Right! And instead, let's hope people use their time in another, equally wasteful and mindless, manor. Slashdot comes to mind, or perhaps the latest computer game...no marketing schemes there. No way!
It's weird that the higher than thou croud always acts like TV is such a monster while they wile away their hours just as mindlessly. Funny that way...
You'll have that sometimes...
No, why don't they keep their goddamn hands off my personal record-playback device. Period. This practice of fast-forwarding through commercials during playback of recorded television broadcasts has been around since the VCR was commercialized. You could then program your VCR to record things when you were away shortly there after. We're talking the late-1970s when it started to hit middle-class homes in the United States. The networks were pissed about it then, and they're pissed about it now. Only difference is, we have a very corporation-friendly administration AND Congress right now in Washington. They might actually succeed in removing the fast-forward button from every video recording and playback device known to man. How ridiculous would that be?