Slashdot Mirror
Disney Says, You WILL Watch the Ads
smooth wombat writes "ABC and ESPN, both owned by Disney, have struck a deal with cable operator Cox Communications to offer hit shows and football games on demand, but with the condition that Cox disable the fast-forward feature that allows viewers to skip ads. This is the first agreement of its kind. It only applies to Cox's video-on-demand service and will not affect viewers using DVRs to fast-forward through ads. The companies will also test technology that will place ads in shows based on ZIP Codes and geographic area, and 'freshen' the ads with new ones every few days."
Even more reason to build a MythTV box..
At least i stil have my mute button and a laptop with wirless to distract me
I just won't be signing up for this idiotic service. As the other poster said, MythTV for me.
I will not watch a Disney owned channel. Easy as that.
Content is neither bread nor air. I don't need it to survive.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The only reason they haven't put these restrictions on the DVRs yet is that they have to compete with TiVo. Once the competition is gone and they've gotten the market sealed up again you can expect these sort of restrictions to start appearing on their own DVRs. MythTV boxes don't count either. It seems to me that the cable companies only embraced DVRs in an attempt to kill them off, I imagine if they manage to drive TiVo out of business then they'll go back to their old tricks.
I read the internet for the articles.
One of the things that I really like about the on-demand stuff I get from brighthouse is that there are no commercials at all - other than sometimes before the program begins. Like Anime on demand will often have a short commercial, then the show with no commercials. It's nice too when my kids want to watch Avatar or something because they get to see the whole episode but takes less time.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Every rewind backwards by 10 minutes so you could compare what you just watched with what happened earlier? If they disable fast-forward, you'll have to watch those 10 minutes over again.
I wonder if it will be possible to reinstate the fast-forward button by running the on-demand movie through a DVR.
Utterly stupid. You pay for cable. You pay for DVR service. You pay for in-demand. Then you get penalized for being a consumer and you can't use your DVR on paid-for content. Kinda pisses me off, even though I never order any ala carte content.
u-bend
So I'm paying for a TV show using on-demand and then am forced to watch ads also? Or is the on-demand service otherwise free. It sounds like a scam to me.
--- Bah, who needs a sig?
The big killer will be in a few years when cable providers have everyone on digital cable and include DRM in the cable boxes that prevent you from using third-party DVRs. Just as they don't want you putting a VCR on the output of a DVD player, they will no longer allow anything but TVs on the outputs of their boxes.
...Its called an OFF button and I know how to use it.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Stuff like this makes me not feel so bad that China has a government owned Disneylan.. err Shijingshan Amusement Park. http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=1678
On the rare occasion that I actually watch TV, I change channels or get up and go do something else when a commercial comes on. Commercials are one of the primary reasons I stopped watching TV. If I want to see ads, I'll watch them on my own time.
TV, like magazines, newspapers, and radio are financed through ads and sponsors. While I realize that it is convenient and preferable to not have to watch all those damned "Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean, do dah dah do dah dah" ads, sometimes back to back, in between sections of your favourite show, that is what finances your show.
Besides, I have a feeling that with the popularity of DVD sets being what it is, cable TV will likely start to dwindle and the box sets will be released at the beginning of each season. This way people can choose what shows they absolutely want to watch with no commercials, and which ones aren't really that important.
Kinda free-market at work there.
Then again, I haven't watched TV in several years so I don't know, maybe I missed something vital here...
VOD is just a rehash of shows are already on the channels anyway. Just DVR the show that's on VOD and skip the ads.
My comments here are my own; I do not speak for my employer.
Wonder what other sort of medieval torture devices they can think of to force us to watch ads?
FLR
Janie Crane: "Edison... an off switch!"
Metrocop: "She'll get years for that. Off switches are illegal!"
- from Max Headroom, Episode 1.6, Blanks
As a commercial producer, your goal is to get the attention of people and get them to remember your product. Because, well, that's what your customers pay for.
So far, commercials aren't even seen as a nuisance by many. They are an often welcome interruption for various personal needs, from bathroom to fridge. When you overdo it, people get annoyed.
And don't underestimate the negative effect of force. If you outright force people to watch an ad, they will connect no good feelings with it. So far, what makes people accept ads is that they enjoy the program around them and that they're in a generally good mood when they watch an ad. When they now pick up the remote and can't FF, they're pissed. And if this isn't carefully watched, the general mood when it comes to ads will be a very negative one. Not only on the "conscious" level, where people complain about ads, but also on the subconscious level.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Content" is a metaphor intended to make people think of creative works as products to be wrapped up and shipped around like any other commodity, when in fact creative works are natural expressions of our humanity and civilization.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
As a TV commercial producer, this makes me very happy ;)
And what's next? Prevent people from changing channels while a commercial is on? Colluding with other networks to ensure all commercials are run at the same time?
Really, you can ram it down our throats, and we can backlash.
Cover my TV with ads, I'll switch to an on-demand service like Apple-TV instead of cable.
TV can push, but we consumers can push back too.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
"The agreement could also provide broadcast networks a way to give viewers an alternative to the convenience offered by digital video recorders , without allowing them to avoid the ads, according to the report"
Sorry what is being "given" to viewers here?
-An alternative to convenience (i.e. annoyance)
-"without allowing them to avoid" (i.e. "while forcing them...")
Maybe I'm old-school, but usually giving things to one's customers is, um, phrased positively like e.g.
"giving viewers quality programming *without wresting control of their devices from them
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
The harder they try to control viewing habits, the harder people will work to thwart whatever system is put in place.
Sometimes when I'm watching something on TIVO I'll forget I can zip through the commercials. I'm more prone to forget and watch the commercials if there are fewer of them and they're interesting. The really obnoxious ones will spur me to either mute the TV if it's live, FF on TIVO and go to great lengths to find an alternative if some company like Disney tries to make me watch. Not happening.
I love the way advertisers treat viewing like a one-way street. You watch what we give you. Well, screw you, Disney. The local ads are the worst. There are several that get me diving for the mute button. Where if they were more informative and less obnoxious, it might make reaching for the remote more of an effort and I might not bother.
But broadcasters thinking they can squeeze 20 minutes of commercials into 60 minutes of broadcast and advertisers thinking we'll calmly sit through whatever annoying crap they throw up there...yes, I'm looking at you, Oxyclean guy...they can kiss my butt.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
What I don't understand is, time after time, people think they HAVE to consume media.
Just go outside! Enjoy the fresh air once in a while. I watch no TV (though there's one downstairs). Disney is probably doing people a favour.
-1 not first post
the more unpleasant they make it, the more people will go to the p2p sites instead... what you want to watch, basically when you want to watch it... and none of the crappy adverts or stupid digital restrictions on how you can watch it...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
8+ months for me. When I moved, I deliberately did not have cable TV hooked up. Broadcast TV is pretty much pointless where I am. No TV? it's wonderful. There's too many other things to do than stare at the tube, and if I _am_ going to watch something it's deliberate, worthwhile, and ad-free: DVDs.
When I _do_ happen to watch TV (somewhere else), all I can think is how lame it is.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Between crap like this and the crap they subject you to in the name of "entertainment", I'm so glad I gave up on TV years ago.
Disney, and any other oppressive media company out there, can blow me if they think they are getting a single dime outta me.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
TV can push, but we, the product, can just walk away. And when the product walks away, you have nothing to sell. Don't push or I'll take my (eye)ball(s) and go away.
For the sake of underwriting "free" television, I'm OK with broadcasters putting ads that can't be skipped, but that are refreshed occasionally in shows that I record. Additionally, if a show has non-removable advertisements, that removes the ability for a broadcaster to prevent me from re-distributing the show on P2P networks or video sharing sites. The show's original broadcaster and advertiser information is now bundled with the show, so no material harm occurs to those parties if I redistribute the material - in fact, they benefit from the additional exposure.
For shows that I purchase, however, I want them ad-free. If I purchase a show, that means I am subsidizing it (at least, a very very small portion of it), and don't want to deal with ads as a bonus to purchasing it. I would also be willing to waive my right to re-distribute the material, but not willing to waive my right to create copies of the material for my own backup & archival purposes.
I think that's a fair arrangement. In fact, I'd be willing to have my representative sign legislation to this effect.
10. Take a nap
9. Fix a snack
8. Let the dog out
7. Check your email
6. Get a drink
5. Go to the bathroom
4. Stare into space
3. Read an article
2. Smooch
1. Mute the sound
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
Unless they can find a way to stop me from leaving the room, I still won't see their ads. I see the "If you make your customers mad and hate you, you'll make more money" school of marketing is alive and well...
I understand why they want us to watch the ads; because if I'm not reminded every 15 minutes that Ditech has low mortgage rates and my erectile problems can be solved by using Cialis, I may start forgetting. And God knows we cannot allow people to forget that Ditech has low mortage rates and erectile problems can be solved using Cialis. Because if they ever need to refinance--something that apparently people do every weekend, by the rate of Ditech ads--they'll know they can refinance with Ditech. And God knows everyone on the planet has erectile problems that can be solved with Cialis, so if they should have erectile problems they can solve them by using Cialis.
Isn't the whole point of ads to sell me what I want? There is a ton of stuff out there I'd love to have if I knew about it--and refinancing through Ditech or having a hard penis using Cialis aren't it!
--
This message brought to you by the Mortgage Experts at Ditech and by the Erectile Dysfunction experts who make Cialis.
The former head of TBS is willing to put up with bathroom breaks, but thinks part of your contract is that you have to watch the commercials:
(Did you sign a contract where one of the terms is that you have to watch the ads? I rather suspect not, Mr. Kellner's belief to the contrary nonwithstanding....)
There is the main problem of open-source. Marketing and the public perception. If we cant get past that, then OSS will never get out of the geek world.
"if its free, that means they can get into your computer, you know all those hackers are bad" "if its free, it cant be any good" "why do they give it away then"
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And the studio's wonder why TV viewership is declining? After trying for a year, I dropped my cable subscription -- I don't think what is on the networks is particularily good for my young kids. I get movies / video's from my public library, which is quite good. I truly despise the 10 minutes of adds for other video's that Disney puts in their headers, so only occasionally do I check out a Disney video for them to watch. My kids watch the occasional video, play outside, play some on the computer (I have done extensive filtering and if I see to much usage of a site such as neopets, I blacklist it), and read. Given few alternatives, even athletic kids will take to reading when they can't be outside with a ball. I have one TV in the house, a ~ 4 year old HDTV ready CRT. If the content suppliers think that I will replace my system to get DRM-protected content, they are sorely mistaken. I would rather read. With Google's book scanning project (books.google.com) and the Gutenberg project, there is a mass of older books that are free to complement what you find in your library and bookstore.
Yeah, this is a bit off-topic, but I just had to chime in and say that I've run across this attitude towards open source software, too.
A coworker of mine bought a cheap computer a couple of years ago. He commented on how he didn't want to spend a lot of money of Microsoft Office for it, and was thinking about getting one of the second-tier office suites. I told him, "Just download OpenOffice."
He had no idea what I was talking about, and thought I was referring him to some seedy warez site. I explained what FOSS was and told him about some of the more popular FOSS applications out there, but he just couldn't bring himself to believe me. He was absolutely, positively convinced that you end up "paying" for free software in one way or another; that even if OpenOffice didn't charge you to download and install their software, that there was some kind of hidden catch where it had to be adware or spyware or something. I even showed him the copy of OpenOffice I have installed alongside Microsoft Office on my work machine. He seemed really impressed, but I think he still ended up buying a copy of StarOffice or Corel WordPerfect Office because he just couldn't believe that it was free.
Needless to say, I don't think he's going to be a Linux convert anytime soon.
It almost made me wish that OpenOffice.org would set up a web site, something like OpenOffice.com, that has the exact same software, but charges you a $50 or so fee to download. Unfortunately, regardless of the best of intentions, some people just don't get it. At least then, I could point these people to the site where you can get the "real" copy.
I know how I'll work around it - I won't watch cable. Seriously. Fuck that shit. There's nothing so compelling on cable that I feel any need to keep it. I've posted before about how I have a MythTV project in the works and when it's done I'm going to drop my DirecTV service and just stick to over-the-air HDTV. And I haven't done it yet, since real life keeps getting in the way, and right now there's just no pressing need. But as more and more things like this keep happening, I have more and more reason to escape from the deadly clutches of pay TV. For now I can make do with getting the few shows on cable I care about via Bittorrent, but if they somehow close all those holes and goes away, I'll either get a Netflix subscription and get entire seasons of shows at once, or I'll just watch less TV! I've been without a TV before and, really, it's not nearly as traumatic as people make it out to be.
I wonder how many years it will be before we are required to have our eyelids mechanically clamped open with our heads aimed at the screen, to enable the 'premium' content from our entertainment provider.
(I feel a patent coming on!!!)
The feeling of being forced, and the feeling of being ripped off.
People accept paying for content. They know that kind of venue. You go out and "buy" a DVD (yeah, yeah, you don't buy the content... and so on). You pay for it, you watch it.
People accept ads paying for their content. They know that well too. You sit down and watch without buying it first, so you accept the ads.
People do NOT accept both. When you pay to watch something, you expect that you paid for it and thus are now entitled to watch the content without interruption. Having to watch ads after you already paid smells a bit like double taxation.
It's also the feeling that, when it works for others to provide content without ads forced down our throat, why not for Disney?
Additionally, we currently have two models for content. Either you pay for the channel, then you expect to see your movies without interruption. You paid for it. Or you get the channel for "free" (aside of general cable fees), then you accept the ads. The ads pay for it.
What would work without a doubt is giving people the choice. Ads OR payment. First of all, people get the impression that they actually have a choice. There is no "you must", which people resent out of principle.
But paying for it AND being forced to watch the ads is annoying, to say the least. How would this be different from using a VCR on freely broadcasted shows? Aside of being able to FF through the ads...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Playing on my iPod while reading this thread: "Professional pirate" (from the movie 'Muppet Treasure Island', produced by... Disney Pictures).
Some say that pirates steal and should be feared and hated
I say we're victims of bad press it's all exaggerated
and also
We'd never stab you in the back, we'd never lie or cheat
We're just about the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet