Google Patent Proposes $2 Fee To Skip Commercials

theodp writes "A day after Google debuted its new Google TV website, the USPTO issued U.S. Patent No. 7,806,329 to the search giant for its Targeted Video Advertising invention. Among other things, the patent proposes having viewers take 5-10 minutes to 'fill out a consumer survey and perhaps to provide additional information such as a mailing address survey before starting the program' to avoid having to watch 10 minutes of commercials. 'As another alternative,' the patent continues, 'the broadcaster may offer the users an option to pay $2 (such as through a micro-payment system, such as GBuy) to exchange for skipping all commercials.' More from the patent: 'The system may allow a user to skip all of the promotions that they want to skip, but may also require the user to fully watch at least four promotions before the program will continue. Likewise, the system may require the user to follow activities that generate a certain amount of advertising revenue or advertising points (e.g., that may correspond directly or indirectly to advertising revenues) before the program will continue.'"

Comments

Greed

[iONiUM]

To me, at this point, commercials are greed. We already pay subscription (cable or otherwise), and most movies/TV shows use product placement among other things to supplement the cost. What really gets me is that now movies have 10 minutes of commercials before them. Did I really just pay $10 to watch 10 minutes of commercials before the 15 minutes of movie trailers? It's odd that only a few years ago, the movie/theatre business made a nice profit without having these commercials, yet now they cannot live without them.

I hope in time commercial-less media is the norm.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope in time commercial-less media is the norm.

I guess you haven't seen Demolition Man, have you?

Re:Greed

[MozeeToby]

What really gets me is that now movies have 10 minutes of commercials before them. Did I really just pay $10 to watch 10 minutes of commercials before the 15 minutes of movie trailers?

Go somewhere else then, seriously. Most often it's the small, independent, or even budget theaters that actual treat their patrons nicely. Even in the relatively small town I live in there is at least one budget theater that promises no commercials, less than 10 minutes of previews, and (as they love to point out as often as possible) real butter on the popcorn. And the manager actually knows the regulars, gives out free tickets and popcorn before the start of many movies, apologizes in person if something is wrong, and actually tries to make the whole experience enjoyable. And all for less than half the price of going to one of the big name theaters. Ok, sure, you won't get to see new releases opening weekend, but how often can you really not wait an extra month or two before you see a movie?

Re:Greed

[the_fat_kid]

do they want me to get things from bit torrent?
I haven't had cable television in over a year. I got tired of all the infomercial crap.
I don't think that I will be paying for a show with comercials.
I think that it will be a cold day in hell that I pay $2 extra for one without.
Just how much do they think that television is worth?
Not gonna do it. no thanks.
now you will have to excuse me, I have some Dexter to watch...

Re:Greed

[Duradin]

Did you inquire what a movie ticket would cost for a showing without ads or trailers? Probably more than $10.

"It's odd that only a few years ago, the movie/theatre business made a nice profit without having these commercials, yet now they cannot live without them."

Nothing ever changes, never. Costs never go up. Revenue never goes down. There are no alternative to a movie theater and never will be.

Re:Greed

[takowl]

I hope in time commercial-less media is the norm.

In glorious soviet UK, we have four major TV channels (and minor channels, national and local radio stations) without commercials. This costs £145 per year ($230, or ~$20 per month). In fact, the radio channels and website can be used for free, you pay if you have a TV (although I wonder if this will change in the future).

Re:Greed

[hedwards]

Not entirely, the problem is that there's a cable/satellite provider, then there's the actual channels themselves. The problem is that when you get cable, you're paying the provider for the cable, but they're not passing all the money necessary to provide the content back to the channel.

The ads are what make up the difference. Which is why channels which don't have commercials end up being completely commercial as in HSN, pledge drives as in PBS or subscription based as in HBO.

It's a bit like sports teams that pay everybody involved more and more money even as they jack up all the fees involved. Unfortunately if you don't like it there's really not any good options other than not watching or seething in your seat.

Re:Greed

[xenapan]

Umm, movie theaters here in SoCal cost $12 for standard tickets. And yes. that comes with the commercials and trailers.

Re:Greed

[OhHellWithIt]

It's odd that only a few years ago, the movie/theatre business made a nice profit without having these commercials, yet now they cannot live without them.

I remember commercials in the movie theaters at least 40 years ago. I would be very surprised if they didn't have them in the 1920s.

I hope in time commercial-less media is the norm.

Don't hold your breath. As long as there is commerce, there will be someone trying to make money through advertising.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. You're not too bright are you? The subscription fees you pay do nothing to cover the cost of the actual content. I'm sure if all that was available to watch was YouTube quality TV shows, the subscription fees might cover the bill. But any show with created by more than a dude with a video recorder requires actors, writers, producers, crew, et all to be paid. Where do you think that money comes from?

Yep. Commercials.

Re:Greed

[Lord Bitman]

Either the cable provider should pay for the privilege of letting their customers watch TV shows. They can pay by charging customers.
-or-
The channels can pay the cable provider for the privilege of letting their advertisers have an audience. They can pay by charging advertisers.

It doesn't make any sense for both to happen. The only reason both happens is because one of the parties involved (cable companies) has a monopoly.

Re:Greed

[aliquis]

In Sweden we have five, but ours suck much more, and cost:
2076 Swedish kronor = 308.87766 U.S. dollars

SVT1 and SVT2 = Old nation-wide channels.
Kunskapskanalen = Science, education, government stuff
Barnkanalen & SVT24 at different times = Shows for children during the days and news the whole time during the late evenings and night.

And then a few (two, TV4 and TV6) free aerial channels with commercials and not part of the obligatory fee.

Same conditions.

But we don't have Top Gear on those channels!

Re:Greed

[TheGratefulNet]

greed runs deep.

take a made-for-tv sitcom. it gets fully paid for (at least it had to in the old days) by BEING on tv that one time. any money over that is gravy. what do they do, now? they release that same content on dvd and charge you again.

when I see people post deals on the various coupons' sites and say 'wow, such and such a tv show is being released on dvd for $x off!' I fail to get excited and, in fact, get angry. the 'gimme generation' fails to see what they are funding and more importantly, what behavior they are funding. buy validating the studios view that they can re-sell an already sold and paid for 'work' you only keep the bad practices of the Old Media Model(tm) alive. not good for us, long term or short term, folks.

if they want the 'paid for by commercials' model, that's one thing; but they constantly insist on ALL the revenue streams. come on, pick ONE, please, but to take more than one is to double or multiply dip and that's just wrong. they want to release the thing on multiple formats and keep charging at every turn? they stop with the commercials then, since you will get your revenue stream via media sales and rentals.

yes, its all about greed. proof that capitalism, when totally left to its own, does not work nor does it scale for very long. the few at the top win and everyone else pretty much loses.

Re:Greed

[maxume]

There are plenty of commercials on PBS, they just happen to be between programs, rather than interrupting them.

Re:Greed

[PowersOfTen]

If there is ever a time that affordable, commercial-free video entertainment does not exist, I'll literally just be reading books.

Re:Greed

[aardwolf64]

The whole commercial thing goes back a long way. Television used to be free, over the air. Consumers were promised that paying for cable would keep the content commercial-free. Then the media companies got greedy, and stuck advertising in there anyway... It's not like we have much of an alternative.

I don't watch shows until around 15 minutes after they come on, so that I can start at the beginning and fast forward through the commercials.

Re:Greed

[h4rm0ny]

Not where I live in the UK. Here the small independent cinemas are so squeezed by the big chains that they put on an absurd amount of adverts before the film. After carefully calculating whether or not my friend and I would have time to see a movie before I had to get back for a meeting, I found that there were over half an hour of adverts and trailers before a one and a half-hour film. Needless to say, I wasn't pleased. I'd allowed some leeway but I hadn't expected forty-minutes. And I don't even mind the trailers usually as I like to see them, but this was mainly car ads. I'm unlikely to go there again.

I think at this point, society is seriously messed up. If we have to pay to avoid being monitored and hit with sales pitches, then the world of advertising must be either so desparate or so avaricious, that it's lost all reason. It's tantamount to a protection racket where people pay not to be hassled. And you'd think that if you were an advertiser, your target audience would be the ones that could afford not to see your ads, no?

I don't think it's even the advertising companies that are to blame. Well they are, because they pay for all this, but ultimately they're just driven by the investors with quarterly whips to increase profits higher and higher. It's the market analysts (or whatever they're called these days) who keep offering them this magic ticket whereby the wonderful technique of stripping everyone of the last dregs of their privacy, will connect each seller with an untapped market of people who desparately want their product. They mine every last drop of data they can from us and then try to flog their services to the product manufacturers saying "look - we know who'll buy your goods. Pay ussssss."

Advertising long since stopped being about companies trying to make money off the public. Advertising is now about advertisers trying to make money off the companies.

Re:Greed

[Crudely_Indecent]

Not in a while, but I did watch "The Glades" earlier this week and noticed that every computer monitor (including laptop lids) has a huge Windows logo. It's a shame that they don't have Linux logos, as they've been caught using a GNOME desktop.

Re:Greed

[uniquename72]

I managed a movie theater for a few years in the '90s. It cost about $60 to show a movie -- primarily in utilities and employee costs. Tickets were $5 a piece for an adult, but most of that went to the studios. So if 12 people came to a movie and all bought something at the concession stand (which made about $5 on average per person), we broke even. Of course, since most of the shows had about 125 people in them, it was a money-making machine. The vast majority of our money came from selling overpriced popcorn and soda.

Today, the theaters themselves are the ones who get paid off of pre-movie advertising -- that's on top of vast mark-ups on concession items. Meanwhile, ticket costs have tripled in the last 15 years, and movie studios are making record profits -- particularly given that there are additional revenue streams like product placement, DVD sales/rental, fees from TV, etc.

So no, ticket costs without showing ads would certainly not be more that $10. In fact, pre-movie ads are almost entirely unrelated to ticket prices.

Re:Greed

[MozeeToby]

now you will have to excuse me, I have some Dexter to watch

You rant about how you're sick of all the commercials, but you need to go watch a show that is shown without commercials. Sorry, but you're part of the problem. The content creators are addressing your complaints and your response is "I'm not paying for content". Wonderful... I'm sure that will solve the problems in no time.

Re:Greed

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Makes me wonder if Apple or Amazon has something in the works to put commercials on their various offerings between chapters of e-books.

Re:Greed

[EdZ]

Technically, you're only supposed to be watching the live-streaming version of the web-based iplayer if you pay the TV license. Stored shows are fine though. It's rather unfortunate that the BBC has started turning unpleasantly closed though: the proprietary nature of the the download service and encryption of the streaming service makes it hard to watch without windows and flash. Then there's the continual slashing of the HD channel bitrate (and the laughable and demonstrably incorrect claims that it 'looks just as good' at 9.7mbps as at 16mbps) and use of 1440x1080.
But griping aside, they still produce excellent programming, provide an excellent news service, and as long as they continue to provide these without adverts I'll continue to pay the license fee.

Re:Greed

[mdielmann]

It's stuff like this that causes me to torrent TV shows. I play plenty for TV, including a cable subscription, but I'm not going to spend 60 minutes watching 42 minutes of content with 18 minutes of advertising (30% advertising time!), as well as watching it when they want me to. Just isn't going to happen. I watch live TV for background noise nowadays, when I don't care in particular what I'm going to watch, or if I feel like something not on my download list. And for those movies that have some compelling value to see in the theatres, I watch them there. The rest I buy or borrow (and skip all the commercials I can).

Re:Greed

[zero0ne]

Maybe he bought the DVDs?

He may download them to watch it when it is released, but he is still supporting the show by purchasing the DVDs.

Showtime and HBO would be awesome if you could subscribe to them WITHOUT needing a TV subscription to go along with it.

Why haven't either of these stations come up with a way to release their product to the masses that don't want or have cable? Why not sign a agreement with Netflix or HULU whereby their customers are given the option to signup for X$/month in addition to whatever they are already paying, and they then have access to those "stations" real time (or as close as you can get to it)? I am pretty sure the Netflix infrastructure could support 2 Stations without any hiccup.

Re:Greed

[TheGratefulNet]

I'm over 40 and have not been to a movie theater in probably 5 years. maybe even more.

I would not even weep if all the movie 'theaters' went out of business tomorrow.

when businesses get that greedy and evil, the sooner they fade away the better.

the unpleasantness of being in the theater and being overcharged at every step turns me off so I choose not to go there.

I rent movies at home all the time. 1000% better experience. the fact that my screen is 32" wide does not bother me in the least! any movie that -needs- a big scream and jet plane level sound is too weak on its content to hold my interest for very long, anyway. being in the comfort of home trumps all 'benefits' of what the theaters give.

let this model die. it had a good run but its not needed anymore.

Re:Greed

[guyfawkes-11-5]

A easier, cheaper and healthier solution. "Shoot your TV!"

Re:Greed

[Lunix Nutcase]

take a made-for-tv sitcom. it gets fully paid for (at least it had to in the old days) by BEING on tv that one time. any money over that is gravy. what do they do, now? they release that same content on dvd and charge you again.

Because making DVDs is completely free of any costs, right? They just snap their fingers and millions of DVDs just pop into existence.

Re:Greed

[IndustrialComplex]

The whole commercial thing goes back a long way. Television used to be free, over the air. Consumers were promised that paying for cable would keep the content commercial-free.

No we weren't. This is looking at the past with rose tinted lenses. A few channels may have been SOLD as commercial free, but that's not why we bought it.

My TV had 13 buttons on it, I could program them and tune them to 13 radio frequencies. What cable offered was 32 channels, all without snow/noise and I wouldn't have to maintain an aerial on top of my house. I was USED to commercials on most of those stations I received (not 13, I think I could receive about 3 on a good day) But I was sold on the fact that I wouldn't have to bother with an antenna, it would always be clear, and I'd get a lot more. Prism and HBO were big selling points.

(As an aside, boy I miss that TV. After it was 13 or so years old, My little sister once tried to get the cartoon characters out and tossed a rock at it. Slight crack in the center we got used to. 13 years after THAT it finally gave up the ghost in a rather ghostlike fashion by shooting blue plasma out the back)

But back on topic, I don't ever remember being sold on no commercials except on channels like HBO.

Re:Greed

[Monkeedude1212]

The content creators are addressing your complaints

What... Google offering $2 to skip commercials? That doesn't sound like the content creators are providing the solution, it sounds like the distributor is providing the solution. And the solution costs you money on top of paying for the service.

Oh, and saying "Go Watch a show without commercials to help push this market" is ridiculous. What if he doesn't like those shows, those times don't work out, or doesn't have that network?

Re:Greed

[AusIV]

For most TV networks, advertisers are their customers and viewers are their product. It appears to be a profitable business model, but I think consumers are starting to get sick of that mindset. This is one of the reasons I really like Netflix. They may not have every movie or TV show ever made on watch instantly yet, but they treat me like I'm their customer, rather than a product they're selling to someone else.

Re:Greed

[Americano]

I actually like the idea of the rental model Apple is pushing - rent a show for a buck or two, a movie for $4-5, watch it once, don't have to watch commercials, and don't have to bother with stopping to rent / purchase a DVD. There are VERY few movies and tv-shows that I watch that I would ever be interested in watching more than once.

If they offered a la carte programming like this, and the performance of the service itself was good, I'd probably cancel my cable subscription and never look back. I DVR most of the shows I want to watch as it is, so I'm essentially paying a cable bill for a shitload of content I never watch, and will never watch. Let me pick and choose, I'd probably spend 30-50 a month on shows & movies I actually want to watch, not have to waste time watching (or trying to fast-forward through) commercials, and save money on my cable bill.

Of course I fully expect the studios and the cable providers will do everything they can to crush this model out of existence, because... why would they want to actually go to the trouble of producing GOOD shows that would make people want to watch?

Re:Greed

[geekoid]

Yeah, it would be twice that without commercials.

Re:Greed

[Sponge Bath]

Absolutely. On KLRU PBS I've seen a string of commercials that included: A beer commercial (Michelob), a fast food commercial (Schlotzkys), and an insurance commercial. These were not "brought to you by" or "supported by" screens, they were full blown commercials. Then they shutdown programming for a couple of weeks of "pledge week" every couple of months. To top it off, they have been cranking the commercial volume to 2x or 3x the main programming volume. At the end of the PBS News Hour be ready with the mute or you will jump out of your seat from the blaring commercials.

I used to donate, now I just throw the weekly begging for more money mailers into the trash. I treat them like any other commercial broadcaster.

Re:Greed

[Lumpy]

You sir are 100% correct.

If I PAY for the content then it had better be commercial free, or damn near free. Google's plan is already a failure as I can pay $1.00 to watch the show commercial free on AppleTV. Why would I pad $2.00 to watch it free on their platform?

Note: there IS a company that still does not have commercials. HBO. They are doing just fine. If I could pay a $10.00 a month subscription fee just for their own content (skip the movies that are on DVD already or first run.. I want their exclusive shows.) I would do it in a heartbeat.

You pay $100.00 a month for cable TV, and then get slammed with so many commercials that 20% of the time you pay for is Advertising. This is excluding the annoying as hell blipverts that are getting more and more invasive and lasting a good minute into the show.

Makes me even more proud that I torrent all that crap and not pay for it.

Re:Greed

[orkysoft]

On the spy show Alias, a few years back, the villains from the K Directorate used KDE. Makes sense...

Re:Greed

[binkzz]

To me, at this point, commercials are greed.

I find them not just greedy - also offensive. I'm more and more frequently offended by advertising and the arrogant belief of advertisers they can do whatever they want because it might make them money.

Re:Greed

[wondafucka]

To me, at this point, commercials are greed. We already pay subscription (cable or otherwise), and most movies/TV shows use product placement among other things to supplement the cost. What really gets me is that now movies have 10 minutes of commercials before them. Did I really just pay $10 to watch 10 minutes of commercials before the 15 minutes of movie trailers? It's odd that only a few years ago, the movie/theatre business made a nice profit without having these commercials, yet now they cannot live without them.

I hope in time commercial-less media is the norm.

To me, at this point, you are very unaware of how much a television show actually costs to produce. Your $50 cable bill doesn't even put a dent in it. And yes, it is greed. Welcome to the primary motivating factor of all human activity. Shall I also introduce you to Greed's friend, Fear?

Re:Greed

[Lumpy]

Actually they are getting reall good as well...

http://www.pioneerone.net/ is and EXCELLENT show that is paid for by donations and distributed on Bittorrent. They are shooting the rest of season one from money they got from just the Pilot epsiode.

The trick? dont use worthless prima donna overpaid actors. Actors do NOT deserve 5 figures per show or more. Stop paying these asshats more than what they are worth. Also a $4,000,000+ per episode FX budget is simply money laundering... You do not need to pay that unless you are doing stupid crap like having real wales, or buying and cutting in 1/2 a new 777 jetliner.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

"now you will have to excuse me, I have some Dexter to watch..." - Interesting counterpoint you've made there, seeing as Dexter is aired on a premium cable channel that has no advertisements. Premium cable has operated under the same premise as Google's pay-to-skip proposition and have succeeded in years. Granted this has been largely due to also offering shows people want to watch, but you're protesting commercials on cable television by pirating from premium providers who run no advertisements? The only commercials on Showtime and HBO are advertising for other Showtime and HBO productions; most of which are excellent.

There's a whole lot of butthurt about the prevalence of advertising, but at a time when intellectual property rights don't mean anything content creators and providers have to generate revenue somehow. No one invests in a company without an industry-average or higher return on equity, and no one generates an acceptable return on equity without advertisement.

Re:Greed

[geekoid]

A) making money is not greed.
B) You pay for the service of having the channels bundled and the maintenance of infrastructure.
C) The only no commercial advertising ever done in regards to cable was for movie interruptions on specific movie channels. HBO, ON, etc...
D) No, you paid 10 bucks to sit in an air conditioned theater, see it on a big screen with good sound.
E) the advertisements supplement the theater, not the movie business.
F) Theater ticket price have no increased at the same pace as everything else. I paid 5.50 cents to see star wars in 1977. The theater, movies and sound qualities of today are far superior.
G) movie trailers have been part of seeing a movie for as long as I can remember. I actually like them. not ads, ads annoy me, but I understand why they are there. Would you pay 5-8 bucks more for a ticket where there is no advertising?

On a personal note, I do think a movie should start at the advertised time. I also think no one should be allowed in after the movie starts, unless they are returning, and I would like to see people who are being distracting escorted out.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

To me, at this point, commercials are greed. We already pay subscription (cable or otherwise), and most movies/TV shows use product placement among other things to supplement the cost. What really gets me is that now movies have 10 minutes of commercials before them. Did I really just pay $10 to watch 10 minutes of commercials before the 15 minutes of movie trailers? It's odd that only a few years ago, the movie/theatre business made a nice profit without having these commercials, yet now they cannot live without them.

I hope in time commercial-less media is the norm.

I remember when cable TV services were just getting started up and they claimed that paying for cable would mean the end of commercials, so hurry up and get cable!

Now people are paying for cable and watching commercials for condoms that rub a the insides of a pussy just right and commercials for EXTREME DORITOS, BRO!

I don't have cable.

Re:Greed

[Lumpy]

You can.

Get a Satellite dish and receiver that is supported by them and buy your channel subscription. Buddy does it with his C band dish.

He pays for $110 a YEAR for 38 premium channels from Starz, HBO and Cinemax.

It's been this way for decades.

Re:Greed

[jedidiah]

...yet another good reason to wait for the home video release or just Bit-Torrent it.

It seems like Hollywood is bound and determine to slit their own throats.

Re:Greed

[An ominous Cow art]

I haven't been in a regular big movie theater in probably 7-8 years - the damned commercials drove me away.

I did continue going to a small local chain that was great - they served good food and didn't have commercials, so I mentioned them several times here on Slashdot, but they eventually began running loud local ads before movies, instead of the silent slideshow they'd had previously, so I stopped going there, too. That was probably 3 years ago.

I'm saddened that the movie-going part of my life seems to be over :-(.

Re:Greed

[D Ninja]

and all bought something at the concession stand (which made about $50 on average per person), we broke even.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Greed

[Ephemeriis]

I'm kind of torn on this.

I don't mind paying for stuff I like... And I sure as hell want to support the folk making quality entertainment. I want my local theater to make enough money to stay in business, and further to see good ticket sales on specific types of films so that they'll carry more of those in the future. I want movies I like to make good money, so that more are made like it. I want to support the stuff that I like, so that there will be more of it in the future.

But it's getting a little ridiculous.

We'll pay over $10 for a ticket to the movies... And then get hit with an insane markup on on munchies. And then watch a never-ending loop of commercials while waiting for the lights to dim. And then watch 10+ minutes of commercials after the lights dim. And then there's the previews. And finally the movie starts.

That seems like an excessive amount of advertising considering how much we're paying for tickets and munchies.

The same thing goes for my TV at home... We paid for the initial installation, the receivers, the TVs. We're paying a monthly fee. We pay a premium fee to get some extra channels. There's product placement everywhere, and we're still seeing commercials every few minutes.

Is all that really necessary?

Re:Greed

[Lumpy]

Problem is that 30 minute tx shows need to be $0.50 and 1 hour shows $0.99

And shows like Colbert and Daily Show will run you $32.00 a month.

Still less than CableTV, but still overpriced. I'll continue to torrent them from my private tracker list instead.

Re:Greed

[jedidiah]

> I remember commercials in the movie theaters at least 40 years ago. I would be very surprised if they didn't have them in the 1920s.

The had TRAILERS in the 80s. They had no "television ads" like they do now.

There certainly weren't "commercials" in any of the cinemas I patronized 40 years ago.

Re:Greed

[Lumpy]

There are no alternative to a movie theater and never will be.

You've NEVER been in a real home theater have you.

Mine, built for less than $4500.00 with used junk off ebay is better than MOST smaller commercial theaters. Do I get 1st run movies? Nope and dont care either. I have better popcorn, better sound, FAR BETTER picture, and I can pause the movie if I want.

Sorry but going to a theater to watch a movie? How 20'th century nostalgic..

Re:Greed

[jedidiah]

> Because making DVDs is completely free of any costs, right? They just snap their fingers and millions of DVDs just pop into existence.

Pretty much.

Some of us have been spammed repeatedly from the sorts of outfits that can run off 1000 units of some DVD for you. It really doesn't cost that much.

Understanding this is why physical media is held in contempt pretty much universally.

Too many people have been spammed by small scale DVD fabs.

Re:Greed

[ran-o-matic]

Broadcast television is still free, over the air, and have always had commercials (in the case of PBS stations more subtle, but still there). I don't remember anyone promising me that cable would eliminate commercials. Provide better and more reliable picture quality and add choice, yes, but not change the actual programming delivered.

Re:Greed

[jedidiah]

I started skipping commercials on TV and the web not because I objected to commercials on principle but because they got annoying.

Back when TVLand aired "retro-mercials" we would look back fondly on those things and wish that modern commercials were more like them.

Advertisers have already exercised the "nuclear option". Now we are living in the post-apocalyptic age of TV advertising.

Re:Greed

[commodore64_love]

I haven't been in a regular big movie theater in probably 7-8 years - the damned effort of having to take a bath and get dressed drove me away. Bittorrent is easier. Download at night and watch tomorrow.

Re:Greed

[mcsqueak]

Go somewhere else then, seriously. Most often it's the small, independent, or even budget theaters that actual treat their patrons nicely.

+1 to this. I rarely see first run movies anymore, just because it's expensive and annoying to fight the crowds, sit through the commercials, and all of that garbage. My local independent theater shows movies a few months after they originally come out (I can wait), and will also run older films and cult classics (I've been able to see Blade Runner and Star Trek II there).

The best part is that tickets are only $3, they have real food available if you don't want popcorn, and they have beer. They limit the previews to 5 minutes, and don't show commercials.

It makes Regal (and whoever else operates the big chains these days) seem like a bunch of jerks.

Re:Greed

[jedidiah]

> To me, at this point, you are very unaware of how much a television show actually costs to produce.

No. You just don't understand the math and how many households that cost is distributed across.

Re:Greed

[EdIII]

Movie theaters never made a nice profit.

The whole reason why they act like East German officers on the Berlin Wall when you try to get in there with drink/food from the outside is they NEED you to purchase the incredibly overpriced drink/food inside to offset their lost profits on the tickets.

Have you ever noticed that movie theater drinks are more expensive than even the airport? The airport of course has you hostage inside the secured zone, but they also have much higher costs due to that security. A movie theater does not. The vast majority of the ticket cost goes to Hollywood, Hollywood is always pressing for the price to go up.

It's tough for a movie theater to make money these days, especially with this economy. I really don't think it is greed with those commercials, but just trying to survive.

Cable is a whole other story...

In any case, the more they try to saturate me with the crap the harder I am pushed away. In the last 5 years since I decided I had enough with Idiocracy, I have taken many steps to completely rid my life of commercials. I have been pretty successful.

I always go to movies during the early afternoons or slow days (can't stand people talking) and show up about 15 minutes late. It's amazing, even 15 minutes late and I can STILL catch a preview or two.

I have not paid a cable bill in 5 years. Instead of using a DVR and skipping commercials, I just use torrents where those nice and considerate "pirates" have already stripped the bullshit for me.

Most of time now I don't even torrent. The networks have gone insane and started pushing commercials via overlay advertisements INSIDE the show itself! Seriously... WTF? It has literally become impossible for me to enjoy a TV show via network delivery, pirated or otherwise. I just cannot get into a TV show like Stargate SGU when they are using the bottom 20-30% of the screen every fucking five minutes to inform me about fucking Ghost Hunters.

At this point I use Netflix almost exclusively. I get zero advertising annoyance of any kind with them. When I get whole seasons of TV shows from them they are nice and squeeky clean. I stopped watching Stargate SGU three episodes into the first season and then watched them all on Netflix later on. It was wonderful, sublime even. I got to immerse myself in the storyline and just .... enjoyed a TV show.

My entire consumption is now based on Netflix and torrent DVD rips that are completely advertising free.

You know why Google will get the money from me? I pay $15 per month right now for my entertainment. If Google really can deliver me the content my way (no commercials of any-fucking-kind), I would have NO problems paying a reasonable amount to enjoy some TV shows in the only way that I can. I have the extra money now that I don't pay the cable networks.

Re:Greed

[Americano]

I certainly wouldn't object even cheaper unit prices, but I don't mind paying a reasonable price ($0.99 per show for most of the shows I watch doesn't feel unreasonable to me, if there's no ads - for daily shows, perhaps offer a weekly / monthly pass that offers a discounted price) to reward content creators whose work I do value. I don't watch TV enough to justify the Cable bill I get today, and I don't re-watch enough episodes to justify purchasing the shows through iTunes, so a rental model with reasonable (and ad-free) prices would be a great option.

Re:Greed

[phantomfive]

I think at this point, society is seriously messed up.

lol how do you know when your life is too good? When you think advertising before you get entertained means society is seriously messed up.

Seriously, this is messed up society, and so is this, but having your entertainment delayed is not.

Re:Greed

[commodore64_love]

>>>In glorious soviet UK, we have four major TV channels... $230

No offense but Ick. I pay $0.00 a year and get about 40 channels. Eight of them... PBS, PBSarts, PBSkids, PBSworld, PBSinfo, MiND, Link, Megahertz... are commercial free. The rest have ads but it's easy enough to ignore them (goto bathroom, goto slashdot.org, or fast forward).
Our Radio is free too - see the link below.

Also we won't have cops banging on our doors and demanding that $230, or else dragging us off to jail. (No I'm not trolling - that is what happens if you refuse to pay the BBC Tax.)

Re:Greed

[mcsqueak]

Mine, built for less than $4500.00 with used junk off ebay is better than MOST smaller commercial theaters. Do I get 1st run movies? Nope and dont care either. I have better popcorn, better sound, FAR BETTER picture, and I can pause the movie if I want.

Yeah, there are a LOT of used projectors on ebay for only a few hundred dollars. If you have a house with an extra room, get one of those, some surround sound speakers, some chairs from Ikea, and run it all off of your laptop and you're getting 99% of the theater experience without the overpriced, crap junk food or the rude patrons.

Re:Greed

[An ominous Cow art]

Agreed. Unfortunately, there are hordes of people that are still clamoring to continue feeding them money.

Re:Greed

[BrokenHalo]

One thing that's a bit sad about modern cinema business is the demise of the supporting movie. When I was young (back in the early 14th century), I spent many an afternoon in those grand 1930s cinemas (demolished in the late '70s to make way for car-parks and office buildings). Often the supporting film was vastly more memorable than the main billing.

One that sticks in my mind was the chilling Sredni Vashtar, a simple dramatisation of one of those many short stories by Saki (H.H. Munro). I read the original version many years later, but I remember the film giving my kiddie self the creeps for a long time.

Re:Greed

[commodore64_love]

>>>Either the cable provider should pay for the privilege of letting their customers watch TV shows. They can pay by charging customers.

This is what happens. The average cable channel charges Comcast or Cox or Whoever about 50 cents per household (the lowest price is nothing for shopping channels and 85 cents for TNT and 2.50 for ESPN). HOWEVER the cable channels also run 40 or 45 minute shows with gaps for ads, so the cable channel sticks commercials in there for extra funds.

All of that money goes towards buying the reruns, plus 3-4 original self-made programs like Monk, Greek, Stargate, and so on. If either the fees or the ads were removed, then the originals would have to be canceled due to lack of money.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

But back on topic, I don't ever remember being sold on no commercials except on channels like HBO.

Kinda playing semantics. You see, "cable tv" back in the early 80's and before, used to mean extra premium channels at an extra cost, while the old 2-13 channels was just regular "network channels".

Re:Greed

[mlts]

Here in Austin, unless seeing a matinee, it is going to be well above $10. One theater has tickets of $30 per person.

I am sure that people will pay a couple bucks more to not wade through commercials. Just look at how well the Alamo Drafthouse is doing with their business model over other theaters, not to mention the customer loyalty.

Re:Greed

[Sporkinum]

+1 for the Collins Road Theaters! http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes-tickets/theaters/1385-collins-road-theatres/
Love that popcorn! Now if Hollywood would actually make something worth watching.

Re:Greed

[Evro]

While that's true about paying a subscription, if you assume your basic subscription is $30/month, and HBO is $15/month, then what you're "paying" for with a $30/month subscription is just two channels worth of content. I get probably 200+ channels with my FiOS subscription. While I don't want all of those channels, there's no a la carte option that lets me select what I actually want, so $30/month for 200 channels is pretty reasonable. If every channel was commercial-free, like HBO, you'd probably expect to be paying $15/month per channel, but maybe you'd be able to select the channels you want. Still, I'm pissed enough at paying $30/month for 200 channels, I'd rather pay $10/month for 50 channels. But I can't anyone being okay with paying $50-60/month for 4 or 5 channels, which is what would happen if they did away with commercials.

Re:Greed

[BrokenHalo]

I don't think it's even the advertising companies that are to blame.

I do. Advertisers have arrogated to themselves the right to pollute every single surface visible by humans with their inane excreta, and NOBODY is doing a damn thing to stop them.

Re:Greed

[commodore64_love]

I like commercials.

Ads in theaters? I agree they are annoying, but ads elsewhere are fine with me. They are what allow me to watch TV or watch the internet or listen to the radio w/o bankrupting myself. i.e. Ads provide free entertainment for poor and middle class citizens

Ads are also what allowed the 1996 Atlanta and 2002 Salt Lake games to be the only Olympics to *make a profit* rather than leave the host city deep in debt. The profit was then donated to various athletic organizations

Re:Greed

[walshy007]

My TV had 13 buttons on it, I could program them and tune them to 13 radio frequencies. What cable offered was 32 channels, all without snow/noise and I wouldn't have to maintain an aerial on top of my house.

Every house sold in perhaps the last 30 years (perhaps not in the US?) has had a quality antenna and has required no fiddling or maintenance.

Every tv since at least the late 80's has had the capability to be tuned for usually at least 100 channels of analog.

Modern DVB sets even auto-tune it for you in the space of five minutes after initial setup, I get around 10 channels flawlessly.

I think a big problem for the US is that cable is so prevalent nobody ever bothers with over the air and thusly it's quality suffers. Of those I know with cable easily 90% of the time is spent on free to air channels anyway.

Re:Greed

[VoiceInTheDesert]

Showtime is a premium channel in most areas. That means you pay to have the ads turned off, much in the same way that GoogleTV is proposing. What the OP here is saying is that he feels that paying to turn off ads that the stations don't even need for revenue is extortion.

Agree or disagree, he is being consistent. He does not believe the ads are necessary to support the show, but that is mere greed that perpetuates them. Therefore, he chooses to revoke his support of the advertisers and networks that support them.

I, personally, think his pirating and the pirating of others is a potentially important catalyst towards change. When studios finally realize that annoying a customer to the point where he would rather steal than deal with your product, they might try a different model.

Re:Greed

[Mr. Underbridge]

To me, at this point, commercials are greed.

Really? Have you established that networks are making fantastic profit margins?

We already pay subscription (cable or otherwise

To whom? That's like saying that since you pay to access the internet, that you should be able to download whatever you want for free. Many channels are not paid by the cable provider.

most movies/TV shows use product placement among other things to supplement the cost

Holding up a Coke can doesn't pay for production costs.

What really gets me is that now movies have 10 minutes of commercials before them. Did I really just pay $10 to watch 10 minutes of commercials before the 15 minutes of movie trailers?

Yeah, it sucks. Now you know to show up later.

It's odd that only a few years ago, the movie/theatre business made a nice profit without having these commercials, yet now they cannot live without them.

And their costs have gone up substantially. The theaters are in many ways more captive to the MPAA than we are.

I hope in time commercial-less media is the norm.

Would be nice. I assume you are willing to pay for it? No free lunch.

Re:Greed

[crimsonshdw]

You can go back even further to the radio serials. The advertisers and companies had a really good quid pro quo system. The companies would sponsor the shows, or even write them in a lot of cases. You had quality entertainment from a variety of sources, and in exchange they pitched their add at the start and at the end of the show. If it was a longer episode, you might have an intermission where they pitch again. Everything was very subtle and in a lot of cases very tongue in cheek. IMO, it was a fair exchange.

Re:Greed

[danny_lehman]

"the unsuspecting reader may unconsciously consume a variety of advertisements through the written word. Perhaps through the use of Alliteration spelling out a brand. Or through the use of landmark phrases to connect a user to a previously addressed food or drink. The power of the written word is underestimated and is thus one of the greatest untapped marketing mediums known to exist"

Dan

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

Spending 50 bucks per person at the concession stand? Wow no wonder you Americans are much bigger now (taking into account inflation and all that :) ).

Re:Greed

[TheLink]

you're getting 99% of the theater experience without the overpriced, crap junk food or the rude patrons.

But I'm a rude patron you insensitive clod!

Re:Greed

[binkzz]

Did you inquire what a movie ticket would cost for a showing without ads or trailers? Probably more than $10.

"It's odd that only a few years ago, the movie/theatre business made a nice profit without having these commercials, yet now they cannot live without them."

Nothing ever changes, never. Costs never go up. Revenue never goes down. There are no alternative to a movie theater and never will be.

Costs do go up, and have gone up considerably. Everything has to be bigger and better than what has been before.

I wouldn't mind some fewer special effects and cheaper, lesser known (but just as capable) actors in exchange for fewer to no adverts.

Re:Greed

[Charliemopps]

It already is:
www.thepiratebay.org

Re:Greed

[BrokenHalo]

...but he is still supporting the show by purchasing the DVDs.

Indeed, I do exactly this. If a show is worth watching at all, it's worth buying a DVD of it to bypass the advertising.

What pisses me off, though, is when I have bought a legitimate copy of a DVD and I still have the frustration of having to sit through large sections of advertising crap before I get to see what I paid for.

Re:Greed

[IndustrialComplex]

Every house sold in perhaps the last 30 years (perhaps not in the US?) has had a quality antenna and has required no fiddling or maintenance. Every tv since at least the late 80's has had the capability to be tuned for usually at least 100 channels of analog.

Remember this was about when CABLE really started to penetrate into the market. In the US that took place over the 70s and 80s. The televisions which were in the majority of homes during that period did NOT have the capabilities you describe. Nor was there any guarantee of having clear LOS to the station.

I think you are just looking at the wrong time period. If digital tuners and electronics were in the 80s, like they were in the 90s, cable might not have done nearly as well.

Modern DVB sets even auto-tune it for you in the space of five minutes after initial setup, I get around 10 channels flawlessly.

Again, that has nothing to do with the point of how cable was sold to people using aerials when cable first came onto the market as a viable option.

Re:Greed

[cgenman]

Here in Boston, 15 minutes of commercials is the norm. When I saw a movie in London, there was well over 30 minutes of commercials. While I consider the amount here grossly overdone, the amount in London was just despicable.

I'd be curious to see what the going payout is for commercials before a movie. If a ticket is ten dollars, and a movie is 2 hours long, do they really make 8 cents per minute per person by showing these things? If not, wouldn't higher throughput trump single sales? Or is the throughput not the bottleneck, so much as maximizing the dollars-per-patron?

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! way to conform and just accept it. You sir, are the reason why we sit through so much BS before a movie starts

Re:Greed

[BrokenHalo]

In glorious soviet UK... This costs £145 per year...

I've always wondered how they actually monitor this. I have never been convinced of the usefulness of those so-callled "detector vans". I always suspected their Gestapo of banging on doors at random and telling occupants to "show us your TV, you scum!"

Re:Greed

[lowrydr310]

I'd like some more information about this setup. I'd gladly pay $110 a year for the channels you mentioned. How can I get it?

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of people don't seem to realize this, but cable was originally a premium service. The concept of paying for TV was shocking to a lot of people, but the hook was that the cable channels came without commercials. They supported themselves just on their subscription fees. It didn't take all that long for commercials to creep their way in there. Same with the premium channels. Ads are sneaking their way in. Product placement is the insidious example, but all the movie channels also seem to show ads for movies in the theatres. Sure they're dressed up as insider information, documentaries, etc., but it's pretty obvious what they are.

Re:Greed

[scot4875]

You still pay the cost for advertising. Everything you buy has the cost of advertising built in.

This is one reason that I see nothing wrong with "stealing" TV or movies; they were financed by advertising. The stuff I buy paid for that, whether I wanted it to or not. I don't generally bother, because there isn't much worth watching; in fact, I generally do pay when I do watch things. But I feel absolutely no remorse for downloading a show here or there without advertisers getting their cut.

--Jeremy

Re:Greed

[An ominous Cow art]

Netflix has solved the problem for me, but there is still the tedium of selecting which DVDs I want, and the hardship of making the trek to the mailbox...

Re:Greed

[wondafucka]

> To me, at this point, you are very unaware of how much a television show actually costs to produce.

No. You just don't understand the math and how many households that cost is distributed across.

Actually, no. I do understand math and the distributed cost.

300,000,000 Assume roughly everyone in America pays $50 for cable and taxes / bs are taken out already

$50

$15,000,000,000 Total Cable income

200 Total Channels

$75,000,000 Total dollar amount per channel

8760 Total Hours of programming (24*365)

$8,561.643836 Dollars per hour

$4,280.821918 Dollars per half hour

You cannot produce a 1/2 hour television show for $4300. Not one that mainstream America would watch, anyways. You can play around with the number of subscribers, the number of channels, and even re-use half of all your programming, and you would get enough money to have community college actors, bad lighting, bad sound, a single set, and terrible scripts.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

now you will have to excuse me, I have some Dexter to watch...

Yeah, I used to enjoy watching Dexter's Laboratory, too :-)

Re:Greed

[moonbender]

The price of the ads is factored into the products. You (and society in general) still pay for all of it, in a horribly inefficient way and with manipulative middlemen getting a cut.

Don't even get me started on the Olympics...

Re:Greed

[mattcsn]

What about those of us without houses? A lot of people rent apartments. We don't have the physical room for a full-scale home theatre, and cranking up a surround-sound system is a sure-fire way to get the neighbors to call both your landlord and the police.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant idea, go ahead patent it before anyone of them get a wind of it. We on ./ won't claim it is prior art as courtesy to fellow ./ (of course you will send each of us a check for million dollars after you sue the pants off of these big guys).

Re:Greed

[moonbender]

Out of curiosity, what kind of hardware did you get? I still think 4500 USD is a lot, and the "big" in big screen really makes spending a few bucks for the real thing worth it -- sometimes.

Re:Greed

[EdIII]

You don't have to sit through anything if you don't want to.

All of my legitimate DVDs get taken out of the sleeve exactly one time. I use software to decrypt the DVD and turn it into an ISO I can mount on any of my media players over the network.

The benefit of this is you can get rid of all the PUOs (Prohibited User Operations) that force you to watch something and even strip out a lot of the crap like FBI warnings. Your DVDs will then remain protected and unused, while you access a slimmer and cleaner digital copy without all the crap.

I have hundreds of DVDs stored this way.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

You should still take a bath before your court appearance though. Unless you plan on accepting the settlement offer. Most folks here on slashdot at least SAY they would fight it - hence the bath.

Re:Greed

[Lythrdskynrd]

Maybe.

If I were a betting man though... I'd put my money down on the side that said he didn't.

Most of the people I know who rattle on about bittorrent and such don't actually buy copies of the things they download. They just watch 'em and delete 'em.

He could very well be the person who cancelled his cable and then buys or rents DVD box sets. My experience tells me that the vast majority of the time, that is not the case.

Re:Greed

[commodore64_love]

Not really. (1) I don't by anything advertised. (2) Advertising drives down prices because as more people buy the item, its per item cost drops.

Re:Greed

[fyngyrz]

Would you pay 5-8 bucks more for a ticket where there is no advertising?

Sorry, I quit going when the tickets hit $8.00 per person. Now, with a nice home theater, there's nothing they can do to lure me back.

Seriously, consider what you get for your ticket. You get screaming babies. The opportunity to catch the flu and any number of other unpleasantries from your fellow theater-goers. You get uncomfortable seats. Climbed over by people you don't know (and usually wouldn't want to know.) Incredibly overpriced food, often with crushed palm tree juice in lieu of butter. You can't yell "fire." You get commercials, and the most awful slideshows ever conceived (surely there is a special hell for those people.) You get really bad pop music, and really lame "quizzes" about the songs and the artists, if I may abuse the term.

At home, for the cost of a DVD or a Bluray (a lot less than a pair of tickets), you own the show and can watch it as many times as you like. You can pause it. You can lend it out. You can watch it with your friends and family. You can have exactly the snacks you want, with actual butter if you like, or a four-course dinner if that's your bent. You can have way better sound, eliminate cellphones and landlines, enjoy comfortable furniture, a cat in your lap and your sweetheart right next to you, and control the showtime instead of letting the showtime control you. Once you wait through the new release cycle once, you're on your own new release cycle, same rate as everyone else, just a few months delayed. And you've saved a *lot* of money, which you can use to improve your life, instead of the theater owner's life. Plus you have awesome A/V equipment, which improves your life in many ways. You can have a drink, or flame up, or grope someone without fear of arrest, too. No children. No babies. No old folks trying to cough their lungs out on the theater floor. No teenagers texting, tweeting, or babbling. No slipping on the ice on the sidewalk; no standing in line.

Movie theaters are dead to me. Like credit cards, you just have to learn to look at them clearly and see what they're doing to your bottom line, and how you could do that better, and you'll never go back to being a sucker.

Re:Greed

[mldi]

Seconded!

Re:Greed

[EdIII]

Where the hell is a local independent theater though?

I have not seen one in over 10 years and that was when I had traveled to some remote places. In fact, where I am right now is COMPLETELY dominated by a single chain. I have 8 theaters in my city to choose from, and all of them run by the same company. The next closest city has I think 2 chains to choose from any maybe twice as many locations. Both of them complete dicks of course when it comes to the commercials.

The theater you described sounds heavenly. Dammit, if I am not tempted to take a road trip just to find one like that.

Re:Greed

[EdIII]

The prices are too high though when you are talking about even 99c per show. It would work for me because I watch very very few shows. I can think of maybe 4 that I really want to watch at all. Everything else is already cancelled and over with, and hence, available on Netflix.

I would have paid $50 a month though for Firefly. Dear god, if that was not a Greek fucking tragedy that it was cancelled.

What I am really interested, and would NEVER happen, is indemnity.

Imagine the Daily Show, or Stargate SGU, etc. selling legal indemnity to copyright infringement claims? Basically, a comprehensive license to enjoy their content regardless of the distribution channel it was obtained through for $4.99 per month?

That would never happen, but man, if it did.... I would easily pay $60-70 per month for a quite a number of shows knowing that I can torrent them without commercials.

P.S - The primary reason I ever started torrenting in the first place was to get rid of commercials and get all of the show. My DVR had a bad habit of losing the first few minutes, or last few minutes of a show when the cable networks fucked up and started a show late because of football or something like that.

Re:Greed

[VolciMaster]

Another example of a place like this - the Movie Tavern

Re:Greed

[EdIII]

When studios finally realize that annoying a customer to the point where he would rather steal than deal with your product, they might try a different model.

That is wholly untrue though. Most unfortunately so.

Your logic is sound. The problem is that you think backing "them" into a corner will cause them to act rationally since they have no choice left. The reality is the crazy bastards pull out a nuclear bomb, and with eyes twitching, their faces contorted in rage and madness, consign the rest of us to oblivion.

Big Media, as they are so fondly and often referred to as, have more in common with fundamentalist terrorists than they do with normal, rational people.

We are at serious, imminent, and direct risk of losing all of freedoms because they can't accept or adapt to the situation. Look at ACTA, the DMCA, etc. Our rights to privacy, anonymity, etc. are being literally destroyed in the name of protecting copyrights. Copyrights themselves keep expanding their rights and time limits in ways that are clearly damaging to society. Software patents, patents on DNA for fucks sake, all of it together is causing serious harm to innovation.

You are entirely correct, but in the worst way possible. They ARE trying a different model. They are changing the playing field and the rules itself. We are the ones that are going to suffer most intensely because of it.

When you no longer own your hardware, software must centrally managed and authorized by the government, every action in your digital realm (aka Cyberspace) is watched and monitored, and all of your content and communications are vetted before they can be accessed, viewed, or even commented on, are you FREE?

You may be thinking I am nuts, but is Big Media heading that direction with technology and lobbying in Congress, or are they getting ready to be rational and come to the table for good faith negotiations with the People?

Heh. The Doomsday clock is at 1 minute to Midnight for us in entertainment.

Re:Greed

[commodore64_love]

Not really. Advertising boosts sales, which means the manufacturing cost per item drops, so the net result is a price drop.
If advertising were forbidden, then you'd see the opposite - sales drop and per-item prices would climb to offset the loss.

Bottom Line - Are goods in the UK any cheaper, thanks to the commercial free BBC and other channels? Nope. If anything they are often higher than the US pricetags.

Re:Greed

[numbski]

Come on, don't make us beg. I know C-band dishes are available, but specifics would be great KTHX.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

... which now has commercials. So does public television. :(

Re:Greed

[dbet]

Teenagers.

That's why movie companies make so much money. Because for whatever reason, teens do nothing else together except go to the movies every single weekend. That's why there's always a push to get movies to be PG-13. That's why really bad movies like Transformers 2 still make $300 million before even getting to DVD sales.

It's also partially because every time the world population goes up by 1%, your income goes up by 1% with no additional effort.

Seriously, if you can open a business that caters to teens and be even remotely successful, you can tap into that weekly movie-money. Good luck though. Movies are great for dating when you're 15. It's too difficult to get hand jobs at the batting cages or arcades.

Re:Greed

[S.O.B.]

Not really. Advertising boosts sales, which means the manufacturing cost per item drops, so the net result is an increase in profit.

There, fixed that for you.

I agree that in theory that's how it's supposed to work. At least, that's what I learned in 1st year Economics.

In the real world businesses keep prices the same unless there is enough competition to force them to reduce prices. And that is, only if the competition isn't also greedy. You only have to look as far as the drug, cable and cell phone companies for typical examples.

Re:Greed

[StikyPad]

Some minor googling revealed this site, which seems to have most of the requisite information. (Fair warning: Try not to be blown away by the pure awesomeness of the site design, not to mention some of the technically inaccurate details.) Nonetheless, it's probably as good a starting point as any.

Re:Greed

[D Ninja]

...I fail to see how one bucket of popcorn is going to affect my weight that much.

Re:Greed

[Cro Magnon]

I remember commercials in the movie theaters at least 40 years ago. I would be very surprised if they didn't have them in the 1920s.

My mom used to have an olde record player, and one of her records was of a very olde radio show (probably 30s, but I might have been late 20s), and it was sponsered by Oxidol.

Re:Greed

[mcsqueak]

It's in Portland, Oregon (the Laurelhurst Theater). As another poster said, we also have the independent McMinamin's chain as well.

Re:Greed

[Spatial]

Did I really just pay $10 to watch 10 minutes of commercials before the 15 minutes of movie trailers?

Not to mention the piracy warnings. Offensively disingenuous bullshit directed at your paying customers, what a clever idea.

I stopped going.

Re:Greed

[lowrydr310]

Try not to be blown away by the pure awesomeness of the site design

Holy 1994! Who needs flash when you have the beloved animated .gif!

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

DeeDee is that you?

Re:Greed

[VoiceInTheDesert]

I agree with you. The line you quoted was mostly spoken in jest, because I know they will never change. It's much easier to just sue people into oblivion. That said, I laugh at their attempts to make me pay. If it's on the internet, I can get to it and I can do so commercial free. I feel sorry for people who do not have the savvy to do this and end up punished by either ridiculous prices or by getting sued.

Re:Greed

[ffreeloader]

Every house sold in perhaps the last 30 years (perhaps not in the US?) has had a quality antenna and has required no fiddling or maintenance.

This is so far from reality it isn't funny. Do you belong to the flat earth society, lived only in big cities, or have lived on only flat country? In the real world there are homes in mountainous areas, canyons, timber, etc... that block signals.

In the western US there are many homes in locations where neither satellite nor broadcast tv are available. These homes are in canyons, on hillsides, or in heavily timbered areas, and many are 100 miles or more from their "local" tv stations.

Personally, I've lived in a house where the previous owner had put the antenna more than a mile away from the house on top of a hill and ran a line to house. That was the only way to get tv reception. I wouldn't have gone to those lengths to get reception, but he did.

I've also lived in other houses, or knew people who did, where there was no signal at the house itself due to the terrain, and if there was an existing tv antenna it was anywhere from 100 feet to a 100 yards from the house, and it was mounted on top of a pole mounted on the roof of a building or on a 50' or so pole set in the ground. The antennas were adjustable because you couldn't point the antenna in one direction and get more than 1 or 2 channels. You had to be able to turn the antenna to get all the channels. Directional antennas were the only antennas that could pick up the signals because they were so weak. Even then you had to have a signal amplifier to get reception.

Re:Greed

[Plasmaball]

C-band (4dtv) as a subscription service is pretty much dead come Jan 1st 2011 and whats left will (quality & price wise) be pretty much as bad as minidish/cable anyway

Premium cable channels are all encrypted and updating to newer DVB-S2 gear and none are sold to consumers on a subscription basis

I love my dish but a cable replacement it is not

Re:Greed

[Jeppe Salvesen]

I don't watch TV (aaarhhh!), I use adblock, and most of the stuff I subsribe to comes with only a few ads. My phone is not listed for telemarketers. And on my mailbox, there's a "no advertising, please" sticker.

Life is good. At least in that respect.

(I still get hassled a bit by pushy salespeople in the streets, though. I'm just waiting for the Norwegian law enforcement to become so inefficent that I can punch them without risking getting hassled by the Man. And the public space is filled with advertising.)

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone from a real small town, seeing sentences of the form "Even in the relatively small town I live in there is at least one [narrow adjective] [service that real small towns have 1 or 0 of]" always amuses me.

Re:Greed

[mcsqueak]

What about those of us without houses?

Those without houses are just SOL. :) I don't live in a house, so it's not something I've done, but will consider once I have a place of my own.

Re:Greed

[walshy007]

Sounds just like just extremely poor planning on the over the air stations behalf.

Then again because of the prevalence of cable I imagine they would have somewhat less viewers and less advertising revenue as opposed to places where cable never had large adoption and the over the air stations are extremely popular.

Re:Greed

[walshy007]

Likely a matter of locality, where I am cable was never even introduced until the mid 90's because over the air served everyone just fine.

Could go a long way to explain why most people find cable rather useless here in comparison to regular tv since over the air gets the most viewers and most advertising revenue.

Re:Greed

[melikamp]

I am in the same boat as you: they can take their commercials and shove it. People always bring up how commercials help to pay for content. May be they do, it does not matter. The main reason for making us watch commercials is manufacturing demand: programming consumers' minds to buy shit they don't need, or to select irrationally the more expensive and less unreliable product on the market. When I see a commercial-supported media, I know that the target audience is stupid people. "We would not have free ______ without ads" is a myth. Commercials are effective. They work: brains do get reprogrammed and companies like Pepsi, Nike, and Apple are thriving in spite of their products. (Don't get me started on feel-good drugs.) Consumers end up brainwashed and pay for their "free" TV by making poor decisions in the marketplace. May be YOU don't because YOU are so smart, but WE do. And, frankly, one who seriously believes that ads have no effect on him is deluded twice.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing like a self-righteous lecture to make you feel better, huh?

Re:Greed

[ffreeloader]

The point is, your assertion is untrue. And, it isn't bad planning. It's that the terrain makes 100% coverage next to impossible. I'd bet you've never lived in the Pacific Northwest, Montana or Idaho or you would never had made such an assertion. Much of these areas are mountainous terrain with widely scattered towns. It's not uncommon to have to drive 50-100 miles between small towns and have to climb a few hills and drop into a couple of canyons between them.

All of this means TV reception can range from none at all to satellite only, to snowy UHF only using large directional antennas that must be adjusted to get different channels because the signals come from various directions. Even then the antennas and satellite dishes are not always mounted on the houses. Many are mounted remotely, sometimes quite a ways away from the house, where they can see the signals.

There's a reason Radio Shack still sells large tv antennas.

Re:Greed

[takowl]

Intimidating letters, mostly. Lots of "cough up or we'll see you in court". If you say you don't have a TV, they say "alright, we'll send someone to check," but I don't know anyone who's been checked (nor what they do if you refuse them entry).

It's probably pretty easy to get away without paying, if you're that way inclined. I think most people with a TV pay up just because they don't want to be breaking the law. It helps that the BBC is pretty popular, and the license fee is less than a basic Sky subscription.

What interests me is whether it will change. I can legally get the last week of programs from their website for free (you have to pay to see it live). Which is quite good enough for me. I wonder if one day, anyone with an internet connection will have to pay. (To clarify, I wouldn't object to this)

Re:Greed

[gamricstone]

The only theater I have heard of in my state (Iowa) that fits your description is in Des Moines. It would be impractical for me to travel to DM every time I wanted to watch a movie. The single local theater, as well as all within a reasonable driving distance are all chain but do not have more than a couple commercials before the trailer. The exception being if you show up early, they have ads for local businesses play (which I'm fine with).

My point is

No free tickets
Very rarely free popcorn
Only 2 screens
Not all towns (especially not small ones) have cheap independent movie theaters

Re:Greed

[Stele]

Now all restaurants are Taco Bell.

Re:Greed

[jrumney]

In glorious soviet UK, we have four major TV channels (and minor channels, national and local radio stations) without commercials.

I'm curious, which channels are you calling major? Is BBC4 or even BBC3 more or less major than BBC News, CBBC and CBeebies?

Re:Greed

[minorproblem]

The funniest thing about commercials is that the people with the least time and patience to waste on them are also more likely to be the people who will actually buy your product. Particularly young males between the age of 21-30... I have a threshold. I cant stand more than a few minutes of commercials. Hence why i stopped watching TV and started downloading my shows. Same with i wont listen to the radio on the way to work because of the number of adverts in peak hour. But during the day they run great programs that i actually bother to tune into and aren't saturated with adverts...

Re:Greed

[moonbender]

That sounds like an axiom from perfect economics land, close neighbour of perfect physics country, where everyone is omniscient and rational and transactions are frictionless. You even provided solid empirical evidence in the form of a non sequitur!

In reality, your scenario is the exception, not the rule. The reduced unit price is merely a side effect; advertising makes sense as long as it results in increased profit, independent of the number of items sold. And since typically several companies fight each other with increasing advertising budgets, any net gain is quickly canceled, even though it still makes sense for every individual company to increase its budget. I bet you could simplify that to some standard example from game theory.

The UK/US thing is just bizarre -- you can't compare prices like that, the UK also has lots of advertising, and besides, it's not as if both were strictly separate markets, many of the participants/products/factories are the same.

Re:Greed

[CTU]

Wile it is true making the DVD's coast money. It dose not justify the amount the charge for a season.
When they charge $40 for 1 season of a TV show they are crossing the line.
They made there money and payed off coast, yet they want that much for a few disk that coast maybe $5 to make with packaging?

Re:Greed

[walshy007]

I do not live in the US, and everywhere I've been in a 200km radius of my home has had tv reception, and I have travelled a few thousand kms before, when I arrive at anywhere there is even a small town (less than 1000 total population) it has still had perfect tv reception.(and yes, some of those towns are in mountain areas)

The point is to someone who has had perfect quality tv reception for decades wherever they go the idea of cable is nowhere near as attractive.

If they can reach cable to all those homes, they can get the media to a mini transmitter that can handle settlements of people in difficult terrain.

Re:Greed

[The_Quinn]

If you discover a profitable business model for TV/movies that doesn't require commercials, you would be providing a valuable service to people, and you would become rich. That would be heroic (as opposed to simply bitching and moaning *Gimme Gimme ... I want ... I want*)

Re:Greed

[Eivind]

True, but this assumes that all of the channels show exclusive shows 24/7 that have to justify their existence by this single showing.

This ENTIRELY fails to be the case. First there's reruns. How large a fraction of say Discovery consists of shows that have been shown previously ? I'd guess 75%, that alone, quadruples the money available to produce a show.

Then there's the shows that are sold and bought and end up being shown on more than one channel. It's the norm rather than the exception that a show is shown on several channels, if successful, it could even easily get into hundreds of channels. (keep in mind that shows are -also- sold to foreign channels)

So, how much of a average channels schedule consists of first-runs? (i.e. content that has not been shown previously anywhere, neither on this channel, nor on another)

It varies wildly by channel, offcourse, but I don't think there's -any- channels who approach 100%, and many channels seem to be in the 10% or thereabout range.

$43.000 for an half-hour show, may or may not be enough. It's not enough for a high-profile show, but MOST of the self-produced programming on those 200 channels isn't high-profile shows.

Re:Greed

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

You mean, people with large groups of friends, who like to see a movie together? Oh noes!

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

www.google.com

Re:Greed

[Lumpy]

There's craigslist for that.

Honestly, pay someone to come over and sit behind you talking on their cellphone, kicking your seat, and talking to the screen, "NO DUDE DONT GO IN THERE!"

Re:Greed

[Lumpy]

Unless you live in a 300sq foot shipping container, you can do a 96" screen and full surround.

You just need to know what you are doing. Things like powered screens disappear to the top of the book cases, projector on a shelf on the opposite wall, etc....

I have seen awesome home theaters in apartments, the living area transforms to the theater room with a single click of the remote.

Re:Greed

[Lumpy]

108" draper silver screen.
Panasonic 3ccd projector.
Kenwood Soverign Surround reciever.
I built the speakers into the walls.
PC running XBMC connected via VGA.
Bluray player connected via DVI/HDMI (Yes it handshakes.
Crestron STX-1700 remote
Crestron CNMSX-PRO controller.
Crestron Dimmer.

Most expensive part was 2X4's for walls, cloth to cover the fiberglass sound control panels, carpet on floor, and 2 couches.

Re:Greed

[Lumpy]

Forgot...

$4500 is nothing for a real home theater. I have installed $98,000 home theaters. Good projectors start at $11,000 and other gear can get way higher.. Most drop $9,000 in seating alone.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is Google offering C-band satellite equipment and subscriptions?

Re:Greed

[OhHellWithIt]

Commercials were in broadcast radio in the U.S. from the very start, and it's why we don't have receiver licenses like they have/had in the U.K. The point I was trying to challenge, though, was that advertisements in movie theaters is not a new idea.

Re:Greed

[OhHellWithIt]

> I remember commercials in the movie theaters at least 40 years ago. I would be very surprised if they didn't have them in the 1920s.

The had TRAILERS in the 80s. They had no "television ads" like they do now.

There certainly weren't "commercials" in any of the cinemas I patronized 40 years ago.

The ads I remember 40 years ago couldn't be called trailers. They advertised, among other things, a local boat dealer and a restaurant.

Re:Greed

[melikamp]

I don't by anything advertised.

This is probably just as false as "I never make spelling mistakes".

Advertising drives down prices because as more people buy the item, its per item cost drops.

On the face of it, it looks false in almost all high-volume cases. To take something off the top, why Coke and Pepsi are twice as expensive as generic sodas? There is no "secret formula", the expensive components are identical, and the taste is subjective. Why are brand-name drugs more expensive than their generic counterparts? I tried every cold medicine out there by now, and I can't tell the difference to save my life. Or my latest favorite: laundry detergents. It's just freaking soap, man, it's the same in every brand, they just smell different.

Re:Greed

[melikamp]

do they want me to get things from bit torrent?

Yes, yes they do. They literally go out of their way to reduce the value you are getting. EVERY big commercial content producer compels or allows distributors to do at least some of the following to the content: censor it, splice it with ads, stream it without an option to save to disk, put DRM on it, purge alternative versions of it, scale down its resolution, make it incompatible with free software—actually, make it incompatible with anything besides program A on a platform B, both proprietary. They further reduce the value indirectly, by collecting your personal data (finances, preferences) and sharing it with all of their buddies. Then they reduce the value even further by fragmenting the marketplace, so that a title A is only available from a store B. And after they are finally happy with how little you are getting, they charge you an arm and a leg. It simply amazes me how what we see in torrents is so hands-down better in pretty much every respect than whatever we can get via legitimate means.

Re:Greed

[commodore64_love]

STRAWMAN ARGUMENT. I never clammed I dont make spellinf mistakes. I just claimed that I don't buy what's advertised. I don't buy Tampons, or tread-climbers, or Air Jordans, or Pretty Ponies, or whatever else they advertise these days.
.

>>>why Coke and Pepsi are twice as expensive as generic sodas?

First it's not twice expensive... just a few pennies more. And because they taste better. Same reason why when I bought Walmart "O's" instead of Cheerios, I immediately knew it was a mistake when I ate the first bite. Better ingredients == higher cost but also better taste.

As further proof, in the UK where most TV/radio is advertising free, are their goods any cheaper than US goods with advertising? No. On the contrary it's usually higher.

Re:Greed

[ffreeloader]

Things just aren't like that here in the US. Many people don't live in towns. There are people in the western US who live 50 or more miles away from a town. In a lot of areas even radio reception is non-existent unless you pay for something like Sirius.

Yes, most towns with a population of a few hundred have a translator, but that translator still doesn't cover the surrounding area 100%. The terrain is so rough that intervening hills and canyons create areas shadows where the signal cannot reach.

For example, the geography where I live is a rolling prairie with deep canyons running in all directions. I live on the edge of what is known as the "Palouse" in a canyon. The elevation of the river at the bottom of the canyon here is 740' above sea level. The closest town on the prairie is 2530' above sea level. Just to climb the canyon wall in your car is a 5 mile drive on the main road out of here(built in late 70's)and it is built on filled-in draws and is cut through ridges to straighten it out, and that's measured from the beginning of the climb. The old highway out of here is three times as long due to how crooked it is as it follows the contours of the canyon wall.

The Palouse is an agricultural prairie with rolling hills, but it also has canyons ranging from 200 to over 1000' feet deep running in all directions and many draws running off the main canyons with ranch houses in many of them. The canyons and draws aren't straight by any stretch of the imagination either, and the sides are very steep. Some of them require you to do some rock climbing, and others have areas steep enough that you climb them on your hands and knees if you want to climb out of them. None of them are gradual slopes.

Just to the east of us(20 miles) the land becomes mountainous with deep winding valleys running all directions. Much of this land is timbered, and there are homes throughout the entire area. As you should be able to see, this makes for spotty tv, as well as radio, signal coverage for the rural homes located in the canyons and on the hillsides opposite the direction of the transmitters.

To get 100% coverage there would sometimes have to be several transmitters to cover the entire length of just one canyon, and on top of most hills/mountains to eliminate any shadow areas. That just isn't financially feasible as in many areas the cost of running power and roads to those transmitters is very prohibitive, and the environmentalists would be filing lawsuit after lawsuit over all the road building.

Re:Greed

[wondafucka]

True, but this assumes that all of the channels show exclusive shows 24/7 that have to justify their existence by this single showing.

This ENTIRELY fails to be the case. First there's reruns. How large a fraction of say Discovery consists of shows that have been shown previously ? I'd guess 75%, that alone, quadruples the money available to produce a show.

Then there's the shows that are sold and bought and end up being shown on more than one channel. It's the norm rather than the exception that a show is shown on several channels, if successful, it could even easily get into hundreds of channels. (keep in mind that shows are -also- sold to foreign channels)

So, how much of a average channels schedule consists of first-runs? (i.e. content that has not been shown previously anywhere, neither on this channel, nor on another)

It varies wildly by channel, offcourse, but I don't think there's -any- channels who approach 100%, and many channels seem to be in the 10% or thereabout range.

$43.000 for an half-hour show, may or may not be enough. It's not enough for a high-profile show, but MOST of the self-produced programming on those 200 channels isn't high-profile shows.

Yes. But. If channels are not affiliates, they have to pay for shows. Re-runs cost money.

A new Prime time sitcom costs $1 Mil per episode. $100K for your average reality TV show. Maybe $50K for a well run talk show.

There are station costs. Property taxes. Labor at the studio. Also, channels that don't put out a lot of new content don't get paid as much from the cable companies.

I wasn't even including the cable company overhead of having a fleet of technicians, financing your set-top boxes, or having an army of incompetent customer service drones.

The bottom line is that when you add it all up, you could not pay for the cost of all the cable tv programming based on total income of cable bills minus the cable company expenses.

Re:Greed

[Golddess]

STRAWMAN ARGUMENT. I never clammed I dont make spellinf mistakes.

Looked to me like melikamp was simply using it as an example of another claim that on the face of it looks to be absurd. No where that I can see are they accusing you of making that specific claim.

Same reason why when I bought Walmart "O's" instead of Cheerios, I immediately knew it was a mistake when I ate the first bite. Better ingredients == higher cost but also better taste.

So does that mean you buy Cheerios?

Re:Greed

[melikamp]

First it's not twice expensive... just a few pennies more.

Sort by price: http://shop.netgrocer.com/shop.aspx?&sid=43258248&sid_guid=384448e9-c8d5-448f-88c1-ef9fbeee1095&strid=2D462&catl0=570&hasproducts=0&forcemenu=1&shopurl=browse.aspx&strtab=Grocery&ns=1

I tell you, dude, this shit is the same sugar and spice, but they make us pay twice. And I am not even saying I am not guilty of it, I rather enjoy Pepsi. Better is subjective. These are the things we learned to like when we were young.

Re:Greed

[An ominous Cow art]

And I was one of them, until the commercials and the high prices (to a lesser extent) drove me away.

Re:Greed

[walshy007]

with what you describe I'm impressed that even the cable companies were willing to deal with areas so sparsely populated and difficult like that

Here if your house is more than say, 2km from any other house, the cable companies will simply say they cannot service you (unless you are willing to pay $10,000+ to have the dig and lay the cabling)

Re:Greed

[Eivind]

There's two responses to this. First, my argument was intended somewhat more narrow. I didn't intend to argue that the current business-model of cable-tv would work equally well without advertising, offcourse it wouldn't. Instead, I intended to argue that calculations based on the assumption that all cable-tv-stations send exclusively new content with no repeats 24/7 -- are deeply flawed, since the reality is that an average program is shown many times.

A $1M half-hour episode, needs to be shown 20 times (in sum over all channels) to break even if the available income is $50K/half-hour. A $100K reality-show, only needs to be shown *twice*. Neither numbers actually seem out of the question. Certainly successful shows will easily break this, Season one of Gilmore girls have been shown -atleast- 4 times in Germany alone -- worldwide it's CERTAINLY way higher than 20 times, and that is ignoring DVD-sales and thelike.

Second: It's not my problem if their business-model is broken. Being presented insulting and harmful advertising, in order to save $1/hour, is a bad deal for me, thus I'm not taking it -- even if the cable-tv-stations wishes I would.

In a world where there are people who're willing to pay me $40 to pay attention to them for one hour, it's a horrendously bad deal to subject me to an hour worth of advertising, and gain $1 from it. Even if you're liberal and say that half the time I go to the bathroom or do something else productive, then we're still left with only $2/hour of generated income.

Frankly, I'm -hugely- much better off working for 1 hour, and buy 30 hours worth of a series I like, rather than watch the same 30 hours on cable-tv, and suffer trough approximately 10 hours worth of advertising.

This is true for anyone, who don't consider watching 10 hours worth of advertising, superior to working for a single hour.

Re:Greed

[Yer Mom]

As further proof, in the UK where most TV/radio is advertising free

Well, the BBC stuff is ad-free; the rest has ads. Probably less than the US equivalents, of course, though Sky seems to be doing their best to catch up.

Re:Greed

[numbski]

All I have every cared about is out-of-area locals and Sports Networks. The rest I can get over the internet in various forms (legally, I might add!), but things like NFL, NHL, and NCAA Div 1 Hockey are only available using "common" providers. C-Band capable to getting the out-of-market locals?

Re:Greed

[ffreeloader]

The cable companies here are the same way. They cover the towns they consider financially viable, but once you get outside of city limits a short distance their coverage stops. Once outside their coverage it's antenna or satellite, and in rough country that means very spotty coverage. In real small towns it's translators on a hill above the town and no cable: antenna or satellite only. Usually that means only a very few channels if you don't go with a satellite dish.

Re:Greed

[walshy007]

Then I fail to see your initial problem with over the air in such difficult places when your options are expensive laying of cable or expensive retransmitters.

Either way where you've chosen to live has mostly screwed you over.

Re:Greed

[ffreeloader]

This entire line of thought is showing how your assertion that every home sold since the 80's has a built-in antenna and good tv reception isn't true. That's all this entire conversation was meant to show. And just for the record, over-the-air transmission is difficult, at best, in many areas. That's what I was talking about when referring to translator locations and how many are needed for 100% coverage in a lot of areas.

BTW, not everyone considers tv reception to be a must in considering where they are going to live. If I could afford to live in the mountains 50 miles or more from town I'd take that over watching tv any day of the week. I'd take the peace and quiet, the sound of the breeze sighing through the trees, the deer and elk walking through the yard in the early mornings and evenings, the native trout in the streams, and all the rest of the wild life that shows up in remote home locations on a regular basis. It's a much less stressful life style and you get clean air to breathe and fresh water to drink that hasn't been treated with chemicals.

Getting away from civilization has quite a few benefits, but it is a lot different that living in town and a lot of people couldn't do it. I grew up doing it so it feels natural to me.

First

[Anonymous Coward]

w00t

Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[elrous0]

The fast forward button on my DVR was one of the last bits of freedom I had, to skip some guy screaming at me about some car/cereal/appliance that I just *HAVE* to buy. I guess Google TV will forgo "Fast Forward" for a "Pay Us Money Not To Have To Watch These Annoying Commercials" button. Ain't technological progress grand?

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[mikael_j]

My freedom is in the form of pirated TV shows and movies, if you won't let me pay for and download them (I'm in Sweden and the choices for US TV shows are pretty much nill) legally then I'll just get them for free without commercials. I'm not waiting several months just for the privilege of commercials and subtitles made by some college student who doesn't understand what he or she is translating...

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[aardwolf64]

Oh, they'll still have a fast forward button, but you have to enter your credit card number every time you want to use it.

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[Whammy666]

What they've done is poison any reason to have the service and offer incentive to pirate the programming. I watch very little TV now since it's become an ad infested crapfest. Subscription TV is just as bad, if not worse than broadcast TV. I've totally quit listening to the radio for the same reason.

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[uniquename72]

They still have commercials in the form of product placement; you're not getting anything for free by bit torrenting.

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that's just silly. It'll save the credit card number after the first use and just bill it automatically every time you use it.

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not waiting several months just for the privilege of commercials and subtitles made by some college student who doesn't understand what he or she is translating...

At least you only have to suffer through subtitled shows. In Germany we have translated voice overs. Let me tell you, the people doing these translations don't know the first thing about the English language (e.g. literal translations of proverbs and puns). It's pathetic what these "professional" translators produce.

To make things worse, there's a perceived total of 5 voices for ALL shows. You cannot even tell what you are watching based on voices alone. Their emotionless, sterile, monotonous performances all sound the same.

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[TheGratefulNet]

other 'obvious' omissions, sort of related: recently I purchased a logitech squeezebox touch. I have a lot of older slimserver devices around the house and wanted to try this one. and recently I've been 'turning in' to internet radio stations for background music. some are commercial free but the bigger ones are not. here's the omission: there's no mute button on the display or remote! no concept of MUTE, either. not even really a STOP button, only a PAUSE button.

was this on purpose or just an oversight? but for HOW many iterations of product line?

the radio listening model does not really apply to the DVR model where you can buffer into disk and play back from that, pause it and FF it. radio does not have images that help you know when the FF can be released so you're back in your content again. a mute button is NEEDED but its just not there. amazing.

brainfart on logitech's part or concious decision?

the creeping 'everywhereness' of ads is intrusive and we need tools to manage it. beware of when they 'trim' features away, there may be more to it than it may seem.

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[AshtangiMan]

I'm wondering why I would be interested in Google TV. The netflix model is looking really good . . . not the streaming part but the DVD through the mail. I just started watching the Supranos, and when I'm done with that I'm sure there will be seasons of Caprica, SGU and others that I can start on. No commercials, as much as I want to watch. Why would anyone pay for subscription TV anymore? (Though I am thinking to get cable internet at home, which comes with basic cable . . . )

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[FatSean]

Yup, and those are the brands I refuse to do business with.

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[Anonymous Coward]

Google TV isn't a DVR, though, so you don't know what you're talking about. This is for streamed content, not things you've taped.

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[Lumpy]

I only torrent files where someone took 600 hours to rotoscope blurs over all product placement.

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[nEoN nOoDlE]

you're getting this stuff for free. You watch YouTube videos for free. This stuff costs Google money to provide you this free service and it has been subsidizing it for you with it's vast amounts of money for years. Is it really that much to ask for you to either watch the commercial that it plays or if you don't want to then pay a couple bucks to continue watching it for free? Online consumers are some seriously spoiled people.

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[jojoba_oil]

So you're saying you refuse to do business with the brands that fund the shows you watch? Are you expecting the actors/producers/etc to get money off of some tree?

I don't mind product placement as long as it's not dictating plot lines. In a particularly bad example, Iron Man pissed me off because every other 5 minutes was "Hey look, an American hamburger just happens to be from Burger King. Lets waste viewer time by waiting for that hamburger, meanwhile mentioning it even more." and "Look at my 3 cars sitting there. They're all Audi. You should buy an Audi." and it distracted from the actual plot. But if (insert your favorite character here) happens to be drinking a Coke instead of a generic-named soda, does that really cause you to avoid Coca-cola? Seriously?

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[jojoba_oil]

Just be sure to keep it away from your wife, your kids, and anyone else who has no concerns when spending money they didn't earn for themselves.

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[elrous0]

Nonsense, You are talking with insanity words! Translation is making fine. Translators are expelling good happy work in communicating good speaking.

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't buy DVD in Sweden?

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[tompaulco]

Wait until their next patent, it is for a process by which the user is charged $2 even if they DO watch the commercials.
If only I had gotten a patent on the process of charging money for no commercials and then slyly starting to squeeze the commercials in.

Re:Well, there goes my "Fast Forward" button

[mikael_j]

Well sure, I can wait for six months or so to buy the 480p version of something that's available for free over the air (with commercials) or downloadable for a small fee (without commercials) in the US now in 720p. Or I can just download it off the net a few hours after the US broadcast...

Absolutely Evil.

[Viewsonic]

That about sums it up. Who have they been hiring lately?

I can only hope they're trying to patent this so no one else can do it, then they just sit on it never using it.

Re:Absolutely Evil.

[gstoddart]

That about sums it up. Who have they been hiring lately?

I can only hope they're trying to patent this so no one else can do it, then they just sit on it never using it.

Yeah, no kidding. Fill out a survey before I can watch TV? Pay them for the privilege to not watch commercials? Generate a certain amount of ad revenue?

My PVR already allows me to do this for free. I can guarantee that as soon as my TV watching will enforce that I watch commercials or pay to skip them, I will simply cancel my TV subscription and stop watching it altogether. I will occasionally rewind to see a commercial which catches my eye, but I'm not generally interested in being advertised to.

Google is in the middle of the worst possible scenario of monetization of my viewing time. None of these "features" would do anything other than drive me away. I don't give a tinkers damn about their advertising revenue, and if they make advertising more intrusive than it already is, I will deny them any more. Give me what I want without making the experience suck more, and maybe.

Everything described in this patent removes value from TV, and makes cost of watching TV (both monetary and time) not worth it.

Tell you what, pay me to watch commercials instead of forcing me to watch them or paying to skip them -- I refuse to be obligated by your advertising contracts. Until then, your business model is between you and your advertiser. My TV watching is between me and my remote, and ends at the point where I say to hell with it, and turn off the TV.

Re:Absolutely Evil.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's funded by advertising. How could they not be evil!

Re:Absolutely Evil.

[geekoid]

No, you [pay them for the option of them not playing commercials. There is no 'privilege stated or implied. You also don't have to watch it. You can go take a pee or something.

You are already not the customer, so they really don't give a rat shit about you.

You are paid to have commercial played. You are given entertainment in exchange for them playing commercials.

And just to dispel a myth:
No, multi channel cable never promised no commercials. Specific movie channels did, as did single Chanel cable back in the 70s. Like 'ON' tv.

You pay for there service the provide by brining a bunch of channels together and infrastructure.

Re:Absolutely Evil.

[FatSean]

Wow, way to apologise for this kind of thing.

I just download TV via torrent with the commercials already cut out. If that means the shows stop being made, oh well, I'll move on to other entertainment.

At this point I feel adversarial towards the distributors and producers of TV content. They just take and take and take. Fine, I played along for years but not anymore. Now I'm going to actively subvert their revenue stream just to fuck with them.

Re:Absolutely Evil.

[geekoid]

Evil? really? yeah, here is an option, you don't have to do it but if it adds value for you then you can opt in.

Yeah, freaking evil~

Re:Absolutely Evil.

[gstoddart]

You are already not the customer, so they really don't give a rat shit about you.

And, the converse is true -- I don't give a shit about the advertisers since I don't have a contract with them.

You are paid to have commercial played. You are given entertainment in exchange for them playing commercials.

No, I paid for the entertainment, but that was accepted to include passive commercials. I can walk away from them, or fast forward them -- what Google is proposing is far more mandatory and interactive. Under that model, I would be required to watch/interact with commercials.

No, multi channel cable never promised no commercials.

Never said it did, or even should. Merely that just because the cable company charges me, and also charges the advertising company that doesn't mean I have any obligations wrt the advertisers. The advertisers simply do not get a guarantee that I will watch.

The fact that they have a business model with more than one source of revenue isn't my problem. If I don't watch the ads, the people who paid for them suffer no loss -- they paid for the hypothetical opportunity to advertise to me. Not for a guarantee that I would care or comply.

Saying that I owe them something or that it is OK to force me to watch commercials is kind of akin to everybody just tithing to the record/movie companies so they can have all of the money they feel they are entitled to. The fact that your business model is outmoded isn't my fscking problem.

Trying to force me to watch even more of their advertising is beyond what I've agreed to. They don't have any expectation that I will play their game. In fact, they might lose the revenue for the cable subscription altogether.

Re:Absolutely Evil.

[pr0nbot]

I just download TV via torrent with the commercials already cut out [...] At this point I feel adversarial towards the distributors and producers of TV content. They just take and take and take.

Does anyone know where I can get a new irony meter? Mine just broke.

Re:Absolutely Evil.

[flooey]

Yeah, I sure hope none of the websites I frequent would ever have a system by which I could give them some money to have the advertising removed. That would be awful!

Re:Absolutely Evil.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Oh noes! Choices!

Same old TV with ads?
Same old TV without ads?
Same old TV with ads?
Same old TV without ads?
Same old TV with ads?
Same old TV without ads?

How evil of Google for making me choose!

Re:Absolutely Evil.

[FatSean]

Point flew right over your head, eh?

I pay more each year for less value. Time to reset that balance by taking content for free (i.e. with the ads cut out). Maybe once I feel we're even I'll go back to looking at the ads.

What was that google motto again?

[killmenow]

Because this doesn't sound evil at all.

Re:What was that google motto again?

[kaffiene]

Yup, that was *exactly* what I was thinking. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

My answer to Google's proposal

[Kevitt]

NO

Re:My answer to Google's proposal

[smitty97]

YES

Here's my $2, never show me a commercial again.

Before everyone gets crazy...

[L3370]

Remember...

We can still go grab a beer and fix a sandwich up during commercials. Don't freak out. Just do something else.

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[mark-t]

Right.... until they start adding commercials to books as electronic readers start becoming more mainstream. You won't be able to turn the page until you sit through this 15 second commercial that the publisher figures might interest you based on the content of the book.

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[demonbug]

Remember...

We can still go grab a beer and fix a sandwich up during commercials. Don't freak out. Just do something else.

Not really - from the summary it sounds like it actually requires some interaction from the user. Can't answer a question about the product it just showed you an ad for? That's okay, I'm sure they'll be happy to show it to you again so you can pass the required quiz before watching your show.

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[mark-t]

Wow... so they want to turn commercials into something resembling a pop quiz from high school?

Unless every commercial is specifically tailored to each and every individual so that the person viewing it has enough interest in the product that they would be *guaranteed* to pay attention to it, that has about as much chance of succeeding as promoting that people stop having sex so that the population doesn't keep growing.

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[uniquename72]

Right.... until they start adding commercials to books as electronic readers start becoming more mainstream.

So stick to paper books -- you know, the ones with pages. And get them from the library.

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[tixxit]

For now. Who knows, may be a certain amount of commercials watched per hour of TV will be required in the future. With current tech (DVR/on-demand TV, facial recognition, eye tracking, etc.) and legal precedences, it really isn't as far out as it seems. "You want to get up and get a beer? That's OK, we'll just pause this commercial for you until we detect that we have your attention again."

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that I don't remember having to fill out surveys in order to watch shows on my tv and I know that my television wasn't violating my privacy left and right like Google seems to do.

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[dnahelicase]

Seriously, I do a lot of cleaning/tidying up in the house during commercials. I don't like them, but it is also a time where you can do something very short while your attention isn't so focused, and by the time the show is over my wife is happier and I didn't really feel like I did anything.

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[Shivetya]

and before setup top boxes monitor your movement like current game consoles are doing. Nah, will never happen. Once they get you to pay for a feature don't you think they are going to make sure that you want to pay?

It was amazing the extent which Sony went to win the Blu-Ray game, I am quite sure there is enough money here to warrant companies making similar expenditures to come with a way to keep the revenue stream. (fwiw, the fight for blu over hd was the fight over forcing you to watch commercials before the main feature which hd did not allow - so now they will bring that to broadcast)

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[mark-t]

Sure... but how long do you think that paper books are going to stay mainstream? While they'll always be around, to be sure... it's not unthinkable that in the not too distant future that may become the primary publishing mode rather than on paper and some works might not even be released in physical form. When my grandson was born (he's 4 now), I postulated that he is probably in the final generation of people in our society that will *primarily* use paper books.

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[interkin3tic]

Right.... until they start adding commercials to books as electronic readers start becoming more mainstream. You won't be able to turn the page until you sit through this 15 second commercial that the publisher figures might interest you based on the content of the book.

I haven't heard of invasive commercials like that being added to videogames yet, which is obviously a much more acceptable medium for that. Ads have made it into games yes, and arguably some of the loading screen songs on certain games from EA that they're trying to get you to buy slows down the loading times, but so far nothing like you're describing for books. And when you consider that most books do not have ads inserted between them like magazines, I doubt we'll be seeing ads like that.

For one thing, a good way to prevent e readers from taking off is to start doing that shit. For another, publishers would have to be crazy, only the pulpiest author would be okay with his or her book being interrupted by ads.

Its good to be skeptical about advertisers limiting themselves, but I don't see your scenario happening.

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[anyGould]

At which point I introduce my TV to the drinking bird.. look at me, I'm paying attention!

Seriously, though: I'll probably just skip the widget if the ad/enjoyment ratio is too far off.

Only sideways on topic - I'm in the process of turning off my cable, since I figured out that at $60/mth for the cable package, it's far cheaper to buy (and yes, I mean actually "pay for on iTunes") the entire seasons of whatever I actually want to watch. Show automatically shows up on my system, no ads, can watch it as much and whenever I want. And as an added bonus, my kid only gets to watch what I let her watch. (No more Elmo!)

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[VoiceInTheDesert]

Books are already pretty much pay for. The "problem" with the TV model is that it's "free," and must be supplemented with ads to make money. Since it's fairly accepted that you pay for books on a per book basis, I don't think this becomes a problem here unless there are a bunch of people out there who would prefer it that way. I don't know anyone who would rather sit through commercials in their book rather than buy it, own it and read it whenever, but it's not outside the real of possibility that it could happen, I suppose. The biggest reason I don't see this happen though is that libraries exist. I see no reason for them to go away, since they are paid for by tax dollars and those kinds of institutions are rather difficult to remove. Most big libraries have big e-book "sections" now, so even for those who don't want to pay for the book, I don't see ads in their future.

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've patented proximity sensor for commercials - it will automatically pause the commercials until you get back from making your sandwich.

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[misexistentialist]

Commercial breaks are often of variable duration to discourage this.

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

But the problem with this is that there are typically 8 sets of commercial breaks per hour on cable TV in the USA .. maybe that explains why Americans are so fat and (judging by their politics) appear to be intoxicated most of the time?

Re:Before everyone gets crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

They can take my hardbacks when they pry em from my cold stiff fingers.

Better idea

[Pojut]

Google is the "king" of targeted ads...so why not do the same thing with Google TV? If I'm watching an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, I obviously will not give a shit about life insurance...but a video game? Sure. I'll sit through an advertisement for that. Unless it's one of those lame Gamestop machinima commercials...

This seems like a strange direction for Google to take...what with their algorithms used for serving up ads online, one would think they would utilize something similar for their TV service...I despise advertisements, but I'll tolerate them if it's relevant to what I'm watching.

Re:Better idea

[characterZer0]

Remember, if they have to advertise on TV, it probably sucks.

Re:Better idea

[mark-t]

Because even their "targetted" ads aren't 100% reliable... in fact, not even close. I perhaps am perhaps at most interested in maybe 1% of the ads that google currently throws at me.... which means that they'd just have to have at least a hundred times as many ads to compensate, which would bore the hell out of me and I would just not use the service at all.

Re:Better idea

[tokul]

This seems like a strange direction for Google to take

They get paid for displayed ads and want to be paid when ads are not displayed.

Re:Better idea

[Jaqenn]

Perhaps I undervalue my security and privacy, but I keep hoping for an increase in the targeted advertising I experience.

I don't want to refinance my house. I don't want to find relationships online. I don't want to find old classmates. I don't want to earn money by signing up for free trials. Even though I don't want these things, I see these ads a lot.

I like videogames and boardgames. I like anime. I like paintball. I like cooking. I already go out of my way to learn about new products and discounts in these areas.

I would love to surrender information about my interests in order to replace the ads I don't care about with ads that I do care about. I'm fine with the idea that they need to make money somehow, and I'm willing to sell them my attention if they talk to me about products that I agree to myself, 'Yeah, I might have wanted that'. Give me an internet radio style thumbs-up / thumbs-down button for the ads, including a 'Never show me an ad for this product again'.

Re:Better idea

[Iggyhopper]

I'm actually fine with this. Let's see, the average teen would like games, phone sex services, and other cool things, unlike life insurance.

Anyway, I still like commercials because I can get off the couch and do something, like make a sandwich or load the top rack in the dishwasher.

Re:Better idea

[Iggyhopper]

Maybe we can have like buttons for ads.

Yay, Facebook is invading our TVs now.

Re:Better idea

[fermion]

Of course for $2 I can go iTunes and buy a copy of ATHF. Actually, if I buy a season pass, it is quite a bit less than that.

Google is clearly late to the game, and will likely only seek to increase the cost to the viewer, which is good for the produces but bad for us. Producers are whining that the norm for tv is 15-20 minute of commercials per hour, while Hulu is 2-5 minutes.

What I would like to see Google do is have targeted text ads along with show. What would really be cool is to return to have hour long tv shows that were more than 40 minutes long.

Re:Better idea

[geekoid]

The only thing your post makes me inclined to remember is that 'characterzer0' is an idiot.

Re:Better idea

[bjourne]

Not a very novel idea. Go watch a childrens show and you will see as many "targeted" ads for the latest video games as you want. Or see a soap opera and see commercials for... soap!

Re:Better idea

[tompaulco]

I'm inclined to agree with characterzer0 myself. As much as everybody is interconnected these days, if a product is really great, you will know about it. If they have to try to convince you about it on a commercial, then it must be pretty much like the other guys product, only more expensive because you have to pay for the advertising. And the longer the advertisement (I'm looking at you, informercials), the more crappy the product is. I WILL NOT buy a product that is featured on an infomercial. Why should I pay $10 for miracle putty, when I can get the same stuff at Home Depot for $2, in the same tube, with the same formula, but with a different label and no advertising?
Why should I whip out my credit card to buy your "not available in stores" crap for $30 this week, when in three weeks, I can buy it on the "as seen on TV" aisle at Wal-mart for half that, and then 6 weeks later for $1 in the bargain bin.

Re:Better idea

[tompaulco]

On the contrary, who wouldn't want to get paid for not performing the service they offer? In google's case, performing or not performing the service both cost about the same amount, but as long as they price not performing the service above the ad impression rate, then they make money.

Re:Better idea

[NonSequor]

Maybe we can have like buttons for ads.

Yay, Facebook is invading our TVs now.

Hulu has Yes/No buttons on ads with the question "Is this ad relevant to you?". I don't know if it actually does anything yet though.

Re:Better idea

[tompaulco]

I value my security and privacy, but I would also like an increase in the targeted advertising. For example, I don't want to buy anything at all right now, so I would like the advertisers to realize this and stop spamming me with ads.

OMG

[DoofusOfDeath]

If there was ever a situation that deserved writing scripts that control a video player, this is it.

Script #1: Fill in the customer survery with bogus-but-valid-looking info.

Script #2: During commercials, cut off the video player's access to the screen and audio output, and instead have the computer present either silence or some alternative form of entertainment (music, etc.)

Re:OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck would be the point of this, exactly?

"Oh jeez, commercials are coming on. I so do *not* want to see commercials, I would rather see a blank screen instead."

Are commercials themselves inherently the most offensive thing, or the fact that your show is interrupted? Because if it's the first, alright. If it's the second, you haven't really done shit.

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can one honestly file for a patent for this without punishment?

The amount of prior-art is absurd; obviousness is obvious.

W-T-F

Re:Really?

[hedwards]

Prior art? I've never had that option on TV, to pay to skip commercials or choose not to pay and sit through the commercials. Additionally, the only places I've ever had that choice at all were online, and the closest to that was Hulu with the one big commercial at the start or several smaller ones later.

It's also not really that obvious, it's obvious that somebody should provide it, I doubt very much that it's obvious as to how one goes about offering it.

Re:Really?

[c-reus]

I came here to ask the same question. How on Earth is this thing patentable? Is any web service now patentable? Could the Twitter guys have patented "system and method for writing 140-character messages via browser"?

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Slashdot? Pay for a subscription and you get no ads Currently Slashdot is offering 1000 ad free pages for $5. As it stands, you have some flexibility as to where you want to spend your ad free pages. You can decide to use them on comments, articles, or the homepage.

$2

[ResistanceIsIrritati]

I'd pay $2 to skip all commercials, forever.

Re:$2

[zero_out]

Too bad it's a $2 "per program" leeching, and not a $2 charge when you first sign-up.

Re:$2

[kidgenius]

How much is a pay-per-episode of a TV show on iTunes? Isn't it like $1.99? You get to skip all of the commercials, right? Isn't that the equivalent of $2/episode? This isn't that outrageous.

Re:$2

[sp332]

One hour of TV programming is 40 minutes of content and 20 minutes of ads. If Google charges $2/10 minutes of ads, its actually twice the price per episode.

Re:$2

[Anonymous Coward]

You can rent some shows on iTunes for .99, though. So, unless the right to skip commercials for a program is permanent, it still is outrageous.

Re:$2

[geekoid]

leeching? How is it leeching? you can either let the commercial run, or pay. It's not leeching.

Obviously you could TiVo it and watch it later and skip the commercials.
Me? I'd also put extra content in the remaining time.

Re:$2

[zero_out]

How much is a pay-per-episode of a TV show on iTunes? Isn't it like $1.99? You get to skip all of the commercials, right? Isn't that the equivalent of $2/episode? This isn't that outrageous.

To me it is outrageous, and that's why I don't use iTunes, or any similar service. Paying $6/hour for entertainment is far too expensive IMO. I'll stick to Hulu for now. At least with Hulu I can walk away for two minutes at the beginning of the show to use the bathroom, get something to drink, or just bug my wife, while the pre-show commercial plays, then sit down for 20 minutes to watch it without annoying interruptions. If there is only one thing I don't miss about TV, it would be the commercials. I stopped buying video game magazines when I was 14 because I realized that half the pages were just ads. Why would I want a TV program to be interrupted every four minutes for two minutes of commercials? Why would I want to get nickel-and-dime'd?

$2 ??

[robpoe]

I'm not going to pay ANYTHING to skip the commercials. I use my DVR to record programs, then watch them "later" (at least 30 minutes later) so that I can fast forward past the commercials.

Being *forced* to sit through advertising (I'm looking at the websites that MAKE you watch a video before you see content -- especially Discovery.com -- where you get a 1-2 minute clip then a 30 second commercial) makes me not want the product being advertised. They actually cause me to NOT buy or use the service..

Re:$2 ??

[MadCow42]

>>I use my DVR to record programs, then watch them "later" (at least 30 minutes later)

Actually, if there's 22 minutes of commercials per hour, you only have to wait 11 minutes before starting your 30-minute program to ensure you can skip all the commercials. Actually, seeing as some of those 11 minutes of commercials will come right at the end of the 30-minute segment, you could start a bit earlier.

If I can start watching Caprica 38 minutes sooner (1-hour show), then I'll do it! :)

Re:$2 ??

[IndustrialComplex]

Actually, if there's 22 minutes of commercials per hour, you only have to wait 11 minutes before starting your 30-minute program to ensure you can skip all the commercials. Actually, seeing as some of those 11 minutes of commercials will come right at the end of the 30-minute segment, you could start a bit earlier.

If I can start watching Caprica 38 minutes sooner (1-hour show), then I'll do it! :)

My wife watches Vampire Diaries (Hey, I can't tease her, since it is split screened with WoW. She gets her brief TV time 1-hr/wk and I get my brief uninterrupted WoW time).

She was in a conference call for the first 15 minutes, and I had it paused. I don't know how many damned commercials were there, but we ran out of buffer. Absolutely amazing.

Of course, that show also had a ford commercial built INTO the show in a rather obnoxious way.

"Oh what song is playing... Uses the voice control to look up song. I love that song." Absolutely pointless to the progression of the show. It DID remind me not to buy a Ford though.

Re:$2 ??

[Combatso]

...but, didnt you pay for the DVR (atleast the hardware running it)... so you did pay SOMETHING to skip the commercials... in my day we hit the mute button, and waited 3 mintues for the A-Team to come back on... sometimes, we took a leak

Just an Example Amount

[eldavojohn]

From reading the paragraph in context, it seems like Google was just showing an example of how a broadcaster or content provider could become indifferent to how their broadcasting revenue is generated. The patent gives three examples for making up $1-$2 of advertising revenue on a one hour program for each viewer. It could be done through commercials as traditionally is done, by survey or even at a direct charge to the viewer. I think it's important to note that the $2 figure doesn't seem to be set in stone, it's more an example of how a broadcaster who demands $2 in advertising revenue per viewer could recoup or mitigate those costs.

The real question is: how is this any different than someone forking over a couple bucks to watch the latest Futurama episode on iTunes?

You can call it "skipping commercials" or you can call it "selling the right to view content once" or whatever the hell you want. But it all comes down to you reimbursing the broadcasters for their content--which has traditionally been done through advertising. I'm surprised this is invoking so much ire from the Slashdot crowd.

Re:Just an Example Amount

[gstoddart]

I think it's important to note that the $2 figure doesn't seem to be set in stone, it's more an example of how a broadcaster who demands $2 in advertising revenue per viewer could recoup or mitigate those costs.

It is also important to note that nobody has ever had a guarantee that their advertising would reach people or be watched. It represents a potential audience, but has never been a guarantee -- it certainly doesn't confer an obligation to me.

The day that commercials become an obligation is the day I will stop watching TV. Right now, I can skip 'em on my PVR. If I was contractually obligated to watch because Google had sold that to a third party, then I would expect compensation, or a reduction in my costs -- and I can guarantee that won't happen since every greedy bastard along that chain is going to "insist" that I watch his commercial. What next, I'm required to actually buy the product?

I'm already paying for my TV subscription. Anybody who thinks they're going to get a guaranteed ad impression from me is sorely mistaken.

Google should tread very carefully here.

Re:Just an Example Amount

[mynion]

ire?

Google advertised their own motto. They seem to forget it. Ironic.
The people who don't pirate tv get punished - intrusive adverts, or dvds with a mountain of junk it may or may not let you skip past.
Don't get me started on region encoding nonsense.

I just want to be able to legally buy a tv show without adverts+drm that breaks or reliance on my net connection being up. Why is that so difficult? Just buy it and have it delivered or downloaded so I can use as I want.
Why am I in the stupid situation where I buy dvds(I like to support the makers maybe I shouldn't) + have to download the same content to watch it how I want. It is insane.

So yes ire.

Re:Just an Example Amount

[drinkypoo]

I will do my level best to avoid any service which attempts to show me commercials. Right now I'm having off and on problems viewing Youtube in Chrome due to ad-blocking and the like (seems to work every time I clear the cache and such.) With that said, this just doesn't seem worth being upset about.

I think it is a foregone conclusion that sooner or later the majority of programming will not even be delivered via broadcast (whether OTA or down a wire, as in CATV or possible next-generation replacements which utilize IPv6 multicast, which is reputed to actually work) but unicast via the internet. One's PVR is useless when one is watching television from their web browser; my HDTV is connected to a PC with XP which is used to run three programs; a DVD ripper because it seems that you can't watch a rented DVD without it, XBMC, and Firefox for Netflix. I tried doing some other surfing but it seems that Firefox with NoScript isn't enough to keep XP safe any more.

If consumers continue to demand commercial-skipping PVRs from their cable companies, then they will likely receive them. If broadcast based on standards continues to be a going issue, and time-shifting and the like continue to be legally protected, then it is likely that third-party PVRs will continue to be available for the duration. Consequently, one will still be reasonably able (or more relevantly for the masses, legally permitted) to skip commercials in broadcast programming. I think we all know that some people will continue to ignore various restrictions that our corporate overlords attempt to place on us, but let us focus on the experience of the common user.

If the shows you want are only available online, you may find yourself sitting through some commercials. Or you may choose to use that time as it has been used by some as long as commercials have been aired; for a bathroom break, or to grab a snack. I keep a netbook close at hand while I watch stuff so that I can ride out the boring parts; Netflix's windows streaming client is a bit pathetic. Silverlight FAIL.

Anyone who has ever paid to stream any video over the internet should really get over being upset about this idea. Google is in the business of selling advertising. Some content will always be available without any. Go forth and consume it if advertising offends thee.

Re:Just an Example Amount

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Very well said!

Re:Just an Example Amount

[geekoid]

I don't need iTunes? ITunes is 3 bucks? I can get it as ti's broadcast. While not to important to most people here, millions of Americans still watch TV that way.

Is Itunes 1080p?

There are a lot of loud people who hate the idea of anyone charging anything for content. Apparently they all work for free.

Re:Just an Example Amount

[cdrguru]

With broadcast TV and radio you are correct. With the Internet you do absolutely have a guarantee that your content isn't viewed without your ads. While this isn't exactly true for 100% of the population, it is correct for 95% and maybe 99%.

Also, ads can be charged for on per-impression basis rather than a flat rate for a particular item. So instead of spending $50,000 on an ad that is hoped to reach 100,000 people you are paying $50,000 for an ad that is viewed 200,000 times. Or probably more accurately you are paying $51,213.25 for an ad that is viewed by exactly 204853 people.

Re:Just an Example Amount

[StikyPad]

The real question is how a business model qualifies for a patent!

Re:Just an Example Amount

[martin-boundary]

The real question is: how is this any different than someone forking over a couple bucks to watch the latest Futurama episode on iTunes?

No, the *real* question is how does it compare with free delayed consumption? Like it or not, the torrenting/sharing for free model is a real option for many people around the world, and those examples you listed don't compete with the free model at all, they only compete with other paid models. So they are not attractive to a large section of the potential market, and never will be until they actually offer an improvement over the free model(*).

(*) crowing about illegality doesn't matter. Economics is built on the relative power relationships between agents, not morality, and right now, the file sharing population has a lot of relative power in this game.

In related news...

[embedded_tom]

FLO TV is dead: http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/04/flo-tv-killed-by-qualcomm-its-four-users-look-shocked-and-sadde/

The sad state we are in

[sunking2]

I think it's pretty telling that a company that is considered to employ such brilliance and be on the technological forefront in the end exists simply to peddle adverts. Surely there are better uses of the resources.

Re:The sad state we are in

[chemicaldave]

I think it's pretty telling that a company that is considered to employ such brilliance and be on the technological forefront in the end exists simply to peddle adverts. Surely there are better uses of the resources.

Is peddling adverts not their entire business plan?

Re:The sad state we are in

[hedwards]

It's not it's entire business plan, they do make some money from google checkout and their android market. I'm guessing those are only a small fraction of their total revenue though.

Re:The sad state we are in

[geekoid]

Are you completely unaware of all the other stuff the use the money they get from advertising for? The programs? the RnD?

They exist BECAUSE they peddle adverts.

Re:The sad state we are in

[Iggyhopper]

Make money and being evil about it.
Use money and being good about it.

I'm OK with that. Google has to make a profit, but at least their using half of it to make a better world.

Re:The sad state we are in

[catbutt]

Can you propose another revenue model for Google? Maybe they should charge people for each search? Make you buy eStamps to send mail through gmail? Be supported through federal grants?

Regardless, their plan here is actually to find an alternative to advertising....you have the option to just pay for the content. And you are complaining why again?

Re:The sad state we are in

[straponego]

Google's not that bright. They make tons of mistakes. For example, the playlist feature on Youtube. Why the hell does it include videos that will refuse to play due to copyright violations or region restrictions? Are they that desperate for a pointless page load? Guess they'll need another thousand PhDs to figure that out.

Nothing is free

[t1oracle]

Silly people. How many of you would go to work if your boss decided that paying you was unnecessary and that you should learn to be less "greedy." We live in capitalistic society, if you want something you have to pay for it. The rest of you communists can go to Cuba.

Re:Nothing is free

[The MAZZTer]

But we already pay for cable/satellite TV... commercials on public airwaves I understand.

Re:Nothing is free

[DragonWriter]

But we already pay for cable/satellite TV...

You pay for the benefits of wired access over OTA access (including access to channels that aren't available OTA.) You don't, except for PPV content and premium channels that you purchase, pay for the content you watch. That you pay for with the commercials, just like OTA broadcast.

Re:Nothing is free

[doesnothingwell]

How much is it? I'll gladly pay for all my media viewing to never watch a commercial again.

Re:Nothing is free

[hedwards]

Citation necessary, we don't live in a capitalist society. The government regularly intervenes on behalf of business interests against the voters. Resulting in massive bubbles and a working class that can't afford to work. What's worse is that even as the working classes suffer more than at anytime in decades, the rich continue to get welfare from the government and whine about how they're not getting enough hand outs.

Adam Smith would be rolling in his grave if he heard you assert that this has any resemblance to what he envisioned as capitalism.

Re:Nothing is free

[fishbowl]

If you think you could make Cable TV operate profitably without commercials, you should be presenting your business plan to the board of directors, not posting on slashdot.

Re:Nothing is free

[Anonymous Coward]

Lies. If that were true, there wouldn't be spats between TWC and Disney every time Disney wants more money per subscriber.

Re:Nothing is free

[mcgrew]

Nothing is free? Bullshit. The thing most important to your life is free, the one thing you can't survive two minutes without -- air. Sunsets and sunrises are free, if beauty is worthless why do people pay millions for paintings? Linux is free, Open Office is free, FOSS is free, public domain literature is free, GPL books are free, my journals are free, rain will water your grass for free, unsecured wifi is free, most music is free, and most of all... America is the land of the free!

Money is simply a tool. Only a fool worships his tools, fool. Now go take your MBA and get the hell off this nerd site and go to Business Week or some other site that caters to your religion, because greedheads like you really piss me off.

Re:Nothing is free

[IndustrialComplex]

Nothing is free? Bullshit. The thing most important to your life is free, the one thing you can't survive two minutes without -- air. Sunsets and sunrises are free, if beauty is worthless why do people pay millions for paintings? Linux is free, Open Office is free, FOSS is free, public domain literature is free, GPL books are free, my journals are free, rain will water your grass for free, unsecured wifi is free, most music is free, and most of all... America is the land of the free!

Money is simply a tool. Only a fool worships his tools, fool. Now go take your MBA and get the hell off this nerd site and go to Business Week or some other site that caters to your religion, because greedheads like you really piss me off.

Ever wonder why some people want to control what you do with your body? It comes pre-installed with some of the best ways to pass the time!

Re:Nothing is free

[catbutt]

I'm sure it could be, it would just cost more.

Actually, Google's plan sounds a lot closer to that model.

Re:Nothing is free

[Anonymous Coward]

damn. fucking told.

Re:Nothing is free

[Anonymous Coward]

hope you were just being sarcastic about amurrKKKa though...

Why, on Earth, is anyone complaining?

[BlueKitties]

To sum up the article: Google wants to let users avoid commercials for $2.00. In case you folks haven't noticed, your average "hour long" prime time TV show is about 45-50 minutes, the rest is nothing but commercials. We are already forced to watch commercials, this just gives people the option to skip them at a fee. In otherwords, things aren't changing, we're just being given the option to opt-out for two bucks.

Re:Why, on Earth, is anyone complaining?

[Viewsonic]

Cable was invented to be commercial free. That was why people originally paid the premium for all those commercial free channels.

Then came the premium cable channels like HBO, Showtime, etc. For the most part those are commercial free, but if you watch Showtimes "Big Brother" they have commercials through-out that. I can only imagine this will get worse and worse and eventually these premium commercial free channels are littered with them. It's bad enough we get to watch a bunch of movie stars in Entourage drink a brand of beer no one in their right mind would ever think about drinking unless they're 50 and sitting in their underwear watching infomercials all night long.

Re:Why, on Earth, is anyone complaining?

[DragonWriter]

To sum up the article: Google wants to let users avoid commercials for $2.00. In case you folks haven't noticed, your average "hour long" prime time TV show is about 45-50 minutes, the rest is nothing but commercials. We are already forced to watch commercials, this just gives people the option to skip them at a fee. In otherwords, things aren't changing, we're just being given the option to opt-out for two bucks.

More specifically, the Google patent proposes a mechanism by which content providers (who need revenue) could be more flexible with consumers about how those consumers receive content while meeting the provider's revenue requirements.

Used well this is good for consumers (those who prefer paying, or one of the other options the provider gives, to sitting through ads have that option), good for content providers (the ability to be flexible to consumer preferences means they can reach more consumers, and, reduces the revenue per consumer point at which they break even -- which, in a competitive market, is another benefit for the consumer, since it reduces the price).

What is there not to like here?

Re:Why, on Earth, is anyone complaining?

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you folks haven't noticed, your average "hour long" prime time TV show is about 45-50 minutes

Actually it is only 42-43 minutes.

Re:Why, on Earth, is anyone complaining?

[LanMan04]

In case you folks haven't noticed, your average "hour long" prime time TV show is about 45-50 minutes, the rest is nothing but commercials.

Try 42 minutes. It's been that way for quite a while now.

Remember back a few years ago when Spike had "Trek Uncut"? It was "uncut" in that Spike was only putting in the amount of ads that was common in the 90s (10 minutes or so?). That means that pretty much EVERY rerun from that era and before that you see on every channel has actual CONTENT cut out to make room for more commercials. Lovely, eh?

Re:Why, on Earth, is anyone complaining?

[kernelphr34k]

I'm not forced to watch commercials when I download everything I watch. There are NO commercials; That's the way I like it.

Since TV is already a huge waste of time commercials just piss me off more. I don't watch TV because of commercials.. I'd rather download what shows I want to watch commercial free. :)

Re:Why, on Earth, is anyone complaining?

[Alien Being]

"Cable was invented to be commercial free."

As much as I share your sentiment, that statement is not true. Cable TV (CATV) was invented to distribute regular broadcasts to areas where private antennas are not feasible.

Re:Why, on Earth, is anyone complaining?

[catbutt]

Cable was invented to be commercial free

Yeah and the internet was invented to allow the military to communicate after a nuclear war. Or something. Doesn't matter. It is what it is, now. What it was initially is irrelevant.

I'm sure all programming could be supported by cable fees, and we wouldn't need ads, but I'm sure those fees would be a lot higher.

I'm all for any plan that reduces advertising for those who prefer spend more money to avoid commercials. All it is is choice, and the more choices we have, the more the market can sort things out. That's a good thing, in my opinion.

Re:Why, on Earth, is anyone complaining?

[natehoy]

Hence the difference between "BBC Planet Earth" and "Discovery Planet Earth". Same show, but they had to cut 20 minutes of footage out of the Discovery version of every 60-minute show in order to shoehorn in commercials. Fair enough, but then the video and David Attenborough's voice can't line up, so they re-voiced it. With Sigourney Weaver. Don't get me wrong, Weaver is a talented actress. But this is not her forte.

This is one case where buying the DVD (or Blu-ray, if you've got the gear for it) is worth every penny. You don't want to miss a single second of the footage, and Attenborough just has such a glorious sense of wonder and excellent timing, and a very good sense of when to just shut up and let the events speak for themselves.

Why Discovery couldn't have just made it a 90-minute presentation and shown the original BBC version (even with "sudden" commercial breaks), I'll never understand. Same 33% of commercial time, more airtime filled up, better quality show, and lowered production costs. Instead, they really ruined it.

To be honest, I did watch the first episode of the US version while staying in a hotel. I thought it was very good. Then I saw the same episode in the BBC version. I was utterly floored at the difference. More footage, smoother flow, and, well, David Attenborough's voice. Now I wouldn't watch the rest of the US version if you paid me. Well, OK, I'd watch it if you paid me, but it'd have to be decent money. And I'd insist on a working volume control so I could turn it down and play some nice music instead.

To everyone out there who watched and enjoyed Discovery's version of Planet Earth - I agree - it was a good show. Now go out and buy the DVD or Blu-Ray of the BBC version and watch it with proper narration and with uninterrupted flow and with all the footage you missed.

The difference will make you cry.

Re:Why, on Earth, is anyone complaining?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's two bucks to watch a single show! How about I just buy the show for less than 2 bucks on DVD or something? That's what they're heading for with all this crap. I get that some shows cost actual money to make but I've gotten so I can't sit through my favorite show of all time, Futurama. Hell, I didn't even bother to watch season 3 of TruBlood as I couldn't be arsed to be in front of the TV at a certain time to catch the HD version. And no, I'm not paying a premium to rent a crappy DVR, my kid could write better software than what they put on those things.

Cause I'll tell you what, it's way easier to push around 3 buttons on my XBox and start a Netflix movie. They are usually 720p and have no commercials. I can pause them and take a leak and it doesn't cost me 5 bucks a month on top of an already huge televison bill (less than 4 bucks for Live Gold which I'd have anyway and I get Netflix anyway).

These guys had better get it straight cause for around 400 bucks you can have a NAS pre download your favorite shows the night after they air and they'll be sitting there waiting for you when you get home and crack open a beer and fire up any machine in your house (TV included) to start watching. I don't do this but who could blame someone who does? They don't offer real 3rd party DVR solutions, CableCard, a la carte pricing, or commericaless programming. Whenever congress makes some noise about this stuff they do something as pro consumer and helpful as you'd expect out of the worst of US cell carriers.

Re:Why, on Earth, is anyone complaining?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the 70s maybe an hour long show was 50 minutes, it's about 41-43 minutes now.

Re:Why, on Earth, is anyone complaining?

[justaguylikeme]

That's true. In fact, I believe the abbreviation CATV originally stood for Community Antenna Television, where large community antennas were put up in areas where reception was limited, and cables were run to the individual houses.

Re:Why, on Earth, is anyone complaining?

[markjhood2003]

Ran across this interesting old movie theatre PSA at the Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/details/WeirdAntiCableTvPsa So if CATV was originally invented for regular broadcasts, I wonder when it started to morph into a competitor?

Patent?

[joeyblades]

I'm not sure why a strategy is considered an invention... moreover, a strategy that has been used for a while by FOX.

Re:Patent?

[Anonymous Coward]

This. There is no invention here, simply an idea. How on Earth did this get granted a patent?

Re:Patent?

[irishlyrucked]

Wait a second. I thought that the only portions of FOX programming worth watching were the commercials....

Is $2 too much?

[yuna49]

I looked at current advertising costs to see whether $2/episode is justified. Right now advertisers pay about 3.3 cents to put an ad in the face of a 25-54 year-old adult during a prime-time show. In an hour-long show, there are about sixteen minutes of non-program material, though some of that is promotions for other shows and local advertising. Let's say that ten minutes of every prime-time hour includes national advertising. That means advertisers are willing pay about thirty cents per show; two dollars seems like gouging in comparison.

Re:Is $2 too much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that a commercial-free version is probably available on itunes for only $1

Re:Is $2 too much?

[rakuen]

The upper bound is double your estimate, because a lot of commercials are 30 seconds in length. So it'd be somewhere between 33 and 66 cents. Also, seeing as some commercials in streaming services such as Hulu are 15 seconds in length, the lower bound might go even lower. So yeah, the $2 payment is disproportional to the advertising cost.

Re:Is $2 too much?

[Anonymous Coward]

"That means advertisers are willing pay about thirty cents per show; two dollars seems like gouging in comparison."

Well, that's because it is. There's this thing called "profit", ya see, and they'd rather get lots of profit instead of hardly any profit. Realistically I'd be willing to pay about $0.25 to skip commercials for the next, hour of viewing time. Not per "show", but per hour of viewing. Per show would be horribly broken because there are several things I watch that are less than 10 minutes long but still have a 30-60 second commercial AND a popover ad I have to close.

But truth be told I'll just continue to do what I currently do, mute it and switch tabs.

Re:Is $2 too much?

[HexaByte]

$2 is too much because it's $2 for every show. Even $2 per day will suck $730 out of your pocket. I don't pay that much for cable TV.

Add up all the shows you watch in your household, and you could easily spend several thousand dollars a year to get rid of commercials. Ridiculous! Just get up and go to the bathroom, grab a sandwich or drink, of mute the TV and talk to a live person during commercials.

See the world's largest pump project being build. http://www.faribanksmorseispumped.com/

Re:Is $2 too much?

[MadCow42]

Commercials aren't 60 seconds long. Try doubling that cost to at least $0.66/hour, assuming your other numbers are correct.

Actually, I think there's more like 22 minutes of advertising time per hour = 44 x 30sec commercials = 44 * $0.033 = $1.45/hour. That's not so far off their $2.

However, I am taking the other approach: I'm going to patent boycotting Google TV, and/or any other medium where ads are blocked. I already avoid DVD's with unskippable content, by ripping them for my AppleTV first... I paid for the DVD, why do I have to suffer through advertising EVERY time I want to watch it?

MadCow.

Re:Is $2 too much?

[dnahelicase]

and in a season or two it'll be on netflix for no additional cost. I don't mind waiting. Then I can watch them all sequentially on my own time.

Re:Is $2 too much?

[catbutt]

I haven't read the patent, but I suspect that the $2 figure quoted is nothing more than an example figure. Until this is actually on the market, complaining about its price seems rather silly.

Re:Is $2 too much?

[catbutt]

Well netflix has its own way for charging for content. This is an alternative to the netflix "all you can eat but you can't have it till later" plan There's room for many different ways of delivering content and providing revenue to those who make the content.

Re:Is $2 too much?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's .30 cents per person.

Re:Is $2 too much?

[LemonFire]

I looked at current advertising costs to see whether $2/episode is justified. Right now advertisers pay about 3.3 cents to put an ad in the face of a 25-54 year-old adult during a prime-time show. In an hour-long show, there are about sixteen minutes of non-program material, though some of that is promotions for other shows and local advertising. Let's say that ten minutes of every prime-time hour includes national advertising. That means advertisers are willing pay about thirty cents per show; two dollars seems like gouging in comparison.

Well Google must make money too. One dollar and seventy cents sounds like a more than reasonable fee to me.

Re:Is $2 too much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's too much. $2 is what I'm willing to pay per channel per month for commercial free cable.

Then again, I can't get that so I'm paying $0 and only rent stuff, when I feel like it. I end up saving money, saving time and enjoying programming that I like. There is surprisingly little programming out there that is enjoyable (lately, it's all "reality TV" for idiots)

Re:Is $2 too much?

[yuna49]

I agree that I should have multiplied by two because the spots are thirty-seconds long. My bad.

However I have to take issue with the 22 minutes/hour of advertising. If you look at a prime-time show on Hulu, it runs about 44 minutes. Since nearly all of the content on Hulu is the program itself, with the advertising timed separately, that only leaves 16 minutes for everything else. Usually there's a station break at the half-hour which gives a couple of minutes to the local affiliate. Then there is typically a promotional spot in most every break for another program on the network. Once you take those out, it looks to me like 10-12 minutes is a plausible guess for the amount of time devoted purely to national advertising.

Let's be generous and say there are twenty-five, thirty-second availabilities each hour. That still works out to something like $0.82 per hour.

Of course, if that $2 was per episode and not per hour, thirty-minute sitcoms would be an even bigger bonanza.

Re:Is $2 too much?

[hguorbray]

but if 30% of the audience opts out then that show becomes that much less valuable for both the broadcaster and the advertiser.

I can't say whether the amount is reasonable, but the 2$ helps offset the reduced ad revenue that comes from offering 30% less eyeballs (probably prime target consumers) to the advertisers and allows the network to continue to operate whilw giving those willing to pay the premium a chance to skip ads.

but I agree that DVD ads and trailers suck as bad as the junk you have to see before a movie is shown in a theater

-I'm just sayin'

Re:Is $2 too much?

[cacba]

I suspect part of the problem is it segregates people into two groups. Those willing to pay $2 for 10 minutes of time and those who wont. This seems highly co-related to disposable income and now the advertisements are shown only to those with less.

Re:Is $2 too much?

[MadCow42]

I was probably remembering the number backwards - 22 minutes of content for a 1/2hour show, not 22 minutes of advertising per hour.

I guess those commercials just drag on so much it SEEMS like they're longer than they actually are. :) Actually, I haven't watched commercials in years, thanks to my DVR. So much so, that I'm rarely up to date on what movies are coming out - that's about the only thing I miss from commercials.

MadCow.

Re:Is $2 too much?

[Anonymous Coward]

What planet do you liveon?!?! Over the last few years I have timed the comercial/program ratios of many TV channels. Most are 35 minutes of comercials /25 minutes of show per hour. These figures vary somewhat with time of day, and chanel, and do not include the infomercials that are all that you see from 2 am until 6 to 7 am.

Thanks to Netflix and the local library (from which I barrow both books and DVDs) I am now comercial free. I no longer pay way too much for comercia-infested cable TV, which has way too many chanels of trash that I would never watch anyway.

Sounds good to me

[Lord Byron II]

I'd gladly pay a couple of bucks to watch TV without commercials. I could use a variety of technological solutions to remove the commercials, but I'd rather pay a small sum, avoid the commercials, and still financially support the programs I enjoy.

This sounds a lot...

[bhunachchicken]

... like Google is actually bending to the whim of the content providers, rather than forcing this on users themselves. After all, YouTube is free, and has ads at the bottom of the video (which you can click to remove), as well as the occasional 10 second ad before the main event. I don't believe this is *Google* being "evil"!

After all, wasn't it the music industry that forced Apple in to adopting DRM..? (or is that just what Apple would have us believe?)

An ideal would be:

• This broadcast is free! But you'll have to watch a few ads before the main item begins, and have to view unskippable ads every now and again during it.

OR

• Thanks for paying $2 for watching. You'll see no ads whatsoever.

That way, people who aren't too bothered about the ads can watch for free, and those that want to see it uninterrupted need just shell out $2 (or whatever the going rate is).

Of course, if you're a well known satellite broadcaster in the UK, you'd insist that viewers do both...

Re:This sounds a lot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering how locked down the ecosystem is in any APL product, I personally think it's what APL would have you believe. It's THEIR OWN DRM method, own USB/power connector, locked down application market, locked down headset controls, non-user serviceable battery, etc. Tell me how much choice you have over any APL product? Then tell me again with a straight face that APL didn't want it?

Then after people let them achieve market domination, then there's some marketing BS: "oh, no, we're 'open'! look what we did!" Sure there's user freedom... compared to the Gestapo. =P

Not Enough Options

[rakuen]

Where's the provision to throw a virgin into a volcano as a sacrifice for commercial free television?

This is great!

[Oasiz]

The more ads the better, I love advertisements !
I especially love those forced flash-video ads that contain products that they don't even sell in this country.

This is really getting close to the typical dystopic visions of a future where they forcefeed ads in to your brains.
Not even money will let you escape them.
Soon you will need a camera in front of your set that makes sure that you are actually sitting in front of it and watching the ads.

Will not likely take long for the other companies to adopt something similiar like this.

Alamo Drafthouse

[shawnmchorse]

Case in point: The Alamo Drafthouse. They play first run movies (as well as cult films and other such), serve food and alcohol, and have actual pre-show video entertainment (not commercials). If a movie isn't playing at the Drafthouse, I generally don't bother going. It's not worth putting up with general obnoxiousness of the large corporate theater chains like Cinemark.

Re:Alamo Drafthouse

[Jawnn]

Case in point: The Alamo Drafthouse. They play first run movies (as well as cult films and other such), serve food and alcohol, and have actual pre-show video entertainment (not commercials). If a movie isn't playing at the Drafthouse, I generally don't bother going. It's not worth putting up with general obnoxiousness of the large corporate theater chains like Cinemark.

Good point. Portland, OR has the McMenamin's establishments that operate in a very similar manner. I reckon that most major cities have something similar. The clientele is more polite (don't insist on texting and annoying every patron behind them) , the menu is far superior, and there's good beer. What's not to like?
Even the small town I lived in a few years ago had a small, locally owned theater that offered an experience that was superior in every way to the multiplex chains that have so fucked up the cinema business. I confess that I still hit the big theaters once or twice a year, for something that I just can't stand to wait for, but that's a tiny fraction of what I used to do. I've sent my message. How 'bout y'all?

Re:Alamo Drafthouse

[geekoid]

I dont go to a movie to here people smacking away at their food.
Its fine for cult movies, old movies. Not for 1st run.

I also find how people smacking there lips and slurping their beer are fine, but sitting quietly and texting is 'wrong'.

And yeah, I live near Portland, and work in Portland, and have gone to those theaters to see some cult classics.

Re:Alamo Drafthouse

[thousandinone]

Sipping beer is doing it wrong. A good beer is a full-mouth experience. And yes, that's what she said!

Re:Alamo Drafthouse

[mlts]

+1 for the Alamo Drafthouse. If it doesn't show there, I don't bother seeing it. Especially the little things, such as being able to duck under a table and zoom out the aisle if someone needs to use the restroom (as opposed to stomping on people's feet at other places), getting real food, real beer (not Bud Light, but actual stuff worth drinking), and ticket prices actually cheaper than the other corporate chains.

I have yet to try the Gold Class Cinemas which just opened up a theater, but there is just no competition to the Alamo as of now.

Re:Alamo Drafthouse

[GIL_Dude]

Interesting. I've been to a couple of these type of theaters and seen first run movies. (Both theaters were in the Houston area and I live in California so I have only gone twice). The seating typically includes a narrow "table" in front of you to put your food / drink on and often has "office chairs" (roll around chairs) instead of fixed ones (I have seen both office chairs and fixed seats), but the bottom line is that people actually aren't as close to you as they are in the Cineplex type theaters. I didn't hear any distracting food noises over the movies at all. Both times it was a very good experience. I'm not really sure how someone eating, say some chicken strips, makes all that much more noise than someone eating popcorn and candy though anyway.

Re:Alamo Drafthouse

[mdf356]

On of the saddest things for me moving from Austin to Seattle was the lack of Alamo Drafthouse. Cinebarre isn't the same -- for one thing, the pre-show is not very good. And they don't do the themed food / feasts like Alamo does.

I have a BnL cup that had my septuacentennial cupcake-in-a-cup in it. The Feast for Pirates of the Caribbean was awesome. And I am bummed I missed out on the hobbit food at the LotR trilogy showing.

Re:Alamo Drafthouse

[jwhitener]

McMenamin's are nice for sure.

While sometimes you can hunt around for a better theater experience, you can't hunt around for a better dvd publisher. I pay 20 dollars for a disc, that has commercials and previews on it..... hate that. I just recently learned about hitting stop twice then play to bypass commercials, but it doesn't always work.

Re:Alamo Drafthouse

[Anonymous Coward]

I've only gone to the drafthouse in Houston a few times but have always had a great time. The interesting thing about the theatre experience is how there seemed to be an air of comradery at the Alamo drafthouse. Patrons mingled with one another. Groups talked to other groups. When I go to the Edwards theatre on the other hand, I can't leave soon enough.

Re:Alamo Drafthouse

[JackieBrown]

I used to be a manager at Westlakes when it was Regal, then Cinemark, and finally Sanikos theaters. I left before it became the drafthouse. I would have stayed if I had know it was going to turn into something cool.

I have lots of fond memories from there.

Re:Alamo Drafthouse

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Who gets that money?

[chemicaldave]

Advertisers pay money to put ads on shows. Google charges $2 to skip the ads...are they pocketing the money or giving it to advertisers as compensation?

I'll do them one better - pay me to watch the ads.

[zerofoo]

How about Google shares their ad revenue with me if I agree to watch the commercials?

I've been told many times that the show is not the product - the viewers are the product. Fine, if I allow Google to show me the ads using MY bandwidth, why not give me a cut of the ad revenue?

-ted

Dear Google: ( +1, Helpful )

[Anonymous Coward]

Go To Hell.

Yours In Greenland,
Kilgore Trout

You can't patent a business process

[AbbeyRoad]

A business process, like pure math, and like pure software is not patentable in many jurisdictions. What is being described here is a BUSINESS PROCESS, and lacks key patentability criteria under current patent law.

Whoever came up with this patent doesn't understand IP.

It probably won't get approved.

It certainly won't get approved world-wide.

Re:You can't patent a business process

[hygieia]

It has been approved by the USPTO, clearly. The only way to make it go away, is if someone takes Google to court to have the patent invalidated.

Re:You can't patent a business process

[blueg3]

It's not a business process that they got a patent for, it's the technological means for one method of implementing such a business practice. The same practice, accomplished by means other than what the patent describes, would be non-infringing.

Re:You can't patent a business process

[Dachannien]

The Supreme Court was unwilling to categorically exclude business methods from patent eligibility in Bilski v. Kappos. Each such method has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine whether the claims are directed to an abstract idea or a patent-eligible method.

Well Sure, If That Covers the Costs

[eldavojohn]

Right.... until they start adding commercials to books as electronic readers start becoming more mainstream. You won't be able to turn the page until you sit through this 15 second commercial that the publisher figures might interest you based on the content of the book.

And if your choice is watching that with not having to pay for the book versus shelling out the usual $20 for the book ... I might actually opt for that.

Re:Well Sure, If That Covers the Costs

[mark-t]

If the book were, in fact, free, sure... but I highly doubt that they will be... well, except maybe some of the fiction that could never make it to hardback.

Re:Well Sure, If That Covers the Costs

[wed128]

i worry you'll sit through commercials AFTER paying for the book, just like cable.

Re:Well Sure, If That Covers the Costs

[Anonymous Coward]

And if your choice is watching that with not having to pay for the book versus shelling out the usual $20 for the book ... I might actually opt for that.

You're funny. Have TV subscriptions become cheaper as the frequency and length of commercial breaks increased? Hell, I just bought a new edition of a book (of the printed, paper kind) instead of an older, cheaper edition because I thought they added content (50 pages more than the old edition). Guess what? These 50 pages are fucking ads for other books.

Re:Well Sure, If That Covers the Costs

[Monkeedude1212]

Right.... until they start adding commercials to books as electronic readers start becoming more mainstream. You won't be able to turn the page until you sit through this 15 second commercial that the publisher figures might interest you based on the content of the book.

And if your choice is watching that with not having to pay for the book versus shelling out the usual $20 for the book ... I might actually opt for that.

It'll be a $20 a month subscription fee for the eReader with those ads on top. And you should be so lucky to get a $2 skip ads option.

Re:Well Sure, If That Covers the Costs

[atomic1fire]

Text ads or small banner ads in the pages would just be easier, since the publisher wouldn't make any money long-term if people get annoyed and stop reading the books. Schools won't go for it, because students cant just stop reading because of a beer ad that the marketer thinks they want (in the middle of class). At-least public domain books are free.

Re:Well Sure, If That Covers the Costs

[cgenman]

Cable is a bit more understandable, as the cable provider isn't actually the content provider.

Unskippable ads in books (those one-page ads have been at the back of pulp novels for years) would be like the unskippable ads at the beginning of DVD's. Spend $20 for a piece of content, they make an extra $1 on something that will annoy you every time you watch the movie. Everybody wins, a little, except the customer.

Re:Well Sure, If That Covers the Costs

[scot4875]

You'll still pay for it; there's no free lunch here or anywhere. It just ends up being an invisible mark-up on *everything* you buy to cover the cost of advertising.

--Jeremy

controlling

[locksmith9]

They are just looking for more control.

playing both sides of the fence

[cadience]

Watch the commercial - the sponsor pays.
Skip the commercial - you pay.

What happened to "Do no evil"?

[cruff]

This sounds like having to sit through a sales pitch at a vacation resort to get free lodging for a night. Thank goodness for the 30 second skip on my TiVO.

Latest Google Patent

[Compaqt]

For a device that gently applies pressure to the users throat, and increases it the more he holds down FF.

Nice try

[Legion303]

No, no, and hell no. I'll keep using the Usenet channel. Thanks anyway, google.

Re:Nice try

[geekoid]

Then you are no ones customer so why would the give a shit about what you think? You only want entertainment for free.

Re:Nice try

[Legion303]

I pay for cable. Your argument is invalid.

I have a few better ideas, Google:

[kheldan]

1. Adblock plus
2. NoScript
3. Completely fake "survey" information
4. If all the above fail, how about I just leave the room for 10 minutes, or minimize that window/switch to another tab and mute the sound for 10 minutes?
5. One word: Torrent
6. Can't find a torrent of it? I probably don't need to be watching it then.

In short: Screw you Google, and everyone else who keeps "monitizing" the living fuck out of everything. When I watched the movie Idiocracy, I only laughed for the first couple minutes. Then I got a stone-cold feeling in my gut because I realized that this is where the world really is heading!

Re:I have a few better ideas, Google:

[geekoid]

So people who work to make entertainment shouldn't get paid? People who provide a service shouldn't make money?

That's a pretty stupid argument to make about a private company.

Re:I have a few better ideas, Google:

[Anonymous Coward]

So your shit's fucked up and you talk like a fag?

Re:I have a few better ideas, Google:

[cdrguru]

I guess they just have to adapt to a new business model. That's what people keep saying about music. Why wouldn't it apply to movies and everything else?

Re:I have a few better ideas, Google:

[kheldan]

They get paid regardless. I don't like ads, I won't willingly watch them. Neither you nor anyone else can make me watch them, and I'm not alone in this. Enjoy watching your brain-melting ads, I have better things to do with my time than be another consumer clone.

Awesomely scary.

[Sait-kun]

It does exactly what everyone (ie the greater majority) has wanted for a long time. I don't know of a single person who - if they had the option - wouldn't skip commercials. So why is so scary?

Won't work... sorry.

[mark-t]

What will happen is that a lot of people will naturally pay the $2 up front to avoid seeing the commercials. The advertisers will notice that hardly anybody is seeing their commercials and so will not be willing to pay as much to subsidize the programs that people who aren't paying for commercial free programming are watching, so the cost of programming goes up. Ultimately, the $2 fee will end up being absorbed right into the standard cost of the service, under the guise of "saving you money" and everybody will still end up watching commercials.

Isn't that sort of what happened with cable TV?

Re:Won't work... sorry.

[mynion]

Spot on. The American TV industry seems broken. Advertising rates have plummeted anyway (peak back in the 80s?). A huge chunk of profit must come from dvd sales yet the whole basis of what lives and dies is still on percentage audience share, demographic nonsense to do with advert sales etc. A significant factor seems to be which idiot in charge this month decides to interfere with content/scheduling/time slots etc.

We are looking at a future where download or streaming will replace dvd+broadcast+cable, yet the industry still doesn't seem to have caught up with the previous shift to dvd with their decision making. I want ad free television and I'm happy to pay for it, but no I won't fill in surveys or trust the king of adverts google to move tv forward in an acceptable manner.

Basically I'm still bitter about Firefly being cancelled. It will pass in a few decades.

I hate commercials

[Anonymous Coward]

And the more intrusive they make the advertising, the more my growing anger will make me dislike their products.

Oh, and make me sit through several ads and then give me a pop quiz before I can watch the show? I'll throw the Google TV box out the window. Problem solved.

irony

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't it a little ironic that it's the wealthy people (who have money to buy advertised products) also happen to be the ones in the best position to pay to skip the ads?

The mute button works great.

[Joce640k]

Give it a try. You won't believe the difference it makes.

Re:The mute button works great.

[Cro Magnon]

Give it a try. You won't believe the difference it makes

Yeah, and not just during commercials.

I never buy anything on commercials

[bouldin]

Seriously, I can't remember any time in the past several years I saw a commercial for a car/cookie/cereal/mouthwash/etc and planned to buy the item.

Content of commercials just has not ever figured in to how I shop. When I go to a store, I know what I want, I find the best deal, I get the hell out of there.

Re:I never buy anything on commercials

[Skraut]

Advertising is actually reverse psychology for me. If I see a lot of commercials for a specific product I stay away from it, knowing that I have to pay more for that product than I should, so that the company can recoup their high advertising budget.

Re:I never buy anything on commercials

[Nocuous]

Seriously, I can't remember any time in the past several years I saw a commercial for a car/cookie/cereal/mouthwash/etc and planned to buy the item.

Content of commercials just has not ever figured in to how I shop. When I go to a store, I know what I want, I find the best deal, I get the hell out of there.

Perhaps you don't consciously plan purchases based on advertising, you just tend to buy the products you've been exposed to, whether you realize it or not. Maybe you're a little less susceptible than the average person, maybe not.

How do you know what you want, or what deals are available? Advertising!

It's just a patent...

[Joce640k]

They haven't actually done this yet. Save your sarcasm for if/when they do.

Re:It's just a patent...

[Nocuous]

They haven't actually done this yet. Save your sarcasm for if/when they do.

Exactly. And don't condemn Mahmoud Ahmad-been-working-on-the-railroad-inejad when he says "the occupying regime [Israel] must be wiped off the map for great justice", condemn him after he actually does it.

Good lord, imagine the outrage if Ballmer had filed this patent.

Re:It's just a patent...

[ihatejobs]

Fanboy alert! Cuz ya know, companies are really in the habit of getting evil looking patents and not bothering to use them. Well ok, some of them are, but Google isn't known for being a patent troll, they are known for being evil behind the scenes and telling all of the sheeple that they "Do no evil".

Greed, but not local greed

[mujadaddy]

The studios get between 80 and 90% of the admission charge for first run movies for the first 2 weeks of the engagement. The ratio reverses beginning in the 3rd week.

I'm not saying it's in the direct interest of the studios to churn out trash with no "legs", but I am saying that churning out trash with no "legs" really hurts the bottom line of the exhibitors.

I was a cinema manager while the massive commercial reel became the norm, and in order to protect the exhibitors' bottom line, every major chain complies with this state of affairs.

Additionally, this is why cinema snacks are so bloody overpriced -- the theaters really don't make any money unless everyone buys $2 of food.

(Interestingly enough, Titanic was the film that kept lots of mid-sized exhibitors in business, because it was still filling theaters for one or two shows SIX MONTHS after release. There was a big round of consolidation a few years after Titanic proved to be a financial anomaly.)

Re:Greed, but not local greed

[binarylarry]

$2???

For the cost of movie popcorn and a large pop I could feed a family of 6!

Re:Greed, but not local greed

[Lumpy]

It's why I buy my juju bees at $1.00 for a giant bag and smuggle it in. I'll buy your $21.95 popcorn and $82.50 5 gallon pail of cola... at least buying 1 we all get a fiber and fake butter overdose with a bladder problem...

Re:Greed, but not local greed

[moonbender]

By smuggling jujubes into the cinema you are basically stealing the movie. I bet you also go to the bathroom during the commercials. Thief.

MythTV allows commercial skip for free

[Dan667]

this one feature makes it totally worth any hassle in setting it up. The payback in not wasting my time watching commercials is 100 fold.

Thats' a smart way to do it

[geekoid]

Give the consumers the option to pay to remove the commercials.

I like it.

Everyone has a choice

[TheMeth0D]

I personally decided that cable was no longer worth the cost especially since you can get OTA HD channels for free and the funny thing is that it seems like OTA channels actually have LESS ads than most of the cable channels!

Wrong

[geekoid]

Look up Business Methods. I would paste the link, but I can't past into a textbox on /. for some reason.

Dude...

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't make TV shows so that they can make just enough money to break even.

People make TV shows so they can make a profit. Further, they would like to make as big a profit as possible. That profit is their incentive for making TV.

Of course commercials are greed. The whole enterprise is greed. And that is exactly how it should be.

Survey info I use all the time

[assemblerex]

Name: Nodata Mining , Income: none , Occupation: other , Interests: Other, Location: Antarctica, Phone number: 8675309

I have an idea...

[egibster]

I have adwords/adsense set up. How about they pay out when someone clicks on my ad...

Prior Art

[ChipmunkDJE]

There already exists prior art to this in a certain form. Hulu.com did this with many promotions for awhile, where you could opt to watch or do an alternative before the show instead of having to be interrupted by commercials. I for one understand the need for advertising to exist and very much like this "opt out of commercials" idea, but they shouldn't be able to receive a patent because its been done before.

say no to convenience fees

[Anonymous Coward]

everyone screams at convenience fees everywhere else (Ticket Master) but here comes Google and they honored

My simple life

[Andy Smith]

I hate the logos that TV stations put in the corner of the screen throughout shows. So I stopped watching TV three years ago.

The high number of adverts in each show was becoming a problem, but the logos annoyed me more. Now, since I've stopped watching TV because of the logos, the adverts don't bother me. Funny that.

When it gets to the point that hour-long shows have half-an-hour of interactive adverts that you MUST watch or they play again, that won't bother me. Because I still won't be watching TV.

I have so much more time to be productive since I quit the tube.

Re:My simple life

[sdturf]

"I have so much more time to be productive since I quit the tube." What is this tube of which you speak? Some ancient media player?

Re:My simple life

[kannibal_klown]

I hate the logos that TV stations put in the corner of the screen throughout shows.

The little NBC, CBS or TNT logos were never that annoying to me, but they started going a little over-board. A show would be on and they'd super-impose an animated advert banner at the bottom... with sound.

Excuse me, but I'm trying to both see and hear the show on TV now.

They tuned those down quite a bit, I imagine due to customer complaints. I don't see the animated banner often, but when I they're always silent.

I watch and enjoy TV, probably more than I should. But I also try to read novels to balance it out.

The truly disruptive technology

[thczv]

would involve ME selling advertisers MY OWN attention, rather than everyone else selling it for me. I would happily give you a personal profile, and you can send me targeted ads that I would actually be interested in. I will willingly view those ads. In exchange, pay me directly by, say, giving me cable TV for free, or give me free movie rentals. How much would the attention of my whole family be worth? Do we really need middle-men for this any more?

Re:The truly disruptive technology

[neminem]

I like your idea, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Also your service.

While we're at it, perhaps we could also then send those reports to Nielson? You know, if that happened, it might convince me to actually pay for cable, if I thought my opinions on what shows shouldn't be canceled (*cough*Dollhouse*cough*) would actually be taken into account if I watched them on tv, more than if I watched them illegally.

Don't Watch

[Seekerofknowledge]

My freedom is in not watching. Why bother with advertising, DRM, subscription fees in the first place? There's hardly anything worth watching anyways. Do you really view all of that stimulation as an inalienable right? With all of this in-fighting and territorial control by companies over "mindshare", viewership, eyeballs, I take it as a sign we're on the wrong track.

Surprise: This is a Profit Center for Google.

[skribble]

I was at Google I/O this year and my immediate reaction to Google TV is that this is just a way for Google to make ad revenue instead of the (or at very least in addition to) the Networks. Google does a lot of cool stuff, but in the end everything they do, they do to generate Ad revenue, and TV ad revenue eclipses Web revenue by quite a bit so Google want's in.

RIGHT...

[SmallFurryCreature]

I have to really control my temper right now because I really want to tear you a new one.

The amount of sheep in your statement is so staggering that even New Zealand would complain. Yes, of course I can do something else during a commercial break. But if a 2 hour movie is interrupted every fifteen minutes for a 5 minute break, that adds a LOT of time to kill while my tv tries to bore me to death with the most inane crap.

I don't watch tv anymore. NOT because I think the programs are beneath me, I like mindless entertainment!, but because it just takes to much time. Say I want to watch the simpsons in Holland on comedy central. It starts at 8isch. So I have to be READY at that EXACT moment and often commericals delay the start of most other programs. 8 minutes later it is interrupted by commercials which go on forever. Then again a few minutes and more commercials. Just to much fucking effort.

The odd thing is, people don't mind ads. Some even collect them. But there is so much as to much of a good thing. No matter how much I chocolate, if you try to drown me in it, I would still fight you.

And the advertisers response to this reluctance to the ad overdose? MORE and LOUDER ads. It is as if you are a carnaval were each attraction is determined to win the sound battle with its neighbours and then they all wonder why their customers ran away. And then the carnaval ground owner decices to replace the attractions that are no longer working with even louder attractions, totally not getting why the customers and profits have gone.

VHS is a good example. Who minded movie previews at the end of a VHS tape? Nobody I would expect, quite handy in the days before the internet. They weren't in anybodies way, you didn't have to watch them or wait for them to passby on fast forward but if you wanted, you could see them.

Then Disney added them to the front. WHY?!? Because some marketing exec thought, if method X has Y return then if I do X2 Y2 is the result. NO. In fact, it might be X2 -Y2

And since the result of the non increasing sales? Make them unskippable on the DVD. ARGH! Why not just take a nail gun to your customers and nail them to your movie posters. That will convince them.

I am old. I remember when Dutch tv had 1 station and no commercials on sunday. Commercial blocks were a handful of minutes at most. Now? I can take a crap and make coffee and completly forget what I am watching and therefor not bother to watch at all.

Google can annoy the hell out of me if it wants but I will just leave and so will countless others.

Just do something else. Indeed. But I just don't come back to the TV.

Let's just hope this doesn't happen...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Google TV's built-in webcam, intended for nice video chats with grandma, turns on during commercials. If it detects that you aren't in front of the TV, or if facial recognition software detects that you aren't paying attention, you have to watch the commercial again, and again. Also, if it detects that you are attractive, your pictures will be sold to facebook advertisers. If you're not attractive, you can still be used as the "before" pictures for dieting ads. (Hey, it's going to be in the TOS, didn't you read the 55 pages of it?)

Patent to kill TV commercial?

[jrbrtsn]

Maybe Google is patenting these strategies so they can then sue all the companies that infringe their patent. Hey, at least I can dream....

Workaround.. does this mean... ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean that if I charge 1.90$ or 2.10$ I work around the patent because it explicitly specifies $2 ?

[Just kidding of course]

A lo-fi version.

[FatSean]

The version over your usual TV network would be at least 480i, if not better.

SomethingAwful has been doing this for years

[Anonymous Coward]

The SA forums charge you to get rid of ads. I bet half the guys ranting about how they'd never pay for ad-free TV are also goons.

Clever

[umbrellasd]

"First we'll introduce these annoying eye-catching interruptions that generate a profit from the Sheep-90% of the population that buys stuff because we tell them to buy. Then we'll charge the remaining Smart-10% money to take that annoying shit back out."

What to do? When you're crushed in with 90% sheep, you go where they go, and aren't distinguishable in any meaningful way. Unless you get out of the herd. Then a wolf eats you.

*bleat* *munch* *poop* *dinner*

Hardly most commercial time is around $20 CPM

[anUnhandledException]

That can vary from $10 CPM to $50+ CPM (most valuable time slot in a major event like Superbowl).

CPM is cost per thousand viewers. Thus the per capita value of a 30 second commercial is about $0.02. We will be generous and double that (no way is a theater getting $40 CPM but for sake of argument lets pretend). That is mayb $0.10 per minute. Yup that is how unvaluable your time is.

Theater drops 10 minutes of mind numbing commercials on you and picks less than a buck. In reality it is much much much less more like $0.30.

Hell I would love for a theater to advertize. "No commercials, less than 10 minutes of movie previews, clean floors, and only 500% markup on food". I would gladly pay the $2 extra to cover that.

Re:Hardly most commercial time is around $20 CPM

[Red Flayer]

Advertisements in movie theaters have a higher CPM than ads on television, because the audience is captive. Not sure how the cost breaks down...

Plus, in my experience (limited, as I only see 1-2 movies in a theater per year), there are a lot of local ads. I assume this means that the theaters negotiate local ad placement, which is priced differently than national/regional placement. I don't know the pricing structure for theater ads... but my best guess is that your estimate is a little on the low side. I wonder if $0.30 per viewer per show would be enough for the theater to break even on splicing the ads onto the reels, administration of ad placement, etc. Net? Sure, it's worth it... but gross?

Re:Hardly most commercial time is around $20 CPM

[anUnhandledException]

Well that is why I doubled the CPM to $40.

Hell lets take an extreme guestimate that movie theaters got a staggering $100 CPM (roughly 500% of national TV rate) for the advantages of local & captive audience that works out to about $2 for a 10 minute block of commercials.

The persons I initially responded to indicated that w/o commercials the ticket price would be double. At best (500% of TV rate) they are making about $2 per person GROSS. Like you said the ad agency and other overhead will eat significantly into that gross.

Sadly both content providers and advertisers value our time very cheaply. TV rates work out to about $2.40 per hour. That is how little advertisers price your "attention".

Re:Hardly most commercial time is around $20 CPM

[Red Flayer]

Sadly both content providers and advertisers value our time very cheaply. TV rates work out to about $2.40 per hour. That is how little advertisers price your "attention".

Well, I may be an edge case, but given how little "attention" I give to their adverts, I'd say they're actually far overpaying :)

Google pricing is completely out of line.

[anUnhandledException]

One would imagine that the "skip" cost would be comparable to the advertising value right?

Average TV commercial value is about $20 CPM. That is $20 per 1000 viewers. Per capita is works out to about $0.02. Every commercial you sit through the content provider picks up about $0.02. Now this varies somewhat based on view rate (people more likely to watch commercial on sports than on sitcoms) and the value of the timeslot (commercials earlier in show worth more as are first commercial in a break.

However as a rule of thumb content providers pickup about $0.02 per commercial. An hour long show has about 18 minutes or $0.72 of commercials. $1 for an hour long show ($0.50 for 30 minute spot) is more reasonable. One could figure that content providers could offer deals for prepaying an entire season. Say Google makes some money, content providers get a little bit more, consumer gets options. $2 is just highway robbery.

Wait a sec...

[geminidomino]

Likewise, the system may require the user to follow activities that generate a certain amount of advertising revenue or advertising points (e.g., that may correspond directly or indirectly to advertising revenues) before the program will continue

I smell prior art!

Anyone else remember those shitty warezy FTPs that would make you sign up for crap and the password was "the third word in the second sentence" kind of crap? And then not work 90% of the time.

you're a modern day freedom fighter!

[Anonymous Coward]

the word "hero" gets used too often these days - but I think that's what you are.

My Flamboyant Grandson

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the future.

Prior Art?

[drukawski]

I think everyone is missing the point; there is plenty of prior art on racketeering, why the hell does Google get to patent it? Maybe a patent for a system that involves me parking a tank outside Google headquarters and charging a fee through a macro payment system the AC_FillThisSackWithCashBitches system for maintaining the tank in a non-firing manner is in order.

Why the bitching

[moeluv]

Personally I don't mind commercials. They give me a nice break to take a leak and grab a drink. Certainly I wouldn't pay 2$ to give that up.

Pay per view on steroids

[kawabago]

This is just pay per view with a few more bells and whistles. How or where does this patent further the useful arts?

$2 micropayment?

[soupforare]

Wasn't the original micropayment idea like 2-10 cents? Where's this multiple dollar being a "micro"payment bull coming from?

Re:$2 micropayment?

[turkeyfeathers]

It came when they discovered there were so many morons willing to pay $1.99 for ringtones.

patent for ads over this in 3..2..

[smellsofbikes]

So next, Google will get a patent on a super-ad that advertisers can pay a surcharge for, that will be played by broadcasters despite the $2 charge consumers have paid. And so the race continues...

Re:I'll do them one better - pay me to watch the a

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been tried in other forms, like allowing users to install ad banners on their computers where you get a cut of the revenue. Its usually fallen flat as many users try and abuse the system with automation, and false feedback. Also those users willing to put up with ads for a small amount of change are usually close to broke anyways, so unless you are trying to convice them to vote for you in the upcomming election, you aren't going to get much from what money they have to spend.

For many users bandwidth is free in that they are charged per month regardless of how much they use (as long as its a reasonable amount). If you are concerned with bandwidth cost, maybe Google could strike a deal with your ISP where watching shows with ads doesn't count towards your bandwidth limit.

Google TV logo

[Anonymous Coward]

(Many TV logos are like this.) It's a rectangle with antennas sticking out the top. I think this is hilarious.

WTF-ever we want to do is OK

[Anonymous Coward]

so this is one of those "WTF-ever we want to do is OK" kind of patent?

yea.. what's your take on Boeing's charge

[way2trivial]

'cause a 777 STARTS at $205 million
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777

Unfortunate Article Summary

[frinkster]

Looking at the patent claims show that this is actually a pretty interesting patent in the sense that it reveals a lot of information about Google's television business model (and yes, I think it sucks).

Not only is Google building an individual profile on you, but they are building individual profiles on TV commercials. They will be tracking which commercials you skip and storing that information in both profiles. This will help them figure out what type of commercials you are least likely to skip based on the previous actions of you and people like you.

Google will be sharing information with TV companies and will allow TV companies to "get rid of" the "freeloaders" by making them jump through hoops or just outright paying cash to keep watching their TV shows. This seems to be what Slashdot is focusing on. Unfortunately, that is only a small part of the problem.

Some honesty in the numbers, please

[jameson]

Hi,

    after some quick googling around, it seems that the relevant numbers are as follows:

- One hour of programming in the US usually contains 15 minutes of commercials.
- Commercials time is worth about 4 cents per minute per viewer.

    So the price of not getting ads should be around 60 cents per episode of most television
shows. YMMV, but IMO that's a lot less than the opportunity cost for wasting my attention
on ads, even ignoring the cost of a television set.

we need a doomed tag

[Anonymous Coward]

from doom the video game

PBS is government paid

[Anonymous Coward]

PBS is government paid. It comes from your taxes. BBC doesn't get paid by the government. Try not paying $10/month from your tax bill which goes to PBS and likewise, enjoy your stay at the debtors prison...

And you can refuse to pay the BBC license fee (not tax). If you don't have reception for broadcast TV, you don't have to pay a license for reception of broadcast TV. Just like you can refuse to pay a dog license AS LONG AS YOU DON'T HAVE A DOG.

Oh, and try not paying your electricity bill, see how well that turns out. Guess what? If you don't pay your bills for services owed, you can get slammed in jail.

Re:PBS is government paid

[commodore64_love]

Oh yeah.

PBS costs just over $1 per US household. Not as bas as $200-something, but I'd like to see that eliminated. Let PBS convert to an advertiser model, with the adds in the last 10 minutes of the hour..... ya know, like they do now.

Re:PBS is government paid

[Anonymous Coward]

I would prefer subtractions in the first 10 minutes of the hour.

Survey? Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I waste 10 minutes on a survey to avoid 10 minutes of commercials? Don't they get that what we hate is not literally "commercials", but having our entertainment interrupted? Why would I waste time filling out some stupid survey, when with commercial breaks I can at least get up and take a piss or go grab some snacks??

Re:Survey? Maybe

[neminem]

Possibly because the answer to every question on the survey is 1, and they can't prove otherwise? Click, click, click, click, click, click. Survey done!

I'm not sure why anyone would pay 2 bucks to get around commercials for a show, as opposed to... paying the same 2 bucks to iTunes, to *own* a copy of the show. Or, you know, just torrenting it.

What makes this patentable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean honestly, patent pay $2 to opt out of some commercials? Is this truly advancing the "Arts and Sciences" to such a degree that it merits a patent? If one were looking for yet another reason why software patents are bad, well here it is.

Quick!

[Anonymous Coward]

I need to get on this and file a patent for charging $1 and $3 for the same thing!

How 'bout a nice Mokie-Coke?

[notaspy]

I could sure go for a Mokie-Coke right now. Wouldn't you like one too?

It's nice, but not that nice.

[CherniyVolk]

I never saw an advertisement for Bentley, Rolls Royce or Lamborghini. Never saw a Porsche ad until most recently, and it's safe to say I was well aware of the Porsche 911 series long before 2002 Porsche SUV ads started showing up. Never saw an advertisement for Tiffany & Co. Never saw an advertisement for Waterford Crystal. Only until recently did I notice that Omega Watches was sponsoring some Olympic events... but I didn't have to wikipedia them I knew from experience they were fine watches as I had already purchased a few years before I watch the first swim race.

There's a lot to be said about the inherent exposure quality products inherit. The argument is most childish, 'how are you supposed to find out? you had to have seen an advertisement'. Wrong. Most of the highest quality products you know of, you never saw an advertisement for them. I never saw an advertisement for Alpine or Blapunkt radios, Onkyo stereo equipment. Never saw an advertisement for Black Hills Gold. Most advertisements are for products we already know from day to day use (the truth is the irony of the fact most of us do not have a Porsche, most of us haven't ever seen a Lamborghini in real life... the least needed advertisement also is the least utilized day to day).

I know about Mt Dew, I have drank tons of it. I don't want to see a Mt Dew commercial; I don't care if they have a new Code Purple drink, I'm sure I'll notice it just fine when I go to get another Mt Dew. I don't care about Mc Donalds, they can advertise swiss gold ingots for free with every purchase... all owners of a Mc Donalds restaurant should be thrown in jail for the obvious health hazards their food creates. I don't need to see another advertisement for Ford... if that damn company would actually make a decent vehicle they wouldn't need to try to convince me to buy it with flashy ads and carefully choreographed cinematics.

The only thing an advertisement/advertiser or salesman does is try to contradict your better judgment. When you see a fine product, you know it's fine. When you see a crappy product, you also know it's crappy. But you buy a lot more crappy stuff than good stuff, largely due to being convinced to shop at WalMart rather than the cost difference. How many shitty Timex, Swatch, Armitron and DKNY designer watches have been sold to each individual? 400 dollars for a crappy designer Coach watch at Macy's.... it's a Timex with those stupid C's on it. I don't care to be sold a crappy product. Fire the salesman and spread his pay amongst the craftsmen... the product will sell itself, fool.

So I don't give a shit about advertisement. I don't want to see it, ever. Nor should I have to pay not to see it. I want NO advertisements. None! Stuff all the advertisements into one channel, that way I can walk around my neighborhood and find the morons who might be watching it. (Ever notice you can always get what you want from people who watch infomercials? You can always convince these fools of anything, Young Earth Creationism? You name it. They are fools.)

Google. I want no advertisements. Not one bleep before, during or after the show. I don't give a damn how awesome the show is, I won't watch any of it if there's a commercial on the air. If I have to pay, one cent, I want no advertisements. If I buy cable service for TV channels... I paid already, why should I have to watch an advertisement, on any channel, that is only going to be additional pay? Why should I be tricked, conned, sold, convinced, fooled, persuaded to buy any damn thing?

Just so you know, it's also why I don't go to a lot of theme parks or sporting events. If I have to pay for a ticket to get inside, there better not be any advertisement when I get in there. If there are advertisement, then I want the cost of the ticket back as they are making money from the advertisements.
Personally I think should any service or product be sold, it should be illegal for it to contain or reference any other product, or otherwise reasonabl

Re:It's nice, but not that nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

CherniyVolk: Wow, you pretty much nailed my thoughts.

I got sick of countless attempts by marketers to be brainwashed and tempted to spend money on their garbage at least a decade ago--that's when I completely gave up on cable/satellite broadcasts, and my hatred toward advertisements has only risen since then, as it's snuck into more and more aspects of life ("freeware," for example... toolbars and adware, anyone?). Ironically, I am 25 right now, which means that I was fed up with all their shit by the time I was 15. Most of the people around my age at the time were always talking about the latest crap movie or whatever anyway, so I ended up hearing about it anyway, which just goes to show just how much of a grasp advertising has on people. It's disturbing. It didn't take me many times getting burned buying crap that was advertised to be great that I caught on... it's amazing that so many people keep taking these corporations' advertising rod right up the ass, over and over.

Luckily, I was a gamer since I was young (lately not so much) and was always interested in computers, so it was easy to do; I just used the TV for 100% gaming (which I always preferred over television). And when the Internet came, it was only a matter of time before the ads annoyed me to no end, just like they did on cable/satellite, causing me to find a way to eliminate them from every machine I touch.

To be fair, I have seen some rare advertisements that gained my interest. Unfortunately these are on channels I would never waste my time watching anyway (every one of their other ads are as worthless as the shows themselves), and I could count the number of times I've seen something of real interest in the last ~12 years on two hands at the most. If I'm interested in something, there are better ways of getting the news. For example, if I want to know when one of my favorite bands - King Diamond - has a new album coming out, I go to their official website (www.covenworldwide.org) and read the news, and perhaps check the Wikipedia articles for any new information with links to news articles. Then there's always Google or some other search engine for further information.

But Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew? I've probably known what those three drinks and gazillions of others are probably since I was 3 fucking years old, and as you mentioned, it wouldn't take long to spot a new one that looks out of place in the store. In fact, after years of basically binging on the crap, I have since drastically cut down on it in favor of just plain water in order to avoid such things as high-fructose corn syrup and carbonation (to try and get rid of the occasional, painful irritable bowel syndrome symptoms), and their ads are not going to start me back up again.

Ford, GM, etc.? The economy is going to shit, and they are wasting our time trying to get us to blow a ridiculous amount of money on a new vehicle. Come the fuck on. Toyota? I listed them separately for the joke that they are: It wasn't until their sticking gas pedal notoriously caused accidents that I started seeing their advertisements skyrocket, claiming they're "the best in safety." Oh! And never mind the fact that Toyota's ads, like all the other vehicle manufacturers, are just trying to get is to blow obscene amounts of $$$ on something most of us don't need (or can get much cheaper, used), with an already bad economy. Too bad Toyota, I don't feel sorry for ya, and sticking gas pedal or not--it's highly unlikely I would ever buy one of your cars.

The latest games? I don't need ads for those, I've got that well covered--you know, being a gamer and keeping up with the news. There are various sites that have a list of all recent games as well, with reviews, even if I'm not up to date on the latest gaming news.

Oh, and BTW: As you mentioned, Alpine does make some freaking excellent car audio equipment. My head unit, as well as my four main speakers and the amp powering them, are all Alpine. My subs, Kickers, are also excellent. I don't think I've

Those are called "bugs".

[Anonymous Coward]

Local affiliates are bad about putting big, opaque ones, but at least its only during their news (usually). At least the networks try to be unobtrusive with a smaller, transparent one. But I'm with you, I'd rather they not be there. That, and the lower thirds they throw in to promo a different show. Better yet, I wish they'd ditch the promos and tell the show producers to add 4 more minutes of content.

NOADS

[dandart]

I am watching no adverts - I look for things I want to buy - I do not want them forced upon me. If that means AdBlock Plus, then so be it. If that means MythTV remove commercials option, so be it. As soon as the world is forced to watch or pay, I think the providers should pay US for watching their commercials - what if we're charged to download them by our ISPs? It really helps lessen bandwidth costs, removing ads.

If it comes to it - I'm pirating the programme - after all, it was shown to me for free!

Political ads

[edmicman]

Hell, I wish the cable companies would let me pay extra to NOT see the political ads these days. Like $10 a month from now until November...they'd make a killing on it

Freakin kids on the lawn again!

[Anonymous Coward]

When I first started going to the indoor movies,in the early 50s for reference, it cost 35 cents, you got two movies, plus a cartoon, and sometimes a news reel, although those latter were fast fading out because of television.

Today I am a curmudgeon. I won't pay what they want for indoor movies, ya, big screen is nice but the other "ambiance" at the movies today isn't, like assholes with cellphones, and instead get mine on DVD for two dollars used at the pawn shop or haggle at yard sales. We got five movies yesterday in fact for ten bucks, about what they are really worth on a stamped disk. I don't pirate, but damn if I will feed the content shillers coffers in WAY overpriced hollywood for ludicrous profits either, none of that crap is worth it. Ain't a one of those "stars" worth being damn close to being a billionaire. Forget millionaire, oh noes, they ain't happy with that, some of those idjots demand to be "billionaires" from being an "artist". Screw them, they can bite me. Same with sports "stars", forget it, stopped going to live sports venues because none of those idjits is worth that kind of money, watched tickets go from affordable to "you got to be shitting me!" levels, not when people who do real useful work on this planet are woefully underpaid still.

Entertainment should cost LESS than necessary stuff, not MORE. and that includes labor/pay scales and what they want for copies that they can pump out for a freaking dime.

If it is capable of being digitized, it should be cheap as heck, but it still isn't, for viewing at the theater or on disk or download. I'm not cheap, I just hate being price gouged for what I absolutely *know* could be much more affordable "new" entertainment options, or anything else for that matter that can be digitized and sold cheap, like software. Sell it cheap, make your money on volume distribution, BIG volume distribution.

Ads, before a movie, I don't care, want to provide it free in exchange for some ads, I can live with that. If interesting I'll watch, if not, tune it out. Automatic now, ads don't bother me. Ads on web pages do though, especially flash ads. Simple text links ads are fine, beyond that, you get blocked. Ta hell with waiting five minutes for some page to load as it pulls javashit ads from 17 different servers all over, that and it is a security threat, so blocked they get.

And what the hell is up with using flash to display static images?? Just because you can?? Please wear a sign or a T shirt saying you are a web master who uses flash for static images so I can see you and give you a fast one to the nads.

TV station logos

[Anonymous Coward]

One of our local station managers told me, after I complained that their new logo was twice the size of the old one and was huge on our HDTV, that the TV station logos are reportedly used for Nielson viewers to record what what local channel or cable network they are watching. Ratings is all they care about, not annoying their viewers.

The end of the Bio Break?

[DesertNomad]

In the good ol' days, that 10 minutes of commercials before would allow me time to hit the head, make a sandwich, grab a beer. But, I'm sure they'd make it so that the view time would be **interactive**, so I'm going to have to train my robot monkey to hit the mouse button the exact number of times required to get through that 10 minutes. Well, I guess that's an opportunity for new business!

Ehm, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Cant do that anymore, we dont need that much beer and food and toilet-visits.

Activities, great

[BillX]

"the system may require the user to follow activities that generate a certain amount of advertising ... before the program will continue."

Trans:

"You must punch _7_ more monkeys to continue. You have punched: _3_ monkeys."

It's a slippery slope

[accel229]

First you pay to skip commercials.
Then they add "premium" commercials that still get through. They charge whoever wants to air such commercials extra money, of course.
Then they introduce an option to skip these "premium" commercials, again for additional money.
Then you pay for that option and the situation repeats...

This happens in other industries, so why not here, right?

You make me sick.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Mods, mod me troll if you want, but that's simply what I feel. It literally nauseated me to think how petty and self-entitled the parent must be.

He says he's fed up with advertising, but as soon as he gets the option to do without (of course, supplementing the revenue it brings), he not only refuses, he tries to construe it as yet another moral reason to continue gorging himself on free entertainment at the expense of, well, everyone else. No more advertising, no more "double-dipping", just a single fixed price representing what it's worth.

But, oh no! That's not good enough! Any attempt at compromise needs to be met with disdain, viewed as a poor attempt. Somehow, the blame for compromise failing needs to be shifted to the producers, because otherwise, the pirate would need to face a choice: become a hypocrite, or even more terrifying, relinquish his free source of entertainment!

OK, I have to go throw up now.

Knock Knock - Who's There?

[dogzdik]

Garn.

-

Garn Who?

-

Garn Get Fucked.

-

These idiots get more fucking stupid by the minute.

-

Buy a book - learn to read, write and play an instrument, invite friends over for sing alongs and dances.....

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Fuck Google.

Re:Buckets of popcorn

[hydrocloricacid]

RE: Bucket of popcorn.

Buckets are the kitchen utensils of the farmyard.

Wait -

[Geminii]

Sorry, why would I want to buy/use equipment which showed commercials, again?