Dish Network Announces Prime Time TV With No Ads

Hugh Pickens writes "Forbes reports that Dish Network has announced a new feature called called Auto Hop for its satellite TV subscribers that will let you automatically skip all commercials for prime time television from the four major broadcast networks — when you watch programs the day after they are first aired. 'Viewers love to skip commercials,' says Vivek Khemka, vice president of DISH Product Management. 'With the Auto Hop capability of the Hopper, watching your favorite shows commercial-free is easier than ever before.' Craig Moffett says it's going to be hard for Dish to maintain good relationships with its programming affiliates when they start offering a feature intended to cut out the bulk of the affiliates' revenues. Whether the auto-skip feature can withstand legal challenge remains to be seen. 'Given the already long list of industry-unfriendly features promoted by Dish, one wonders if Auto Hop will be the final straw that provokes legal action from the broadcast networks,' says Moffett. 'We suspect Auto Hop probably uses some sort of bookmarking insertion based on automated recognition of commercial inserts (called "fingerprinting'"), which if true could certainly be argued to be a manipulation of the content stream by the distributor.'"

Comments

Re:I work in the advertising industry

[Kangburra]

I work in the advertising industry and it is outrageous how far people can go to abuse others. It isn't free to make all those good tv shows and in my opinion authors should get paid for them. Mostly this is based on advertising on TV. If you don't want advertising, go buy the DVD boxes which don't have them. But have some decency and let people get paid for their hard work. Dish Network is bunch of assholes.

Fine but don't then fill the DVD's with crap about piracy and advertising other shows, I just bought them to avoid getting the actual show I want to see in an uninterrupted format, let me have it!

Re:I work in the advertising industry

[anglico]

The problem isn't just the commercials, it's all the annoying ads in the lower corners of my screen, advertising all the other shows they produce. It distracts from the show I'm watching, and sometimes it blocks something I needed to see that was relevant to the show I was supposed to be focusing on. The networks are shoving more and more advertising down our throats and people are tired of it. Personally I would rather product placement, as long as it isn't the 1950's cheesy way, I'd rather see a Budweiser than a can that says "beer". The 'stars' and the executives are all paid too much and the majority of shows suck. Let's not even talk about reality shows, I really doubt those cost a fortune to make. So I will restate the earlier post "cry me a river"

Re:I work in the advertising industry

[EdIII]

Desperation is a stinky cologne.

Nobody is going to have any sympathy for you because you need to realize one simple immutable fact:

nobody wants the shit you are responsible for making. nobody. everybody hates you with the burning passion of a thousand suns. the only way for you to get advertisements in front of people is by the lack of choice .

Therefore, you are already deeply unethical in any attempt to sue somebody out of existence like Dish Network that is providing what the customer wants (Sonicblue), and deeply disturbed and sociopathic with your successful attempt to ruin television with disruptive overlays during programming.

The only way you can survive is by continuing to make sure the consumer has the lack of choice, and then you sit there with the unmitigated gall to complain when choice is provided.

Get a clue. Get a different career. I suggest Ambulance Chasing Lawyer or the guys who provide fresh meat for Hostel-like entertainment packages in Eastern European countries. You know.... something with a little more heart.

Re:I work in the advertising industry

[xenobyte]

Ads on the Internet were interesting 10-15 years ago... Small static banners advertising stuff that might even be relevant for a student/nerd like me at that time. Today they lie ("You have won!", "You may be at risk..." etc.), flash, jump, shake, slide over content etc. and that beyond obnoxious. I now block it all and it's their loss. If they behaved I probably wouldn't be so likely to do it. The so-called 'targeted advertising' simply doesn't work - for me at least. Whenever I happen to unblock ads or surf from other machines, the ads are all over the place, usually thinking I'm either a pregnant woman or a handyman, both of which are unbelievably off the mark.

I also block telemarketers and paper ads in my mailbox, using relevant signup services.

Ads on TV are even worse. Once in a full moon someone makes a good or funny television ad, but they rarely stand the test of being repeated 6-10 times each hour...