I wonder how true that is. We (the/. crowd) tend to forget just how tech-savvy the general population is. Skype is a huge technological leap for a lot of people. Pidgin+OTR is dead simple, but most people don't even know it exists.
They say it's to put in more commercials and not to disrupt TiVo. CNN had a story about it a while back. They didn't believe it either.
TNT runs back-to-back episodes of Law and Order so that the credits for one episode run at the bottom of the screen during the opening scene of the next one. Since they run the same episode two days in a row, it seems unlikely that this is actually a nefarious plot to screw with TiVo. So at least part of the motivation must come from fitting in more commercials.
A number of networks have stopped airing commercials between the end of one show and the beginning of the next. (As opposed to a few years ago, when it was standard to take commercial breaks both before AND after the end credits). Apparently the networks found that this 5-minute break trained their viewers to flip to another station, and viewers that have seen part of a show are more likely to return to that station.
So mangling minutes in the schedule allows for more ads, higher viewer retention, and screws with TiVo, to boot. Why wouldn't a network do it?
It seems like most people are claiming that they don't own any illegal music. No one here is doing anything to hurt sales.
Then again, slashdotters are not your average "techies." As simple as it might be, the average joe doesn't know how to rip his own mp3's. The people who most hurt record sales are the ones who go from the record store to iTunes, rip everything, and share their entire hard drive on Kazaa.
Perhaps bands can learn from They Might Be Giants. The whole TMBG album was available on their site way before their latest CD came out. At their shows, they laugh at the people who buy the CD's. And when they played a free show in Boston, the crowd was half a mile deep.
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I wonder how true that is. We (the /. crowd) tend to forget just how tech-savvy the general population is. Skype is a huge technological leap for a lot of people. Pidgin+OTR is dead simple, but most people don't even know it exists.
They say it's to put in more commercials and not to disrupt TiVo. CNN had a story about it a while back. They didn't believe it either.
TNT runs back-to-back episodes of Law and Order so that the credits for one episode run at the bottom of the screen during the opening scene of the next one. Since they run the same episode two days in a row, it seems unlikely that this is actually a nefarious plot to screw with TiVo. So at least part of the motivation must come from fitting in more commercials.
A number of networks have stopped airing commercials between the end of one show and the beginning of the next. (As opposed to a few years ago, when it was standard to take commercial breaks both before AND after the end credits). Apparently the networks found that this 5-minute break trained their viewers to flip to another station, and viewers that have seen part of a show are more likely to return to that station.
So mangling minutes in the schedule allows for more ads, higher viewer retention, and screws with TiVo, to boot. Why wouldn't a network do it?
Hmm... pewter mugs...
I wonder if Beer abosorbs less lead than water. Maybe that's what they mean by, "Guinness is good for you."
It seems like most people are claiming that they don't own any illegal music. No one here is doing anything to hurt sales.
Then again, slashdotters are not your average "techies." As simple as it might be, the average joe doesn't know how to rip his own mp3's. The people who most hurt record sales are the ones who go from the record store to iTunes, rip everything, and share their entire hard drive on Kazaa.
Perhaps bands can learn from They Might Be Giants. The whole TMBG album was available on their site way before their latest CD came out. At their shows, they laugh at the people who buy the CD's. And when they played a free show in Boston, the crowd was half a mile deep.