Slashdot Log In
ABC Wants DVR Fast Forwarding Disabled
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jul 07, 2006 11:02 AM
from the learn-to-spell-bad-idea dept.
from the learn-to-spell-bad-idea dept.
Anonymous CE Worker writes "The television network ABC is looking to develop technology that would disable the fast-forward button on DVRs, and allow commercials to run as intended on their channel." From the article: "Some research executives — even at networks with sales departments that acted differently — had argued before the upfront that ads viewed in fast-forward mode generated value for advertisers, since consumers were at least partly exposed to their messages. But Shaw said ABC was only interested in finding a way to receive compensation for un-skipped ads."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
NEWSFLASH: If your channel is the only one disabling fast forwarding then people aren't going to bother watching your shit in the first place.
Indeed (Score:5, Funny)
Whenever commercials come on TV, I SWITCH TO ANOTHER CHANNEL without commercials.
I bet next they'll try to disable the chan up/down buttons, the mute button, and the power button during commercials. Then they'll try to mandate all chairs have restraints that are activated right before commercials come on. Ooh, and little things to hold open your eyelids and ears...
Parent
Re:Indeed (Score:4, Informative)
A little history first --
This is the reason that many years ago, the networks worked together (sort of) to carefully time their advertising so that it all runs at once. You flip the channel, and all the other channels have their adverts running in time-sync.
Cable channels made that a bit tougher to do, but for the most part everyone remains in-sync for ads.
The more modern way of doing it --
Lets not forget the gobs and gobs of "embedded advertising" that is out there. That Hummer on CSI-Miami is an embedded ad. Those Coca-Cola glasses on American Idol are another example. Anyplace that you can see a product name or brand name identity in a TV show is a paid advertisement.
Sticking with the CSI example, the camera they used to take pictures with used to have no name on it. The show got popular, and all of a sudden it became a Nikon camera.
Parent
Re:Indeed (Score:4, Informative)
It's not even particularly modern. Why do you think James Bond's signature drink is a vodka martini? Because the movie producers made a deal with Smirnoff. In 1962.
Parent
Re:Indeed (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, in the books, his 'martini' is quite strange, from Casino Royale : "Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet (a brand of dry vermouth). Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel." He called it a vesper after a good looking agent. He asked for it to be served in a "a deep champagne goblet".
I'd heard about the Smirnoff deal for the movies, but, I've never found anything yet to confirm it.
Parent
Fine by me... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fine by me... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the networks could have us chained to our sofas and forced to watch advertising for 8 hours a day, kept awake by electrical jolts, they'd do it in a heartbeat.
So anything that makes their advertisers unhappy results in worse conditions for the herd. I mean viewers.
Parent
Re:Fine by me... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you misspelled legislators
Parent
Whats the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
More of the same ol' same ol' of screwing the consumer.
Re:Whats the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Whats the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Whats the problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Sure that's what you think now, but if you watch enough tampon commercials...
Maybe next time you are at the store you'll think to yourself, "Maybe I *do* need some tampons."Parent
Man Law! (Score:4, Funny)
**scribes your post into large book**
Parent
Re:Whats the problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
This would not be pretty (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, an important part of advertising is getting people to hear your message. However, it's also important not to inspire feelings of hatred toward you by trying to force your message down people's throats. If the net result of your invasive advertising is that everyone hates you, how is that a good thing for the advertiser?
Right.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Any DVR manufacturer that goes along with making a DVR less useful than a VCR is going to suffer in a huge way. In 1988 we had a VCR with a 30-second fastforward button.
I'm not even going to get into how making someone watch commercials is wrong.
Aw piss on 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
ABC was only interested in finding a way to receive compensation for un-skipped ads
Whoops, time to change their business model!
Let me introduce myself. I'm an olde farte. I was a teenager back in the 1970's when they were laying the first cable around our neighbourhood. Back then people (the They as in "they say ...") said "nobody will pay for what they already
get for free" and "nobody will pay to see advertising." Well... "they" were wrong as it turns out, people now pay upwards of
50$US for the honour of watching bad programmes and watching Enzyte Bob lose his shorts (tell me those floats in the pool
aren't phallic, go on).
Now it's the content providers who are insisting the viewer (those with satellite and cable) watch the advertisements they are already paying to see.
<Stimpy>Ironic, huh, Ren?</Stimpy>
Time for network execs and particularly the viewers to wake up and smell the coffee.
Re:Aw piss on 'em (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Aw piss on 'em (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, and better yet the business model already exists -- take your network to a pay basis like HBO or Showtime.
The big problem with that approach for ABC, of course, is that it requires that you have decent television that people will actually shell out a few bucks a month to watch. I mean, "Grey's Anatomy" might be all well and good for a network show, but put it up against "Rescue Me" on FX or "Deadwood" on HBO and it's revealed for the lame-brained homogenized crap that it is.
The networks should be the last people with any input into the technology that will define the future of the TV industry. All the decent television is elsewhere, either on HBO or SciFi or Comedy Central or other channels that were never broadcast through the air to begin with. Listening to ABC's bright ideas here is like, well, listening to the music industry when they tell us that the only legitimate way to listen to music is on a CD that we paid full price for and will never lend to a friend or resell ('cause that's just like stealing, you know).
Parent
While they're at it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:While they're at it (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Screw that... (Score:5, Interesting)
No commericials, no annoying crap. I get more done, and if there is anything I want to watch, then I download it off of one of the many sources of free video.
Quality and instant (yet horribly scheduled) access is the only thing TV networks have going for them, now.
somewhat unrelated DRM rant (Score:5, Insightful)
yes I do understand that if I copy this disc I just bought I will get into trouble, yes, I known this since vhs cassettes in my youth thank you very much
that will probably never change, but I think dvd player fabricants should enable skip option on content you paid for...
On Screen Ads (Score:3, Interesting)
Explain, please? (Score:3, Insightful)
If a person skips an ad (or, fast forwards it), they very obviously had no desire to ever submit dollars to that product/company, or would do so already without the ad in the first place.
The difference is the bottom line (Score:5, Insightful)
Advertisers are concerned about DVR fast forwarding diminishing the reach of their advertising and they are right to, it is diminishing the reach of their advertising. Advertisers pay networks for that reach so networks are justifiably concerned about the rise of DVRs impacting their revenue. ABC's arguments that people don't have the right and (most amusingly) don't really want to FF through ads are idiotic, but the counter-argument that ad-skipping is not going to mess with the business model of sponsored television doesn't hold water either.
Parent
Unskipped ads only (Score:4, Interesting)
I trully believe that it is enough that my parents already pay for the dish service (ExpressVu in Canada,) and I trully don't care about the networks' desire to make money on commercials.
---
(going on a tangent here)
By the way, I really reduced the number of visits to the local movie theaters, I went to watch the Superman though and it was terrible experience: it was a 10pm show and people brought their 2-3 year old kids, a family right behind us had 4 of these things at the same time and it was impossible to get the parents to shut the little pricks up. And one of the parents at the end of the movie started yelling at me: you can't treat kids that way, what do you have against kids (the guy was from India I think, but it should be irrelevant in principle,) I told him he should have kept the brats at home and not bring them to the 10pm show that ended at 1am. He wouldn't stop yelling, so I asked him if he wants to take it outside, he didn't, oh well. And by the way, the movie was supposed to start at 10pm, but it only started at 10:20, and they went through all the garbage commercials and all the little good drones/zombies were watching those commercials as if their lives depended on them and I was studying the drones, they were almost drooling with those gigantic backets of pop-corn.
I know why I don't go to the movies: little kids, big up kids, popcorn, noise, (oh yeah, one of those parents behind us left his cell on and was yapping on it for sometime during the movie,) commercials for anything, not just movies, then 20 minutes of movie commercials.
---
Fuck the movie theaters. And fuck the ABC network producers, we already pay to watch their garbage and they just have to stick it to us with all these commercials AND now they want to prevent us from skipping the commercials.
Man I am glad I don't have a TV at home.
Re:Movies (was: Unskipped ads only) (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why I only watch movies at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas [originalalamo.com] here in Austin. No children except at special showings (for Superman, no children under 6 and then only with parent). Even then, if they are noisy they will get thrown out. Also, no commercials and special movie-themed pre-show entertainment. (Unless you consider previews commercials, or 60's-era Car commercials before the movie Cars to be annoying commercials rather than fun pre-show entertainment... which I don't).
Also, they have good beer. Hooray, beer!
Seriously, if you like movies, the Alamo is a good reason to move to Austin. Or, at least, to visit.
Parent
I want to disable... (Score:5, Interesting)
...cars that are pissing me off on the highway.
...cell phones of people in the grocery store with those stupid BlueTooth headsets.
...push-to-talk on cell phones.
...Blackberries.
Is there any reason why ABC should be allowed to disable someone else's equipment that they don't like, and that I should not be allowed?
Re:I want to disable... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
I see more commercials with Tivo (Score:4, Insightful)
And what's with commercials being twice as loud as the show you're watching!
-Ben
Shaw, pshaw! (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article, an opinion by the ABC tool Shaw:
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong wrong! Mr. Shaw! What a tool you've turned out to be. People are not grateful for the timeshifting of their shows... they're grateful for being in control of their watching preferences. Some will watch commercials and will do so whether or not they can skip the ads. Others don't ever watch ads, don't ever want to, but happen to inadvertantly bump into ads every once in a while -- that's the best you're going to get with them.
You want to piss off the customers? Disable the fast forward during commercials... Plain and simple... there will be a backlash.
Too many ads is the base problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
With 22 commercials per hour, it is not worth the time to watch the show live.
When this happens .... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't tolerate live TV as it is, and I have occasionally rewound an ad which looked funny which I had skipped. (Like those great VW ads about unpimpin' your ride
I won't watch yout (*&#^ Kotex, McDonald's, or Huggies commercials because I can guarantee I will ever be a consumer. Your ad contract with ABC does not extend to me.
I wish advertisers would outgrow this belief that I am somehow morally/legally bound to watch the stuff I don't want to see that they paid someone else for. Pay me a few hundred extra/month, and I'll personally watch all of the ads during all of the TV I watch. Otherwise, go away!!
Would not an in-band signal be required? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please do this! I hope all channels do this!
There would have to be some signal that "commercial starts here" and "commercial ends here," otherwise how would the DVR know when to disable fast forward? The OSS DVRs, such as MythTV, could key in on the signal and outright block the commercials entirely. Wow... sign me up!
Better yet... (Score:5, Funny)
PBS (Score:5, Insightful)
Just my two cents,
(I would expect lots of geek and nerd comments but I am posting to
Re:The technology already exists... (Score:4, Interesting)
No I don't, actually. I've had a TiVo since their first models came out and I don't recall any of them having a 30-second skip.
More on your topic: I'm on a fence with my TiVo. I'm worried about the whole DRM thing. It hasn't affected me yet, but the instant it does, TiVO will lose a household with three TiVOs in it immediately.
Parent
Re:They never learn (Score:5, Insightful)
What would it take to MOTIVATE you not to use the word "incentivise" ever again? Do you think that using (not utilizing!) large words makes you sound more intelligent?
It makes you sound like a blathering idiot who doesn't know the language.
Ok -- there -- I feel better now. My co-workers thank you for diverting my flames from them for the rest of the day.
P.S. I'm waiting for someone to post that incentivise is a perfectly cromulent word.
Parent
Re:I see no ads (Score:5, Insightful)
You are watching 1 hour of Television a day.
Ads on US television, 3 minutes every 10 minutes - rough estimate.
1 x 6 x 3 x 365 = 6570 minutes per annum = 109 hours per annum.
What's your time worth $10/hour (conservative figure)?
So that's $1090 p.a. for pretty crappy programming vs £150 p.a for what is without a doubt the best television in the world.
You've been had, mate!
Parent
Re:I see no ads (Score:4, Interesting)
Well perhaps you missed:
Shameless
Black Books
Ideal
Dr Who
BBC documentaries (some of the best in the world: Private life of plants, string theory, etc)
Battlestar Galactica
IT Crowd
The office (UK)
Ali G
Alan Partridge
That show about the priest who lives on the island that i forget the name of...
And im sure ive forgotten a few. Even their shitty sitcoms (read little britian) are way funnier than the popular ones in the us (eg friends).
The only worthwhile american tv is from HBO and PBS. Unless you like watching 'CSI: please kill us now' editions interspursed with reality tv and dating shows.
Parent
Re:Make better commercials (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Hey, here's an idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, I lie when I say "I don't understand". I fully understand: that would be hard. It takes talent and dedication to sit and come up with an engaging story that people will stick with, and that undermines the formulaic "churn 'em out" policies of network TV's reality TV cash cows. They'd also have to stop paying the outrageous 1/2 million an episode for big-name actors, which wouldn't go over at all, and god knows it would just be a horrible loss for the world if Jennifer Aniston couldn't make enough money to buy a goddamn Ferrari after every episode.
Whatever. I don't care what they do. Until my fiance moved in I had bunny ears that picked up PBS, CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox, and the only things I ever watched anyway were Nova, the local news, and Simpson reruns. I don't care what they do. Hopefully more people will wise up and stop plugging into the boob tube every night and send their stupid little marketing schemes into a death spiral with or without DVR.
Parent
Re:Hey, here's an idea! (Score:4, Interesting)
That's why I pretty much only watch
Aside from those and few odds and ends...I really never watch commercial tv...I've not found anything interesting on them mostly for years. I like shows the make me belly laugh, or teach me something...the so called 'reality' stuff does neither. With a Tivo or MythTV..I can get plenty to watch that I like, and after awhile, I know neither what time it came on, nor what channel it came on. And I skip commercials with a vengence...
Parent
Re:Hey, here's an idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
Thief. Or at least, ABC and all the rest would like you to think so. Because you know, it's now your DUTY to watch television, where once they were grateful for your viewership - now it's your responsibility!
Parent
Re:Hey, here's an idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know much law, but to pull a precedent from what I do know, what about the Betamax case? That established that "private, noncommercial time-shifting in the home" counts as fair use under US law. If you can do whatever you like with TV shows that have been broadcast publicly, why did this case even reach the Supreme Court, and why did the justices add so many qualifications to the very limited use of home recording that they decided was legal?
I was under the impression that this still was in a bit of a 'grey area', since they were publicly aired...
The vast majority of the things that people believe are "grey areas" are, in fact, simple black-and-white questions that people just want to believe are grey, because it makes them feel better about doing something they know damn well is probably illegal.
Parent
Re:Hey, here's an idea! (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, the obnoxiousness of watching a five-minute commercial would immediately cause the folks still watching normal-speed TV to go out and get DVRs in order to FF through them; the end result would be that everyone would buy a DVR, and everyone would watch the same 30-second clips!
In time, there would be an 'arms race' between the networks and DVR companies, to see who could have faster fast-forwards, and who could have the slowest commercials. Just think: a two-hour Rogaine ad, transmitted at 0.5 fps.
Isn't technology beautiful?
Parent
Thanks to DRM... (Score:4, Informative)
That's right. Thanks to DRM and the DMCA, I can't skip/FF all the junk on the original, but I can easily make a full quality copy without the restrictions.
At least with VHS tapes I could use a marker to write the time point where the movie started on the tape. Then I could FF there before hitting play. I thought technology would save me from that tedium.
Parent
You don't seem to understand the DMCA (Score:4, Informative)
By ripping that original and making a new copy of it without the restrictions, you have bypassed the copy protection and therefore broken the DMCA, a federal law. I obviously don't think doing that is wrong; I'm just pointing out that it is against the law. I'm just bringing up that both of the actions you described are technically illegal.
Parent
Re:This just in... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then they decided to get even more money by charging us and getting money from advertisers. Then they decided to get even more money by putting more commercials. Then they decided they could get even more money by raising rates and tying users with tiers with crap they dont need. Now they want even more money by skipping commercials ff options. Where does it end? People are paying $100 a month because there is a show they like on HBO on only that tier offers it and for every 30 minute show there are over 15 minutes of commercials.
Is this what this crap buys?
No wonder I refuse to watch any tv. There are some shows I like such as Boston Legal and the West wing but I refuse to just sit there and stare at a tube?? Especially if half the content is now crap.
Back in the 60's you had only 1 or 2 30 second commercials and you could live with antenna.
Parent