Skipping commericals is not theft. It may violently upset the premise that broadcast and cable TV have always assumed would always exist, but your business model is not our problem. Innovate, or get off the pot.
Why wasn't this an issue when people started skipping over commericals with their Betamax 20 years ago?
Re:Business model
ziggy on 2002-05-03T12:43:38
There are five main ways to pay for television programming in the US: advertiser sponsored (through commercials), public sponsorship (PBS, funded through taxpayer dollars, memberships, and the charitable foundations that underwrite programming), subscription (cable channels like HBO), pay-per-view (mostly for boxing matches and recently released films), and infomercials.The folk wisdom used to have it that there was only one way to make TV work -- to have a single sponsor pay for an entire program (the Texaco Star Theater), until someone came up with the idea of spreading the cost out over many sponsors. Then the folk wisdom was that there was only one or perhaps two ways to make TV work -- commercials or government funding.
Today, we're seeing hybrids like NBC where some of their income is coming from ads for broadcast and cable programming, some of their income is coming from subscriber fees on cable. Presumably, there are some deals to be had by syndicating old TV shows as well.
I'm not saying that I particularly like any of the solutions here, but if Ted Turner is having a hard time scraping a few billions of dollars together because people are skipping commericals on TBS, then perhaps it's time for him to start thinking outside the box, or just step down.
Re:Business model
pudge on 2002-05-04T20:46:16
My wife recorded an Alanis Mmoorriisseettee special on a new women's channel, Oxygen, a few weeks ago. They have a black band along the bottom of the screen, similarly to how TNN does it (the channel that has ST:TNG on 12 times a day). TNN usually just has the name of the show and network, and maybe an "ad" for an upcoming show, in the band. But Oxygen has advertisements for other products along the bottom. Constant ads. Sucky. They didn't look too bad -- nothing like the 1986 World Cup Budweiser ads or anything -- but still, annoying.Re:Business model
ziggy on 2002-05-04T22:13:21
The constant [ad] crawl will probably be the wave of the future. I can't wait for the day when a significant number of viewers are watching broadcast/cable TV on their computers (through a bt48 card or somesuch), and then "discover" they can place an overlapping window on top of the crawl to hide the ads. Or the day after, when the TV execs start campaigning that using overlapping windows is tantamount to theft.Sadly, I'm only half joking here.
Re:Business model
vsergu on 2002-05-05T01:41:06
Putting black electrical tape on your TV screen is theft.
