Networks seek new ways to make DVR users pay
By Marc Perton 
posted January 21st 2005 1:23AM
posted January 21st 2005 1:23AM
The Los Angeles Times has a little article about how television networks are starting to come up with more creative ways to get commercial-skipping DVR users to pay for content. Two major options have emerged: extending the pay-per-view concept to more programs, and embedding ads, in the form of product placements, in the actual shows. While neither option is likely to please viewers used to getting their network shows for free, both are better than a third option: treating viewers as criminals for breaking their "contract" to watch commercials, as one network exec proposed a couple of years ago.
treating viewers as criminals for breaking their “contract” to watch commercials, as one network exec proposed a couple of years ago.
That's funny guess i'm a criminal for switching channels during commercials too. They should sue the person that invented the remote control for theft!
-Jeff
The iPodder Documentation Project
http://blog.zemote.com
I swear that this needs to stop NOW. Every company under the sun is trying to squeeze their customers dry.
Right. Why not charge me for taking a piss during the break?
First, it's been proven that people are actually more attentive when they fast-forward commercials. Second, popular shows are making a ton in DVD sales today. I don't know any real fans of any program who prefer the mpgs they downloaded to the official DVDs. I suggest that if they truly want to increase their profits, these networks fire their high-priced lawyers.
i didn't sign any contracts. i didn't get any contracts.
by their way of thinking, they broke the contract that states they won't produce crap - including "so-called" reality shows and makeover shows.
they were sent numerous copies of the contract over the past 50+ years - each time one of their sponsors' products were bought. didn't they read the fine print?
I'm with you, catflap. They owe me money for all the time I wasted watching Blossom and Who's the Boss.
So now we need a lawyer to make sure we are covered for the time we are in the bathroom?
These TV Exec's believe they are of a highter power, believe me I know where the power button on the remote is, so does everyone else.
words cannot express how irate I am that I am required to pay 5 dollars a month for use of the DVR that i PURCHASED from dish network. they provide me with NOTHING for that 5 dollars. It is THEFT. I do not understand how this is legal, what service is it that they are providing? I could have built a freevo (was going to but got too lazy) and they wouldnt be able to charge me a dime and I could record whatever I want, but this way they at least made 350 bucks off of me when I bought a DVR from them, the least they could do is not charge me an asanine monthly fee for NOTHING.
ahem.
So as I was saying, I agree that this is ridiculous. If the networks werent so greedy, and didnt already cut out so much programming to add in so much advertising, maybe people would not mind sitting through 2 minutes of advertising per hour and skipping the commercials would be a moot point. This is so similar to radio.
Satelite radio came along and there are no commercials so everyone jumped ship, paying a few extra bucks to listen to commercial free radio. [Did you know you can actually listen to MUSIC in the morning? I thought it was illegal. All this time I was convinced radio stations werent allowed to play music before 10am.] And now the radio broadcasters are getting all pissy. It blows my mind how broadcasters in any media can think that forcing their advertising on viewers/listeners is a solution to anything. If they continue
How out of touch with reality are they? People pay money each month to watch HBO. A network that does not cower before the FCC and that plays its programming COMMERCIAL FREE.....fwe.wefo3gnjke
[/RANT]
"treating viewers as criminals for breaking their “contract” to watch commercials"
Yup, we are crimanals for breaking a contract that we never signed or ever agreed to. I think we should be allowed to get our time back some how for all the crap that gets produced.
Only so much more of this time-shifting and other nonsense before I ditch my paid cable for the free bit-torrent television. Tic-Toc.
Shocking.... they are putting some many ad placements in shows already.
Have you ever watched The Apprentice? It is one big advertisement.
I Love to watch TV, but there is NOTHING on TV that I can not live without......
Do they think we are dying to watch John Goodman pretending to be on a diet? or Horatio Caine (CSI Miami) put his hands on his DAMN hips one more time. We really do not care anymore.
The only TRUE drama left in the world is sports. Everything else the ending has been decided before we see it. Sports is the only thing where the ending is UnKnown to the participants and the audience.
There is absolutely nothing on television (especially broadcast networks) that I care enough about to put up with the tricks these jackasses are looking at to fool me and my TiFaux.
Let me watch TV like I want to. If you move your programs 4 minutes past the top of the hour or insert obnoxious commercials into the actual program, I will simply stop watching.
And do you think I'm actually going to pay you to watch The Apprentice? Good luck with that.
Think of the difference between the broadcast nets and the cable nets. Broadcast nets show a program once; they'll move it around to different nights just to mess with you; they'll start it early or end it late in an effort to control the audience.
Cable nets typically show a program at least twice a night (for east and west coast), which is a very DVR-friendly move (reduces a lot of conflicts when I can grab things at 2 a.m.). They run marathons of popular shows, and pepper their daytime schedules with repeats.
Of course, I'm paying for cable, so the cable nets have the incentive to please me.
But that's part of the reason (the other being network shows typically suck) that my TiFaux is filled up with "The First 48" rather than CSI; MythBusters rather than Fear Factor and Dog The Bounty Hunter rather than [insert name of stupid network reality show here].
Jamie Kellner, the network exec responsible for the "contract" quote, is no longer at Turner Broadcasting. He's back at the helm of The WB, from whence he came. He was also one of the original Fox execs back in the early days of Tracy Ullman and the like. Just an FYI.
The amusing thing is that product placement is how TV shows *used* to be financed. Go watch a tape of an old Burns & Allen show sometime. Right in the middle of the sitcom the milkman shows up and they do a little skit about how Carnation milk comes from contented cows. As much as I dread it, I suspect that's the best solution.
Product placements in TV Programming exists and is as bad as in the Movies (can you say Reeses Pieces)
What was the big plug on Alias a couple nights ago. It was the Motorola RAZR mobile phone.
How many Coke commericials have we seen from Friends to Seingfeld.
Even Electrostatic Speakers in Joey & Chandlers apartments. You think that they just had them to look cool. No they were an add placement. You never heard them. Their other AV Equipement was junk. It made no logical sense for speakers costing in the thousands to be in the apartment.
TAZ