OK, so it’s not a one-sided argument, but still, put me down for one of these … the equivalent of AdBlock in my web browser:
Now WHO would click 'No'? Anybody?
The disruptive technology at hand is an ad eraser, embedded in new digital video recorders sold by Charles W. Ergen’s Dish Network, one of the nation’s top distributors of TV programming. Turn it on, and all the ads recorded on most prime-time network shows are automatically skipped, no channel-flipping or fast-forwarding necessary.
Oops.
Ted Harbert, the chairman of NBC Broadcasting, … [called] the Dish feature an insult to the television industry. “Just because technology gives you the ability to do something, does that mean you should? Not always,” he said.
Yeah, good luck with that argument. Meanwhile look at what these ‘desperate times’ have led to …
James L. McQuivey, a vice president and analyst for Forrester Research, said that “with Dish’s aggressive move to please the end customer rather than advertisers, it’s clear that in the fight for TV revenue the gloves have finally come off.” He continued: “The fact that Dish would be willing to anger some of its most important content partners just goes to show how desperate these times we live in really are.”
Shock! Horror! Scandal!
Read Brian Stelter’s article at the NYTimes.
Or buy the box set of DVDs?
-P
PS I saw a figure of EIGHT MINUTES ads quoted in a recent “half hour” episode of prime time TV. That’s what’s driving this technology. Audience abuse.
