Petteri Pyyny
13 Jul 2002 14:26
Chairman of Turner Broadcasting System made more controversial remarks related to the rise of digital video recorders, such as TiVo. He says that consumers' ability to skip commercials could kill the current advertisement-supported TV as we know it and eventually change all TV channels to rely on subscription fees.
This is actually what Internet publishers have feared and in some extreme cases already realized -- users have the ability to "skip" or "ignore" ads by using technical methods and therefor pushing the advertisement income the publisher receives, down. TBS is part of AOL TimeWarner and controls media names such as CNN and WB.
According to survey, around 70 percent of DVR owners use their devices to skip the commercials. Obviously as a counter-argument, the advertisement biz is worth of $60 billion and is unlikely to disappear, but what will be the method that they'll use in future, if the eyeballs watching 30sec ad clips every 15mins are going to disappear. TV stars wearing "Buy our product" T-shirts maybe -- open and ruthless product placements?
Anyway, interesting stuff. More from Associated Press via Yahoo!.