Thursday, July 06, 2006

ABC Wants to Neuter TiVo

ABC's president of ad sales wants to take away the power of DVRs to skip commercials. According to MediaPost, Mike Shaw has been talking with companies about developing technology to disable fast-forwarding through commercials.

DVR customers have to pay to watch shows that are available for free, so it is understandable that some might balk at being forced to watch commercials.

Creating a technology battle for showing or not showing ads would be a waste of resources. The better idea is to offer a cheaper DVR with ads, and let the market decide. DVRs with commercial interruptions would still sell, as long as the price is right.

The networks should stick to their guns and require advertisers to pay for viewed ads that were watched later. Pretending that only "live" watching is valuable is denying reality.

Cable operators should launch free network DVRs where they can offer targeted ads that would be better received and provide better value to the advertisers.

Posted By John Gartner at 02:21 PM
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