Television Without Commericals?

A member of Slashdot posted the following:

How Could TV Survive Without Commercials?

Milo_Mindbender asks: "I'm sure many of the readers of this site know the joy of skipping commercials using a TiVO, Replay or other form of PVR box. I'm sure it has occurred to a lot of us that if someone produced a schedule of commercial stop/start times the PVR could easily make all commercials instantly vanish from a recording. While this would be really cool, if it got really popular it would KILL all the local TV stations and TV networks who depend on ads to survive. Sure, you could say it's their fault for having an outdated business model, but there's a problem: these sources are where A LOT of the content for your PVR comes from. If they die, there's nothing for your PVR to record. My question for this crowd is: 'If the commercials stopped tomorrow, what business models can you come up with that would keep TV content flowing to your PVR?'"

This post leads to the biggest motherlode of FREE public perception and incite regarding how televion and advertising are viewed by regular people. OK, well...almost regular people. They are members of Slashdot after all.

I couldn't read it all although all of it was fascinating.

It ranges from this:

I think most people would be shocked to discover how little spending habits would differ if no one watched commercials...

Mostly, because they don't either. Human brains tend to veg out when the damn things come on.

To this:

That marketing firms never point out that ad campaigns are carefully launched when interest would go higher anyway, is the most devious scam of all.

To this very insightful statement:

Speaking of paying a premium, how about this strategy: Would you pay one cent to skip a commercial?

Have an account linked to the PVR and subtract 1 cent each time an ad is skipped.

Of course, having an account implies a link to a credit card and a unique identifier. This allows for some detailed profiling.

There should be an option to turn profiling on and off, with various benefits to the user if they turn it on (because the profiling is valuable marketing information.)

When profiling is turned off:
Skip an advert: subtract 1 cent from your account
Don't skip an advert: do nothing to your account

When profiling is enabled:
Skip an advert: subtract 1 cent from your account
Don't skip an advert: plus 1 cent to your account.

The people with profiling turned on would have some interesting powers too. For example, if the profiling revealed that 90% of people are willing to pay 1c to skip the Mazda Zoom-Zoom kid ad, that #%)*&#% 'Buck-a-day' or similar computer sale ads, the Dell Kid ads, etc, you would essentially be telling the advertisers to change their tune.

It just goes on and on and on. Check it out at:

Slashdot | How Could TV Survive Without Commercials?

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