“Advertising within TV shows is still the mother lode of how the networks bring in their revenue, and CBS and the other networks have an extremely important interest in protecting the sanctity of the first-run show’s ratings,” said Andy Donchin, executive vp and director of national broadcast at Carat. Andy might be eating those words in a few years as cable and broadcasters wake up and smell the VOD. Certainly, not everyone is going to pay for ad-free content but an entire generation who will refuse to accept current ad supported content models is fast growing and simply won’t settle for business as usual. Additionally, if show producers and broadcasters see a viable and profitable pay per VOD business model, they’ll dump advertisers faster than Cue Cat came and went.
