[reed13k]

I think they will eventually have to completely change their money model from $/second air time to $/x # of viewers. Then bill for the actual viewers for the time frame the commercials are running - with 3rd party verification from the website trackers it would be fairly clean. Difficulty will be agreeing on what an individual view is worth to the advertiser - it’ll be less than today, by how much will be the fight.

I’m also really hoping for more competition in broadband internet - I really only have one option in my area and that’s time warner. If I didn’t have to have them for hi speed intent I would definitely switch.

[TomGuy]

$/x # of viewers

Cable/satellite providers might have the software capability to actually count how many watch any given program at any given time.

The Internet does, because 'content' is downloaded to the computer and then 'interpreted' into a video file.

Hulu or Netflix*, for example, can probably count how many watch each of their programs/movies. In the case of Hulu and Crackle and similar commercial-inserted providers, they can count the number of views/downloads even the commercials get.

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*Netflix has my entire viewing history under 'my account'. I suspect that most content providers have similar databases.