[GeneD]

How have your stock options been doing?

[Born to Conserve]

Do people still watch TV?

I stopped during the "War on Terror" when they started with the crawlers on crawlers on crawlers, and the mini "icon commercials". Way too obnoxious.

[Revolting cat!]

We could even improve on the idea by having viewers pay the companies advertising their products for the privilege of not buying those products. Ebryboddy heppy!

[Hodar]

The genie is already out of the bottle. True, advertising pays for the TV shows we all enjoy, and the capability of skipping over the advertisements is presently available on Tivo and DishNetwork sets. The challenge to the TV industry is to manage the air:commercial ratio such that the consumer doesn't feel it's worthwhile to buy an aftermarket 'filter'. Have fewer commercials per block, and charge more for them. If instead of 10 minutes of TV followed by 2 minutes of commercials, I only had 30 seconds of commercials, I may be inclined to put up with the commercials instead of purchasing a device to remove the unwanted portion of my nightly entertainment.

[Samwise]

Mind Boggling Bump

[Voltage]

How does this work? Do you mute commericials for a set period? I don't see how the machine can tell what are commercials and what is the rest. I only watch FOX News, so recording and playing later is of no interest to me.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Perhaps Jamie Kellner and the rest of those snobs should PAY US for watching commercials.

[RippleFire]

Coming soon: Blipverts!

[RWCon]

threaten to destroy commercial TV, which, he argued, is already a fragile business.

My heart bleeds for the bastards.

[DrDavid]

Didn't TiVo report that the most watched and re-watched segment of the Superbowl, wasn't the game, but the Brittany Spears Pepsi commercial? That would show that Keller's idea that PVR users are stealing from the networks is wrong!

It would help if the programming transmitted was actually worth watching.

[Political Junkie Too]

Uh, public airwaves?

-PJ

[TightSqueeze]

as much as $250 per year.

This is a sort of an hypothetical Ask Emily... If a person is already hacking satellite TV, would they still need to pay the $250?

[MarkL]

I have an idea... How about we, as cable subscribers, have an option to "opt out" of their channel, so that we don't have to pay for it if we don't want to. Then, we can charge THEM for access into our homes. That way, they could schedule 24x7 commercials!

Mark

[babygene]

Jamie Kellner suggested later that day, that those Americans that did not watch tv should also have to pay the 250.

[Kozak]

Oh yeah, like I want to watch his crappy Braves anyway!

[Hodar]

Jamie Kellner does have a point. TV shows seldom make any money (Exceptions are BATMAN, Sesame Street, and others who make money by franchising products outside of the TV medium). But as a rule, the TV shows only lure watchers so they can be hit by advertising. If we can filter the advertisements from the shows, advertisers won't finance the shows we love.

[Blue Screen of Death]

If the ad people would make interesting and informative commercials and limit the number of times they are repeated, they might keep more viewers. However, if they follow the "bowflex" school of repeat until the viewers wear out their mute buttons, then they can expect viewer dropout.

[tm22721]

Just make it all subscription services like HBO.

Who watches commercials anyway ??

BUMP

[Eala]

threaten to destroy commercial TV, which, he argued, is already a fragile business

Given that commercial TV appears to be pitched to the bottom one percentile of American IQ, I'm not surprised. What's there to watch?