In our universe, we own a Tivo in order to watch shows on our schedule, without commercials.

In the parallel universe inhabited by ABC’s ad sales chief Mike Shaw, consumers will acquiesce to his evil plan to disable ad-skipping fast forward buttons on cable customer’s digital video recorders. According to Good Morning Silicon Valley, Shaw told MediaDailyNews:

“I’m not so sure that the whole issue really is one of commercial avoidance … It really is a matter of convenience — so you don’t miss your favorite show. And quite frankly, we’re just training a new generation of viewers to skip commercials because they can. I’m not sure that the driving reason to get a DVR in the first place is just to skip commercials. I don’t fundamentally believe that. People can understand in order to have convenience and on-demand (options), that you can’t skip commercials.”

Shaw may want to catch up on his trade magazine reading. GMSV has this link to a 2005 survey showing that 62% of respondents see “not watching commercials” as a benefit of DVRs, and 55% enjoy “watch(ing) their program faster by eliminating commercials” (the leading benefit, according to 76%, was time-shifting). This summary of a Nielsen / Lifetime study says that 84% of DVR owners wanted one so they could skip “commercials / uninteresting content;” it also says that 68% of female DVR owners “always” fast forward through commercials.

We wish Shaw luck, as long as he stays in his universe. If he comes over to ours, he’s just going to create an opening for the sale of standalone DVRs from manufacturers who aren’t in bed with the cable companies, or for competitive services — DirecTV, Verizon — to promote DVR offerings with fast forward. For those people who aren’t getting their video from YouTube, that is.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 7th, 2006 at 5:14 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.