Mrs L and I watch very little live television. We record everything we want to watch and then view at our leisure. This has the added bonus of not having to sit through advertisements. We skip them. Two presses of the fast forward does the trick in most cases and not an ad to be seen. Job done.
Yes, I know that the advertisers don’t like this practice. Indeed one such once claimed that we are stealing from them by doing this as their payments are paying for our viewing. That may be, but I am under no obligation to watch a sales pitch. Prior to this, the ad breaks were an opportunity to nip out to the kitchen, so we didn’t watch them then, either. I will not watch advertisements that interrupt the programme. This is not negotiable.
Now there is the technology to simplify ad skipping and the advertisers’ attempts to block it have been rejected.
A bid to block a TV service that allows viewers to automatically skip adverts on recorded shows has been rejected.
Fox had called for a preliminary injunction on Dish Network’s Autohop ahead of a copyright ruling.
Broadcasters Fox, Comcast, NBC and CBS have each sued Dish Networks, saying the show recordings are unauthorised.
Fox said it would appeal against the ruling. It says Autohop is “destroying the fundamental underpinnings of the broadcast television ecosystem”.
But Dish called the decision not to grant a preliminary injunction a “victory for common sense”.
Dish is correct and the broadcasters are wrong. When I buy a magazine, it will have advertisements that have subsidised the articles therein. I don’t look at the ads, though, I skip past them. Am I stealing or breaching copyright by doing so? Of course not. Likewise with television advertising. Adverts in the middle of a programme are distracting and annoying and not one television advertisement has prompted me to buy a product. Indeed,, those I have seen have been sufficiently annoying to put me off buying the product being pushed.
So, sure, I have no problem with broadcasters selling advertising. It’s the free market in action after all. So is my liberty to not watch them. So, too, is the sale of a product that weeds those adverts out.
Dish, which has 14 million customers, argued that Autohop was simply making it easier for viewers to do something most do already – fast-forward through unwanted adverts.
Quite. More power to their elbow.
‘those I have seen have been sufficiently annoying to put me off buying the product being pushed’.
You’re not the only one; there are several products and shops I consciously avoid as a direct result of their advertising – though I would not go as far as my mother, who boycotts one particular supermarket because their jingle doesn’t scan.
The advertisers must be very confident indeed in the stupidity of their audience if they think that those obliged to sit through adverts unwillingly would react in anything other than a hostile manner to the products concerned.
That, removing DRM – all good stuff.
Well PG Tips will never pass my lips again, thanks to the Johnny Vegas “How can a tea taste Eagle!” Advert, that’s for sure!
But even bloody YouTube are putting ads on stuff. You have to sit through some crap to get to the Miles Davis or Art pepper track you want to listen to. Friggin annoying!
We don’t watch any broadcast telly anymore, we only use the internet. AdBlock Plus puts paid to advertising there.
Dish should buy up some advertising space on Fox, Comcast, NBC and CBS – just for shits and giggles 🙂
Easy sell I would have thought – “If you don’t want to watch our adverts, buy our product.”
Oh dear, so you’ll be missing all those anti-smoking informercials as well!
Ace!
I similarly will do whatever it takes to avoid adverts. Handy for a slash or a brew, but generally a total bane. A word needs to be had about rental DVD’s as well. We got a movie from Love Film the other day and, for the first time with anything I have had from them, the disc hijacked my player and would not let me fast forward through the adverts. There were 25 minutes of trailers interspersed with the kind of shit I can usually avoid on the TV, which meant that, by the time the film was reaching it’s climax, I was falling asleep! A particularly shitty trick if you ask me. We accept certain aspects of the cinema experience because there are other benefits. However, forcing people to live through the shittiest parts of going to the cinema, in their own home, and without any of the advantages is a recipe for cancelled subscriptions!
What is this “TV” thing of which you speak?