Turner CEO: "PVR Users Are Thieves" 971
A user writes: "It was bound to happen - 2600.com is reporting that Turner Broadcasting CEO Jamie Kellner is calling PVR users thieves. When asked why personal video recorders are bad for the industry, Keller says 'Because of the ad skips.... It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming.' Since when have we made contracts with the broadcasters for watching their content? More of the 2600 article can be found here."
I find this friggen disgusting (Score:2, Interesting)
Other Crimes (Score:5, Interesting)
Skiping commercials is theft? Then what about hitting mute? What about going to the bathroom? What about talking loudly to your loved ones during commercial? Gonna send us to jail for that?
Should we envision a dark future where you watch a show and then are QUIZZED on the ads you saw? If you pass you're good, if you fail you're fined? That's the only way I can see this form of theft ever really held in check.
When I buy something and take it home or have it delivered to my home, I can do whatever I want with it. If I buy something I can use it however I want. I can even throw it away if I want. Same should apply with my cable television. I paid for it, it was delivered. I didn't sign any contracts promising I'd watch any single second of it, and whatever I do with it is up to me -- the sale never stated otherwise.
And what about broadcast television? What are your signals doing tresspassing on my property? Okay, that one's a bit silly, there are federal regulations for airwaves, but it isn't much siller than calling skipping an ad theft.
enough is enough (Score:2, Interesting)
strange things are afoot ;) (Score:3, Interesting)
but bill and ted will have their revenge:
- digital television, brought to you through your xbox2.
- advertising overlays on your shows every three minutes that you can only get rid of by pressing a special key combo on your xbox controller
what's scary is that you could almost see something like this happening. how fucked up is that?
Re:I love these morons... (Score:2, Interesting)
is also unwritten but
we hold to it fast.
CEO is right (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's think about it this way: let's say in five years, everyone owns a VCR that removes commercials. Thus, no one ever watches commercials, and all broadcast networks go out of business. You know what all the Slashdot posters will be doing? Posting here because they can't afford to pay for their shows!
People, look, you can whine all day about how you deserve to get everything for free. At the end of the day, someone has to pay for it, though. Yes, you can go to the bathroom, channel surf, use mute, whatever. The point is, with all those methods, the advertiser has a chance to get to you first. You can ignore it, but the advertiser can still catch your attenetion. With a Tivo, that doesn't happen anymore. You can skip commericals with no risk of missing anything.
Think of it like a timeshare deal, where you get the free weekend for listing to the sales pitch. You might very well go there with no intention of buying anything, and you may well leave without spending any money. The point is, you can't skip the sales pitch. Everyone gets to take their shot since you took the offer. Same with TV. The advertiser won't spend money if there's no change of people watching his commercials.
new business plan!! (Score:2, Interesting)
"It's not our fault we lost 54 billion! They didn't watch the commercials!!!"
Re:CEO is right (Score:2, Interesting)
Total fscking bullshit
I pay for several channels (some of which I can't even receive) which have ZERO commercials, apart from their own "watch this programme on Friday" type. I don't have a choice in paying, it's the law. As a "benefit" of that payment I can receive two other channels (out of the three available) that DO have advertising, but never watch the ads anyway. Zero money goes from me to the advertisers. Why would they go out of business? Only if they are relying on the ad revenue. Channels that charge for content AND shove ads in your face are the worst. They're getting a double slice of the pie for no perceived benefit to the consumer and should be stamped out.
Noone is saying "I want everything for free". Paying for content is a good idea. Paying to be told what you can and cannot watch is not. Paying for shit and then told you don't have a say in it is not.
P.S. There's also the "Off" button. How many ads are watched when the TV is off? None. Fuck 'em. It's the consumer's choice to increase their electricity bill. Not the broadcasters.
Re:Other Crimes (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course Turner's real concern isn't whether people skip the adverts, it's whether he gets paid by the advertisers, in which case it's not a lot different to websites saying "please click on the banner ads so we get money from the advertisers".
Dunstan
BTW, is this the same Turner as runs TNT? I happened to be in the US for the 1990 World Cup, and remember that TNT repeatedly interrupted the live soccer to run adverts while play continued, and it was the same adverts over and over and over again. After that I vowed never to by "Tums" again. Worse, they ran trailers for their own World Cup coverage instead of cutting back to the game which was going on. Madness.
Class action for defamation? (Score:1, Interesting)
Can't that be the grounds for a class action for defamation?
Cheers...
P.S.- There is a little diference between something that one doesn't like and something illegal. And anyway, isn't thieving a public crime? If so, it is also improper for calling thief someone that has making a breach of contract (as that isn't a public crime, but instead a civil case).
This is gonna... (Score:2, Interesting)
When the MPAA says anyone attempting to break the encryption on DVDs is a pirate, it can be difficult to explain to the laymen how innacurate such a statement is. One could go into depth about fair use rights, the definition of "pirate", as well as region coding... and on and on. However, noone is going to need any kind of geek to layman translation of this bull.
All of a sudden I'm entering into a contract when I hit the power button on my appliance which converts electromagnetic waves into pictures and sound!? Um, I don't think so. Nope, no matter how much the dictatorial corporations try to push this concept on the public, ain't noone gonna buy it.
Quality TV vs. Bullshit WB/Turner/TNT crap (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Is it also theft to just NOT WATCH the ads? (Score:3, Interesting)
If he thinks I have a contract to watch the ads, then he also had a contract: (1) to go back to just showing about 2 minutes of spots every 15 minutes instead of making them every 7 or 8 minutes and taking more than 1/2 of the time; (2) to not have my volume blasted when an ad comes on.
I signed no contract with him or anyone else to watch commercials. But I do question that all seem to put commercials on the same time. Is that collusion between networks???
Re:Does this mean.. (Score:3, Interesting)
If any TV network or cable network tries to tell you (Espically the Turner scumbags) they are hurting because of this then you can be assured that is is a 100% lie. Someone needs to go public calling the Turner network anti-american (Duh, it has been for years, look at who turner is married to) and call the CEO a hypocritical liar. Yes, calling him a liar in public will get things rolling.
This Bullcrap has to stop and it has to stop now. Why the hell do these overpaid SOB's get to make bold-faced lies to the public and not get called on the carpet about it?
I think it's time to start forming an angry mob.
How long until... (Score:2, Interesting)
Or maybe it's already here. I dunno, I don't watch a a great deal. And most of that's BBC.
Re:Contract with the networks (Score:3, Interesting)
The usage is not free of charge, in fact, it is rather pricey. They pay a license fee to the FCC, and have to renew every couple of years....
Now, about this contract..... I didn't sign any contract. I challeng the networks to produce for me the contract I allegedly agreed to, and explain to me through what mechanism I allegedly agreed to this.
Lastly, how about we put together a contract for the networks. Something along the line of the Software Vendor License Agreement mentioned on /. yesterday?
Why would he make such a claim? (Score:2, Interesting)
1.) No person ever signed a contract that says they have to watch commercials. (Legally, none of us ever signed or had a verbal "agreement" to watch commercials.)
2.) The amount of money spent on programs by commercials is irrelevant to the public. If john q. Business man pores money into advertisements and theirs no return then he is taking a risk and is suffering the consequences of the "risk". Equally, if he spends money in the stock market, he is again "taking a risk."
3.) From a functional point of view there is NO difference between a vcr and a pvr. If a vcr is permitted then a pvr should equally be permitted.
4.) On top of that Turner reserves the right to NOT accept business from companies such as DirectTV which provide and support PVR units such as the integrated DirectTV and TIVO unit. Yet instead, you go to Best Buy and there in Big Ads are all the Turner channels on DirectTV. Why?
Because they want the money.
5.) Ultimately, its an issue of money. They just expect to get more revenue from TV ads then they do now.
So here's the BIG THOUGHT OF THE DAY. I wonder if he is making such a critical CLAIM just so that they GET more PUBLICITY and encourage people to buy TIVO's? After all PVR sales are really not doing that great and maybe this is a way to PROMOTE them. (ie-...by saying they're bad..people will want to buy more of them.)
The future of advertising (Score:1, Interesting)
Robert Heinlein said it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Source: The Judge in Life-Line
Shopping and Jail (Score:0, Interesting)
In the future, there will only be shopping and jail.
It doesn't matter (Score:3, Interesting)
Below is an excerpt from an article in The Economist about television:
So how is it that commercial American TV can come up with such funny, clever output? The first explanation is HBO. "Sex and the City", "The Sopranos" and "Six Feet Under" are all made by this cable channel, part of AOL Time Warner. "HBO's achievements have had a dramatic impact on the entire media culture; creatively, it's put its rivals to shame," comments Peter Bart, editor of Variety, a Hollywood industry newspaper. HBO owes its achievements to a potent mix: stable management under Jeff Bewkes, who has held one or other of the two top jobs for the past 11 years; savvy, blanket promotion of its shows; and a business model that relies entirely on subscriptions rather than advertising. Curiously, a channel that did not originally chase ratings, because it did not need to, has ended up grabbing them anyway: on Sunday evenings during the summer, "Sex and the City" often beats other network shows. All this enables HBO to take creative risks, which itself draws talent to it. Alan Ball, who writes "Six Feet Under", had previously won an Oscar for the screenplay for "American Beauty", a successful movie. Writers love working there. "On most network TV, once you have a successful formula, you have to stick to it for ten years," says Michael Patrick King, creator of "Sex and the City". "With HBO, we have complete liberty to take the story wherever we want."
The full text of the article is here [economist.com]
the US legal/business system feels horribly broken (Score:3, Interesting)
when will the insanity end? arresting whole populations, doesn't, uhm, scale well.
in this particular case, there was NEVER a contract. show me my signature, please. therefore no wrongdoing is ocurring. the stations put on 'free' broadcasting and they really thought thay had us nailed. we now have a workaround and their pissed. well, maybe its time to find a better business model! remember the story about the buggy whips and how, when cars became popular, the BW companies had to find a new business? same thing here. no one is willing to watch commercials (given a choice) and you can either legislate/force people to watch the stupid things or - well - update your business to modern times.
personally, I'd be very happy to see all commercials go the way of the buggy whips. if you want to watch tv, pay for it (eg, cable, satellite). but of course, once we pay for it, let us record and watch the way WE want to.
Re:Hey, this sounds familiar (Score:3, Interesting)
Slashdot is using resources in their end to support you when you access their site. That is not the case for Turner. There is no delta cost imposed on Turner by your behaviour.
Re:Commercial Advantage works just fine today (Score:2, Interesting)
It works (like mine did when I watched the tube, gave that up a few years ago due to being an immense useless time sink) by looking for the signals the networks use to indicate to the affiliates "hey here comes a commercial" which is encoded in the "back porch". That's the area of the signal when the CRT beam is repositioning itself from the bottom to the top of the screen. During that period, there is a fair bit of information sent. The "Commercial Advance" VCR's just rely on the idea that for the networks and affiliates to change their codes would take so many bucks that it's not likely to happen.
Some of them also look for black screens around the time of the back porch signal; that can fool them into cutting into the program content on the leading or trailing edge.
And when it's not networks but others, the ads are still encoded with the signalling and the equipment still generates the signal; once it's the standard it's easier to have all cases covered.
Re:All day long I feel like a criminal (Score:2, Interesting)
I love that. I really wonder if compensation for assumed crimes sanctions the crime. Sometimes I wish I was a lawyer so I could figure this stuff out.
Realistically? (Score:3, Interesting)
First, consider that for non-premium and non-public channels between one sixth to one third of all broadcast time is advertisement. That cuts the length of original content to between sixteen to twenty hours each day right there.
Second, consider that in the US most prime-time drama and comedy show will film between nine and twenty new episodes per season. (I don't know how frequently news magazine shows produce new episodes.) Even generously assuming one special event that co-opts a show's time slot happens once a month, this means that for prime time comedy and drama shows, only one quarter to one half of broadcast time is original content. Three hours of prime already gets reduced from 180 minutes to 120 to 150 minutes from commercials. Then we need to reduce that by one quarter to one half yielding a range of 60 (at worst) to 115 (at best) minutes of original content programming each night.
Third consider that Friends and ER are the exceptions. The vast majority of television shows do not cost nearly as much as high profile prime time hits.
Fourth, one isn't counting syndication of programs from series that are owned by a network.
Fifth, networks pay studios so much for high profile prime time hits because the studios can get away with charging the networks so much. Whether or not Friends would still be made at the same quality (*cough*) and sold for such a high price in market driven by subscriptions is an unknown.
Sixth, your division of money is skewed because many of those 100 channels are repeats of the same network. A network only has to pay for a program once, when it purchases it. Your figures would only make sense if 100 channels were actually making 100 different prime time hit programs. As it is, of those 100 channels 10 are ABC, 10 are NBC, 10 are CBS, 10 are WB, 10 are FOX, 10 are independant and 10 are PBS or community access.
Seventh, the thirty odd channels left are by sucscription only. It should be rather obvious that these channels already find subscriptions are more than adequate for producing or purchasing enough original content to stay in business.
Your entire argument is built on verbal flatulence. You may in fact be right, but your numbers are so skewed as to be meaningless to figuring out whether or not subscriptions service only is viable as the main model of television viewing.