Look Ma — No Hands!

Trying to Keep the Viewers When the Ads Come On - New York Times

Oh no! The ad-supported world of TV is crashing down around itself! DVRs are to blame!

You all know about this by now. Armed with an HD DVR, you are the master of your own cinema. It's a beautiful thing. But not for the networks, who depend on you watching the very commercials that the DVR makes it so easy to skip. The only way to defeat this is to make the ads part of the program, a strategy American Idol has mastered and other programs are beginning to use.

As interesting as this problem is, though, how can malarkey like this make the Times? "...more viewers are watching shows delayed rather than live, using TiVo and other DVRs," the article linked above says. "Research indicates those viewers are more likely to fast-forward through spots than those who watch live TV."

Really? And here I thought people who were watching live TV couldn't fast-forward through commercials at all. What's that? They can't? Then how on earth could anything but what the NYT wrote be true? Tautologies are hardly news. "Viewers who can fast-forward through commercials are more likely to do so than viewers who can't." That's what the article basically says. People who have hands are more likely to give handjobs than people who don't, too, you know. I look forward to reading about that illuminating fact in the Times tomorrow...