How Could TV Survive Without Commercials? 1122
Milo_Mindbender asks: "I'm sure many of the readers of this site know the joy of skipping commercials using a TiVO, Replay or other form of PVR box. I'm sure it has occurred to a lot of us that if someone produced a schedule of commercial stop/start times the PVR could easily make all commercials instantly vanish from a recording. While this would be really cool, if it got really popular it would KILL all the local TV stations and TV networks who depend on ads to survive. Sure, you could say it's their fault for having an outdated business model, but there's a problem: these sources are where A LOT of the content for your PVR comes from. If they die, there's nothing for your PVR to record. My question for this crowd is: 'If the commercials stopped tomorrow, what business models can you come up with that would keep TV content flowing to your PVR?'"
"I've heard a few interesting ideas such as:
- having people pick a few ads from a list and watch them before each show...
- ...giving advertisers a profile of your interest and let them show you a (smaller number) of unskippable ads for things you are really interested in...
- ...ahaving the products show up in the show itself (product placement). For example: Buffy, after killing a vampire, could then slam down a Mountan Dew.
In show ads (Score:3, Informative)
I think this may provide some hope, but I think without traditional commercials they'll be in a tough spot to make ends meet.
Video On Demand (Score:5, Informative)
I believe TV shows can fall under the same model. Maybe the first show (the pilot) is free and each show afterwards is some cost. The cable companies can of course run package deals and such (50 shows a month for X dollars) and the cost may be pretty low if many people watch.
Interestingly, this model bypasses both TiVo's and commercial television's revenue models.
Brian Ellenberger
Re:We already do pay for TV without commercials (Score:4, Informative)
What? Few or no channels? I think you mean few or no commercials, and I agree. Pay tv is the way to go, 99% of 'network tv' sucks ass and there's nothing worth watching. I'll take a handful of cable channels with no ads over 100 free channels any day. Obviously Tivo owners agree.
I think Springsteen said it best "57 channels and nothin' on".
Re:product placement (Score:3, Informative)
Close, but actually not at all. Abercrombie is over 100 years old link [abercrombie.com]... and it became "trendy" for young folks way before that one hit wonder wrote a song about it.
Re:Great if you're socialist (Score:0, Informative)
A little about VBI (Score:3, Informative)
Much like spam filters, there are a few approaches that can be taken to apply statistical data and pattern recognition to the VBI data, which could then be used to skip commercials automatically. There are a few hobbyists doing this.
Since time data is also included in the VBI, the TV stations have exact lists of when commercials are to be inserted by their parent networks. This information, if obtained, could be useful when used in conjunction with the time data in the VBI.
Here's a good place to start reading if you want learn about your VBI... http://www.robson.org/gary/writing/nv-line21.html
Well, the BBC has "survived," hasn't it? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't say you have to like the BBC. I don't say I would like this as a solution in the U. S. I just say, here is an existence proof. Here's one way television can and has "survived" without advertising.
As it says here, [bbc.co.uk]
The BBC's domestic radio and TV services are financed by the television licence fee.
The current licence fee (from 1 April 2002) is £112.00 for colour and £37.50 for black and white.
Anyone aged 75 or over is now entitled to a free TV Licence for their principal address.
If you are registered blind you only pay 50% of the full licence fee.
For less than 30p a day (colour), the licence fee pays for:
The television channels BBC ONE, BBC TWO, BBC Choice, BBC FOUR, BBC News 24 and BBC Parliament;
Five network radio services, plus the BBC Asian Network, and new digital radio services launching in 2002;
Regional TV programmes and Local Radio services in England;
National Radio & TV in Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland;
BBCi.
Re:Um, how would anything change? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Its funny... (Score:3, Informative)
It depends what TV can do for me... (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, these channels provide much better TV (well, for me anyway) rather than the commercial channels, which broadcast the same average bull as the US channels do.
I think there are several questions you might ask yourself when creating a business model. What can TV do for its audience?
Once, four of the 8 commercial channels here in Holland, who own the best watched soap opera, announced that they would go behind the digital decoder. They made a gamble that people's addiction to this soap would force people to accept the new system. But what happened, a smaller national channel announced that they would never go behind the decoder and they owned a soap opera which was less popular, but still. So in the end, nobody went behind the decoder.
So what is TV for people? Education? Entertainment? There's one little problem with TV : forcing the customer to do anything that they're not doing now and which costs them more money will end-result in a competitor giving the same service without the force. People want freedom, not watching Buffy does not mean you're gonna die.
Just simply thinking of a business model is not enough. There's enough TV around anyway - you must have a good reason for me to watch your stuff.
By the way, both education and entertainment have substitutes: go to a theatre or a concert or perhaps read a good book. No TV does not mean no fun.
I guess you really have a problem.
Re:Great if you're socialist (Score:3, Informative)
You can provide content which will please the programmers. You will, however, have little indication of what pleases the public and honestly little reason to care. Stuff like that tends to carry fairly esoteric material, aimed to a narrow subset of the public (not nessecarily your subset!), instead of widely popular content.
that's not true either (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great if you're socialist (Score:3, Informative)
That is where you are wrong. The BBC was from the very start conceived as a television and radio broadcasting company. Considerable sums were spent on research into television and a substantial amount of the technology used in modern TV was developed by the BBC.
The BBC was formed as a corporation in 1922 and received its royal charter in 1927. The first television signals were broadcast in 1936. The Hansard records of the House of Commons debates demonstrate that the potential of television was fully understood.
It does not take a great leap of imagination to realize the potential of combining the movies and radio. The newspaper barons understood correctly that TV would threaten both their power and their revenues.
Re:Um, how would anything change? (Score:2, Informative)
> spending habits would differ if no one watched commercials...
I think the reverse is true: you would be shocked to discover
how effective advertising really is. It is *amazing* how much
it alters the buying behavior of the public. Not everyone is
subject to this type of manipulation, but enough people are
that the overall trend is for ads to be effective.
> Mostly, because they don't either. Human brains tend to veg
> out when the damn things come on.
As true as that is, it doesn't change the objectively measurable
effectiveness of television advertising. I won't quote stats at
you, because you can look those up on your own. Instead, I'll
tell you the experience that drove this point home for me...
I used to work at McDonald's. I live in a community that is in a
serious reception hole[1], so everyone[2] gets cable. Consequently,
they get a number of television stations that correspond to a
different advertising district (Cleveland). When the Cleveland
area McD's runs a special on a given item, sales of that item in
Galion increase as much as tenfold (for a really good special;
threefold is closer to average).
The ultimate proving ground for this is when the Cleveland area
runs the 20pc Chicken McNugget for $2.99. Numerous times per hour,
Galion's McD's drivethrough has the following exchange (usually
almost verbatim):
"Thank you for stopping at McDonald's, may I take your order?"
"Yeah, [pause to examine menu...] Do you have that,
uh, twenty-pieces McNugget for two-ninety-nine?"
"No, I'm sorry, we don't."
"Uh, you don't?"
"No, I'm sorry, that's only in the Cleveland area."
"Oh. [pause, to look in disbelief at price on sign]
So, how much is it then?"
"Four thirty-seven." [I expect it's more now. It's
been a couple of years since I worked there.]
[in tone of obvious disappointment] "Oh. [long pause]
Well... I'll take [pause...] I'll take the twenty-
piece chicken McNugget."
I worked there full time for five years, and Cleveland
must have run that special every year, and every time we
had this exchange several times an hour (during the day
time, not during breakfast or the slow evening time),
and in all that time, *once* I heard a person decide
not to buy the McNuggets and get something else instead.
My interpretation? Almost invariably, they saw the
commercial and set their minds on that 20-piece McNugget,
and _decided to buy it_, before they left home. We sold
roughly twice as many McNuggets (and normally the 20-piece
accounts for only a very small percentage of McNugget sales,
perhaps 10% at most, so that's about a thousand percent
increase in sales of the 20-piecer) whenever this special
was running in the Cleveland area. Normally, an order for
a 20-piece was unusual enough that it might not happen on
any given shift, but during these times we expected to
sell them every few minutes.
Television ads may be stupid, but they work. _Why_
they work is what I can't figure out for the life of me.
[1] TV reception is horrific in Galion; we get a grand
total of three radio stations. We're only about
an hour's drive north of Columbus, and communities
to our north and east get stations we don't get.
Cellphone reception is worse, by which I mean it
is basically nonexistant. (You can drive a mile
outside of town in any direction and get reception
several orders of magnitude better. We have a cell
tower _in_ Galion, but it doesn't help.) We don't
know whether it's merely the shape of the land, or
some kind of mineral deposits that deflect signals
in a way that causes interference, or what, but the
phenomenon is undeniable: out reception is horrible.
[2] Plus or minus one percent.