Disney Says, You WILL Watch the Ads

smooth wombat writes "ABC and ESPN, both owned by Disney, have struck a deal with cable operator Cox Communications to offer hit shows and football games on demand, but with the condition that Cox disable the fast-forward feature that allows viewers to skip ads. This is the first agreement of its kind. It only applies to Cox's video-on-demand service and will not affect viewers using DVRs to fast-forward through ads. The companies will also test technology that will place ads in shows based on ZIP Codes and geographic area, and 'freshen' the ads with new ones every few days."

Well, then

[pak9rabid (1011935)]

Even more reason to build a MythTV box..

hehe: try to parse this sentence from TFA

[Mateo_LeFou (859634)]

"The agreement could also provide broadcast networks a way to give viewers an alternative to the convenience offered by digital video recorders , without allowing them to avoid the ads, according to the report"

Sorry what is being "given" to viewers here?
-An alternative to convenience (i.e. annoyance)
-"without allowing them to avoid" (i.e. "while forcing them...")

Maybe I'm old-school, but usually giving things to one's customers is, um, phrased positively like e.g.
"giving viewers quality programming *without wresting control of their devices from them

Re:hehe: try to parse this sentence from TFA

[Lemmy Caution (8378)]

They have 2 types of customer, one of them being their advertisers. They are in the business of selling their other customers to these customers.

Perhaps the future is this: as consumers all gain the ability to circumvent ads and the value of advertising on cable declines, that the charges for cable service increase by at least double, since cable providers wouldn't be able to get any money from advertisers. (Ideally, this would be accompanied by a decrease in the cost of other goods, but I suspect that advertisers would simply keep the same marketing budgets and look elsewhere.)

One wonder what things like ratings would mean in a truly post-advertising world. Why spend millions more on a show just because it gets better ratings, if ad revenues don't exist? Would all cable become like the Discovery channel? Or will pay-per-view become universal?

Re:hehe: try to parse this sentence from TFA

[Sj0 (472011)]

I can see the new Star Trek now.

Some dude: "Captain Nestle! The sensors are picking up unusual tachyon emissions on that uncharted planet, planet Ford Escape 8! Shall I set a course with our EA Sports warp drive?"

Captain: "Make it so irresistable, like boating. For more information on boating, call 1-888-555-2104"

[The USS Enterprise car rentals, shaped like a giant bottle of cool, refreshing 7-up, travels to the planet Ford Escape 8]

Some dude:"Captain Nestle! Sensors by Calvin Klein are detecting enormous quantities of awesome! Ford Escape 8 is the best ever!"

Captain:"This is great! Quickly! Call headquarters and buy stock in this planet using the money in my ING bank account, where I [pause] Save [pause] my money"

It would be entertaining, but only if it wasn't serious.

Re:Well, then

[Lumpy (12016)]

Sounds great. so how are you going to get your mythTV box to record cable when they encrypt the firewire connection and nobody has cracked a cablecard tuner to work with it?

comcast detroit is ready to switch to all digital cable. your fancy QAM A180 tuner card will not get many channels and your high end NTSC tuner card will get nothing.

thiat is where it is going for CableTV. It SUCKS for Mythtv right now as NTSC is going away and Cable is hell bent on putting unsanctioned PVR's out.

Your only choice is a Tivo Series 3 with 2 cablecard tuners or wait for the Vista-blessed-edition-MCE with cablecard capability.

The cablecard makers have vowed that it will NEVER work with linux or regular unblessed MCE pC's.

Re:Well, then

[russ1337 (938915)]

>>>> The cablecard makers have vowed that it will NEVER work with linux or regular unblessed MCE pC's.

Somewhere in China, a night-shift manager in an electronics factory that supplies PCI cablecard adapters to the USA, just thought of a new business opportunity.

Fuck it - don't watch cable!

[pestie (141370)]

I know how I'll work around it - I won't watch cable. Seriously. Fuck that shit. There's nothing so compelling on cable that I feel any need to keep it. I've posted before about how I have a MythTV project in the works and when it's done I'm going to drop my DirecTV service and just stick to over-the-air HDTV. And I haven't done it yet, since real life keeps getting in the way, and right now there's just no pressing need. But as more and more things like this keep happening, I have more and more reason to escape from the deadly clutches of pay TV. For now I can make do with getting the few shows on cable I care about via Bittorrent, but if they somehow close all those holes and goes away, I'll either get a Netflix subscription and get entire seasons of shows at once, or I'll just watch less TV! I've been without a TV before and, really, it's not nearly as traumatic as people make it out to be.

Re:Well, then

[DJCacophony (832334)]

You [emule-project.net] can't [bittorrent.com] be [sourceforge.net] serious [giganews.com].

Re:Well, then

[by Anonymous Coward]

You idiot.
Usenet is dead, no one uses it, don't waste your time, piecing together uuencoded files and that whole 7bit-8bit thing is overrated and way confusing. Let it rest and stay away from it and please never mention it again....

Re:Well, then

[cheater512 (783349)]

Thats what a IR Blaster is for.

Re:Well, then

[russ1337 (938915)]

>>> ..for people who want a DVR and not an ongoing project...

I'd say that traditionally you would have been correct. But I just built my second mythtv for the house (Dual core, Ubuntu 7.04, Mythtv 0.20). It took me less than a day, and most of that was just messing with stuff I didn't need to mess with. Last time, a year ago, it took about a week.

The Ubunut7.04 recognizes the PVR-150 out out the box and has a full mythtv package in the repo's. It was a case of one click. No more IVTV rubbish and just follow the instructions to get your remote control working. All not that hard even for a noob like me.

Haven't seen any TV ads for a couple of weeks now.... Unlike Cox cable users....

Re:Well, then

[Darby (84953)]

As a cheap shot, I'll assume you dont have one because if you did she'd be bitching about it. Trust me, MythTV has an almost subzero WAF...

It's through the roof in my house. The wife gets all of her British shows off of UKNova, podcasts, etc etc etc and they download right to the shared directory. Boom.

She just bought a used XBox to use as a frontend in the bedroom.

So given how solid MythTV is and has been for some time now, your argument is both wrong and sadly out of date.

Re:Well, then

[Dr_Barnowl (709838)]

Wifey is the biggest compu-dunce in town, and she loves MythTV.

She likes to sit and flick through the movie listings. She loves the fact that it records every episode of Scrubs.

Extremely high WAF.

Conflict resolution? Three tuners, and a small instruction to wifey to use "find one" instead of "record this". Change the background image? Why the hell would she want to do that?

Seriously, if the moaning about downtime when I'm upgrading it is anything to go by, it's by far the most adored piece of technology in the house, bar none.

TV? Why?

[dazedNconfuzed (154242)]

8+ months for me. When I moved, I deliberately did not have cable TV hooked up. Broadcast TV is pretty much pointless where I am. No TV? it's wonderful. There's too many other things to do than stare at the tube, and if I _am_ going to watch something it's deliberate, worthwhile, and ad-free: DVDs.

When I _do_ happen to watch TV (somewhere else), all I can think is how lame it is.

Re:TV? Why?

[by Anonymous Coward]

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694/ [theonion.com]

Re:TV? Why?

[Andrew Kismet (955764)]

I have mod points (or at least did for this page until I posted this), and couldn't find -1, clueless. You keep your karma for now.

Re:Well, then

[russ1337 (938915)]

If you continue to insist on stealing our content, and engaging in piracy, we're left with no choice but to replace your computer with a DRM-enabled appliance. Please, let us know if our customer service department can be of further assistance ;-)

Funny you say that. It was this very morning one of my colleagues called me a Pirate (Aarrr) just because I use Open Source software.

I said "so to not be a pirate I have to use Windows?" His answer: "Yep, If you use free software you must be pirating something."

Re:Well, then

[Dancindan84 (1056246)]

That's funny, since most pirates I know have more copies of Windows than anything else.

Re:Well, then

[Greyfox (87712)]

I trust you then stabbed him in the face and plundered his booty?

the problem

[nurb432 (527695)]

There is the main problem of open-source. Marketing and the public perception. If we cant get past that, then OSS will never get out of the geek world.

"if its free, that means they can get into your computer, you know all those hackers are bad" "if its free, it cant be any good" "why do they give it away then"

I've run across this, too

[KingSkippus (799657)]

Yeah, this is a bit off-topic, but I just had to chime in and say that I've run across this attitude towards open source software, too.

A coworker of mine bought a cheap computer a couple of years ago. He commented on how he didn't want to spend a lot of money of Microsoft Office for it, and was thinking about getting one of the second-tier office suites. I told him, "Just download OpenOffice."

He had no idea what I was talking about, and thought I was referring him to some seedy warez site. I explained what FOSS was and told him about some of the more popular FOSS applications out there, but he just couldn't bring himself to believe me. He was absolutely, positively convinced that you end up "paying" for free software in one way or another; that even if OpenOffice didn't charge you to download and install their software, that there was some kind of hidden catch where it had to be adware or spyware or something. I even showed him the copy of OpenOffice I have installed alongside Microsoft Office on my work machine. He seemed really impressed, but I think he still ended up buying a copy of StarOffice or Corel WordPerfect Office because he just couldn't believe that it was free.

Needless to say, I don't think he's going to be a Linux convert anytime soon.

It almost made me wish that OpenOffice.org would set up a web site, something like OpenOffice.com, that has the exact same software, but charges you a $50 or so fee to download. Unfortunately, regardless of the best of intentions, some people just don't get it. At least then, I could point these people to the site where you can get the "real" copy.

Re:Well, then

[poopie (35416)]

one of my colleagues called me a Pirate (Aarrr) just because I use Open Source software.

I said "so to not be a pirate I have to use Windows?" His answer: "Yep, If you use free software you must be pirating something."

Oh, man... that is *so* inaccurate. Windows users have very little useful software that is free. Most software is commercial or shareware. Windows users seek to fill the gaping functionality holes with commercial software and get nickeled and dimed (more like $20 and $50) to death. That, I believe, is a major factor for *Application* piracy.

Linux users on the other hand, explore all their well integrated, easy to centrally install, free options and find tools that work great, or pretty well, or at least do some of what they need for free.

Running MythTV, I have more than enough content that I'm paying for to watch on TV - I have no interest in looking for bittorents of video content.

Likewise, using streaming audio, I have more than enough access to audio content to keep me busy for the rest of my life.

Well then

[edizzles (1029108)]

At least i stil have my mute button and a laptop with wirless to distract me

Sounds good to me

[Grishnakh (216268)]

I just won't be signing up for this idiotic service. As the other poster said, MythTV for me.

Customer says

[Opportunist (166417)]

I will not watch a Disney owned channel. Easy as that.

Content is neither bread nor air. I don't need it to survive.

Re:Customer says

[CowTipperGore (1081903)]

Unfortunately, most customers say "Are you ready for some football?!"

The average American ranks cable (or satellite) TV and cell phone service up there with food and water. It will be a lonely boycott.

Re:Customer says

[contrapunctus (907549)]

about your cell phone comment (I just want to show an opposing viewpoint):

how fast things change, 15 years ago nobody had one and behold, we did live and not worse than we do now

My car broke down and I was without a cell phone 10 years ago. I'd say that was "worse than what we do now". Now I carry a cell phone with me especially in a car (and before anyone goes there, I don't talk and drive).

Neither is it "content"

[Mateo_LeFou (859634)]

"Content" is a metaphor intended to make people think of creative works as products to be wrapped up and shipped around like any other commodity, when in fact creative works are natural expressions of our humanity and civilization.

Re:Neither is it "content"

[Mateo_LeFou (859634)]

Sorry, I simply don't agree that "it won't exist unless you pay for it". People do things -- sometimes incredibly impressive things -- for many reasons. To reduce human creativity to an economic transaction is, frankly, insulting to my notion of civilization.

By your logic Emily Dickinson's poems do not exist, since she had no expectation of being paid for them and even wanted them destroyed upon her death.

Re:Neither is it "content"

[MBraynard (653724)]

You are right - to an extent - that some people do things just for kicks or publicity or because they seek some other kind of psychological trilogy.

However, there would be no Battletar Galactica or The Office or 300 without paying. And in the case of The Office, the program is ad supported. There is a causal relationship between creative works - real or intellectaul - and most of the times that relationship is financial.

Here's a thought - Dickenson's poems might not have exited had a publisher not been able to profit by publishing/printing them. This was before the internet.

Re:Customer says

[decipher_saint (72686)]

IF Wikipedia is correct they own;

Disney-ABC Television Group

* U.S. Television Networks:
o ABC, Inc
+ ABC Television Network
# ABC Daytime
# ABC Entertainment
* Greengrass Productions
* Victor Television Productions
# ABC Kids
# ABC News
# ABC Owned & Operated Stations
* WLS Chicago - Channel 7
* WJRT Flint - Channel 12
* KFSN Fresno - Channel 30
* KTRK Houston - Channel 13
* KABC Los Angeles - Channel 7
* WABC New York - Channel 7
* WPVI Philadelphia - Channel 6
* WTVD Raleigh-Durham - Channel 11
* KGO San Francisco - Channel 7
* WTVG Toledo - Channel 13
+ ABC Radio (ABC Radio & ABC Radio Networks have been acquired by Citadel Broadcasting, the sale has not yet been completed)
o Disney ABC Cable Networks
+ Disney Channel
# Playhouse Disney
+ Toon Disney
+ Jetix
+ ABC Family - formerly Fox Family & The Family Channel
# BVS Entertainment - formerly Saban Entertainment
# Jetix Latin America
# Jetix Europe (Disney 74%, public shareholders 26%)
# SIP Animation (undisclosed minority stake)
+ SOAPnet
* U.S. Cable Network Equity Holdings:
o Lifetime Entertainment Services (joint venture between Disney (50%) and Hearst Corporation (50%))
+ Lifetime Television
+ Lifetime Movie Network
+ Lifetime Real Women
o A

Re:Customer says

[j00r0m4nc3r (959816)]

No!! Not SOAPNET!!!

Re:Customer says

[ZiakII (829432)]

I will refuse to watch Lifetime now!

DVRs are saved by Tivo

[jandrese (485)]

The only reason they haven't put these restrictions on the DVRs yet is that they have to compete with TiVo. Once the competition is gone and they've gotten the market sealed up again you can expect these sort of restrictions to start appearing on their own DVRs. MythTV boxes don't count either. It seems to me that the cable companies only embraced DVRs in an attempt to kill them off, I imagine if they manage to drive TiVo out of business then they'll go back to their old tricks.

Re:DVRs are saved by Tivo

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746)]

The only reason they haven't put these restrictions on the DVRs yet is that they have to compete with TiVo.

If you had not noticed, Tivo signed a deal with Comcast to help develop and supply Tivo branded devices as Comcast DVRs, instantly making Comcast their biggest customer. Tivo is a partner to the big Cable companies now, not a competitor (which might be why we're seeing this stuff happening now). The writing was on the wall long before the deal was done as Tivo repeatedly refused to implement features that benefited their customers, but were opposed to the interests of the cable companies (skip ahead without an easter egg, commercial skip, export to DVD/VCD at a reasonable price, export to laptop in mpeg format, etc., etc.)

It seems to me that the cable companies only embraced DVRs in an attempt to kill them off, I imagine if they manage to drive TiVo out of business then they'll go back to their old tricks.

The way cable companies make money is by getting you to watch as many commercials as possible. This means getting you to spend more time watching ads and more time watching reruns with ads. The consumer buying a DVR wants to watch as few commercials and reruns as possible. These two goals are directly in conflict, which is why no one in their right mind should expect a good experience buying from a DVR manufacturer that is also their cable company or partnered with their cable company. They will give you the minimum features needed to keep you from going elsewhere, rather than the best feature set. The cable companies were smart to pay of Tivo, while they were still the only big player in the space. It redirects all the momentum in the space to ground, and gives them time to buy legislation to make sure only cable co. approved DVRs will work with "new improved" TV services. This space is ready for a revolution and a couple of new players, if only they can get by the cable company's monopoly leverage where they provide DVRs at under cost, while overcharging everyone for service to subsidize it.

huh

[stoolpigeon (454276)]

One of the things that I really like about the on-demand stuff I get from brighthouse is that there are no commercials at all - other than sometimes before the program begins. Like Anime on demand will often have a short commercial, then the show with no commercials. It's nice too when my kids want to watch Avatar or something because they get to see the whole episode but takes less time.

Re:huh

[Artifakt (700173)]

And you're getting one more advantage - since your kids watch a continuous 22 or 45 minute show, instead of seeing it broken up into blocks possibly as small as 8 minutes long by commercials, they cultivate a longer attention span. Quite possibly, they will do better in school and even adult life because of their home environment. Sadly, proving any of this is unlikely, as any realistic, controlled experiment would involve something like a test group watching 3 minutes of programming followed by twenty 15 second long commercials, for lots of hours on end. Any parent that would let their kid be in this test group would be unfit enough to serve as an alternate explanation for all the kid's problems.

I hope they're careful

[cfulmer (3166)]

Every rewind backwards by 10 minutes so you could compare what you just watched with what happened earlier? If they disable fast-forward, you'll have to watch those 10 minutes over again.

I wonder if it will be possible to reinstate the fast-forward button by running the on-demand movie through a DVR.

Stuff like this

[C_Kode (102755)]

Stuff like this makes me not feel so bad that China has a government owned Disneylan.. err Shijingshan Amusement Park. http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=1678 [japanprobe.com]

You know...

[VE3OGG (1034632)]

TV, like magazines, newspapers, and radio are financed through ads and sponsors. While I realize that it is convenient and preferable to not have to watch all those damned "Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean, do dah dah do dah dah" ads, sometimes back to back, in between sections of your favourite show, that is what finances your show.

Besides, I have a feeling that with the popularity of DVD sets being what it is, cable TV will likely start to dwindle and the box sets will be released at the beginning of each season. This way people can choose what shows they absolutely want to watch with no commercials, and which ones aren't really that important.

Kinda free-market at work there.

Then again, I haven't watched TV in several years so I don't know, maybe I missed something vital here...

Re:You know...

[gosand (234100)]

TV, like magazines, newspapers, and radio are financed through ads and sponsors.

Huh?

Let me be more clear...

TV (over the airwaves) is financed through ads and sponsors. What about Cable TV, which I pay for? Why do I have to watch ads on those channels? And moreover, this article is about on-demand pay-per-view... why have ads in that? It isn't about financing it, it is about making more money. Unless they are going to lower the price because now the ads will assist in financing it. I think not.

If magazines are financed through ads (which is clear from their HUGE percentage of the magazine content) then why do I have to buy them?

Newspapers - same as magazines.

Radio - OK, here is the one area where you don't pay for it, so you endure the advertisements (or just change the station).

skip VOD

[not_anne (203907)]

VOD is just a rehash of shows are already on the channels anyway. Just DVR the show that's on VOD and skip the ads.

Eye Staples

[Cytlid (95255)]

Wonder what other sort of medieval torture devices they can think of to force us to watch ads?

Not going to work

[HangingChad (677530)]

The harder they try to control viewing habits, the harder people will work to thwart whatever system is put in place.

Sometimes when I'm watching something on TIVO I'll forget I can zip through the commercials. I'm more prone to forget and watch the commercials if there are fewer of them and they're interesting. The really obnoxious ones will spur me to either mute the TV if it's live, FF on TIVO and go to great lengths to find an alternative if some company like Disney tries to make me watch. Not happening.

I love the way advertisers treat viewing like a one-way street. You watch what we give you. Well, screw you, Disney. The local ads are the worst. There are several that get me diving for the mute button. Where if they were more informative and less obnoxious, it might make reaching for the remote more of an effort and I might not bother.

But broadcasters thinking they can squeeze 20 minutes of commercials into 60 minutes of broadcast and advertisers thinking we'll calmly sit through whatever annoying crap they throw up there...yes, I'm looking at you, Oxyclean guy...they can kiss my butt.

Re:Not going to work

[nine-times (778537)]

Sometimes when I'm watching something on TIVO I'll forget I can zip through the commercials. I'm more prone to forget and watch the commercials if there are fewer of them and they're interesting.

Well that's the funny thing, too. Since getting my DVR from my cable company, I've noticed that there are times when I actually stop fast forwarding, rewound, and watched an ad. Do you know why? Either the ad got my attention with something that was going on, or it was an ad for a product I might actually want.

I think that bears repeating: "an ad for a product I might actually want." For the good of our cultural/socialogical sanity, the various groups in the advertising industry should be trying to find ways to deliver ads people are willing to watch without a fight, shielding consumers from ads that will only annoy the crap out of people. That was the whole idea of ads on television, after all-- to make the ads worth watching. Ads today are so fricken annoying, though, that it's usually not worth watching them anymore.

And I'm not suggesting that the advertising industry damage themselves by showing restraint out of purely altruistic motivations. On the contrary, if they don't scale back and find ways to avoid annoying the crap out of people, we might just keep getting more inventive at blocking all ads all the time.

Take the web as an example: A lot of people have become so annoyed with horrible pop-ups, pop-unders, complicated flash junk, etc., and the result is that we've developed extensions and plug-ins that block pretty much all advertising everywhere. If advertisers showed a little more restraint, ad-blocking might not be so common.

Compulsory Viewing?

[youthoftoday (975074)]

What I don't understand is, time after time, people think they HAVE to consume media.

Just go outside! Enjoy the fresh air once in a while. I watch no TV (though there's one downstairs). Disney is probably doing people a favour.

There are other ways to ignore the ads...

[cjmnews (672731)]

10. Take a nap
9. Fix a snack
8. Let the dog out
7. Check your email
6. Get a drink
5. Go to the bathroom
4. Stare into space
3. Read an article
2. Smooch
1. Mute the sound

20 minutes into the future...

[Tackhead (54550)]

> ...Its called an OFF button and I know how to use it.

Janie Crane: "Edison... an off switch!"
Metrocop: "She'll get years for that. Off switches are illegal!"

- from Max Headroom, Episode 1.6, Blanks [maxheadroom.com]

Not necessarily good

[Opportunist (166417)]

As a commercial producer, your goal is to get the attention of people and get them to remember your product. Because, well, that's what your customers pay for.

So far, commercials aren't even seen as a nuisance by many. They are an often welcome interruption for various personal needs, from bathroom to fridge. When you overdo it, people get annoyed.

And don't underestimate the negative effect of force. If you outright force people to watch an ad, they will connect no good feelings with it. So far, what makes people accept ads is that they enjoy the program around them and that they're in a generally good mood when they watch an ad. When they now pick up the remote and can't FF, they're pissed. And if this isn't carefully watched, the general mood when it comes to ads will be a very negative one. Not only on the "conscious" level, where people complain about ads, but also on the subconscious level.

Re:Am I still allowed to go to the bathroom?

[Guy Harris (3803)]

or will that violate my Terms of Service?

The former head of TBS is willing to put up with bathroom breaks, but thinks part of your contract is that you have to watch the commercials [2600.com]:

JK: 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.

CW: What if you have to go to the bathroom or get up to get a Coke?

JK: I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom. But if you formalize it and you create a device that skips certain second increments, you've got that only for one reason, unless you go to the bathroom for 30 seconds. They've done that just to make it easy for someone to skip a commercial.

(Did you sign a contract where one of the terms is that you have to watch the ads? I rather suspect not, Mr. Kellner's belief to the contrary nonwithstanding....)