Hey Marketing Demon, I close popups without looking at the products either. :eek:
Ever notice how when it’s something like not destroying the social net or not raping the environment, it’s “we’re free to do whatever we want to make a profit and you can’t interfere,” but then these folks get all moral and religious when whatever it is that they’re doing isn’t working?
Guanolad, the networks and advertisers are making a wager. They know that they can’t compel people to watch ads, but they hope that people will. It’s a pretty good bet: most people watch most ads most of the time. Certainly enough people watch ads to result in a high coorelation between advertisements and sales. But it is a wager, not a compulsion.
This is exactly the same as a grocery store putting toliet paper on sale at below cost: they hope that while you are in there stocking up on toilet paper, you will pick up a bunch of high end items that you would not have other wise bought. And they are right enough of hte time to justify their actions. In this situation, do you feel like one is morally obliged to buy non-sale items as well as the loss leader?
Now then, what with the remote control, the VCR, and finally, the TiVo, the wager that we will watch the ads as well as the programming is becoming less of a sure thing (though it is still pretty good). As a result, the TV networks are more than welcome to try and negotiate contracts, or to quit producing programming all together. Maybe in 50 years we won’t have networks at all. Certainly, networks will have to find new models to generate revenue. That might suck, but it wouldn’t be becasue people acted immorally.
Well, I disagree. I think to actively deny advertising with a machine, and still expect television to be free like it’s some kind of god-given right, has a certain immoral element to it.
You don’t have to actually watch every single ad, you aren’t expected to buy the product, you don’t even have to be in the room when they’re playing, but to totally remove them entirely sight-unseen is just unfair.
[Hijack] You are meddling with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I will not stand for it ! [/Hijack]
[Re-hijack]What in the name of Johnson & Johnson are you talking about?[/re-hijack]
How about taping a show and watching it later and FAST FORWARDING over the commercials? I do that all the time.
I hate commercials, I hate pop up internet ads, I really hate commercials before movies and I loathe telemarketers that call me and try to sell me something.
It might be worth giving up Buffy to be free from commercials forever.
Unfair? Tough. Look, Kellner doesn’t run a broadcast network anyway, they run cable channels(yes, I know TBS is broadcast in Atlanta). They are also part of the Time-Warner family. Time-Warner AOL just signed a deal with TIVO to allow you to program your TIVO unit through an AOL connection. So it’s kinda hard for me to take what he says seriously about this. The networks put out the stuff over the public’s airwaves. The government licenses them to do this, using our spectrum. The do this with commercials to try to make money. If someone receiving that signal decides to skip the commercials, then too bad. No one forced you into the business, it’s not theft, and it’s not immoral.
If advertisers think that commercials aren’t being watched enough, stuff like TiVo blocking or worse might be implemented. I don’t think it’s theft, but commercials, like it or not, do pay for much of the programming we watch.
Guano: Your posting’s dangerously close to pitesque. Although, IMHO, your last posting (quoted below) deserves a Pitting of you, I shall respond in a civil manner to it here. If you feel that my response deserves a pitting in reply, feel free to open a thread and link it here.
What contract? I did not enter into any binding agreement with anyone related to my purchase of my television set, other than that with the merchant who extended credit to me to pay for said set on installments.
I have broken no contract as no such contract exists. I am merely using (if I did, in fact, have such a device) another machine in the comfort of my home. Heck, when my next-door neighbour uses his blender, it creates static on my radio. Does that mean that he’s legally liable for the advertisements I did not hear due to the static?
[qutoe]It doesn’t have to be an actual signed piece of paper,
[/quote]
Ah, here’s the rub. You apparently thiink that “verbal contract” means “anything I wish it to mean but not on a piece of paper.” A verbal contract is a contract entered into between two parties, both parties aware of said contract.
There is free broadcasting, of a sort. Neither of the two PBS channels I watch shows advertisements. I’ve been meaning to donate some cash to them, but cash gets tight. So, am I not allowed to watch that station?
What about the stations which broadcast in my area and for which my television set is equipped to receive? I don’t watch all of those stations and consequently, I’m not watching any of the advertisments broadcast on the stations I don’t watch. Did I break some contract with them? Of course not!
It’s unspoken because it doesn’t exist. It’s not accepted, also because it doesn’t exist. Both parties can’t be aware of it because it doesn’t exist. It just doesn’t exist.
Why can’t you grasp the truth of the matter yourself? Advertising on TV, Radio, or Internet is a gamble. It’s a wager made by the advertiser. The advertiser has chosen that particular method to invest in his business. Some businesses still use only word-of-mouth. Surely, you’re not going to tell us that if I purchase something at such a business and then don’t tell my friend, neighbours, and acquaitances about it, I then violated a contract with that store, now are you?
Drat! This is already in the Pit! I could’ve sworn it was in the Great Debates.
Oh, well: Guano, do you actually have a clue as to what you posted about contracts? That posting surely was one of the most inane descriptions of merchant-consumer interaction I’ve ever read!
The human race got along fine for thousands of years without everyone having a box in their living room that told them what to do. The current system, where a tiny handful of corporations use cultural masterpieces like “Home Improvement” to motivate people to watch commercials for things they didn’t know they wanted, like carpet deodorizer, has only been around for about 1/10000th of our existence. I won’t miss it.
So am I “obligated” to watch all the commercials on every channel? I pay 60/mnth to watch the cable channels…do I still have to watch every commercial on FX? What if I’m not watching ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX at all? Am I being immoral because I should be giving my attention to those commercials as well? How many channels am I obligated to watch? Right now my TV is off, and there are millions of commercials I’m missing! Does it not count because I don’t technically have my TV on? What about when I’m watching HBO? They don’t show commercials…am I still screwing some innocent broadcast channel out of money? What about the broadcast channels that are owned by huge corporations? (ABC?) Do they still need my commercial viewing!?
It’s all so confusing!
If a contract exists, it is between the advertisers and the network execs.
BTW, what businesses does Kellner work for? So I might boycott those products…
Theft my pretty little arse.
Guano, yes, television programming is subsidized by advertisers. No, no one has a right to free programming. But that isn’t what we are saying.
Network offers free programming. They do not, and cannot, require that we watch advertising. Advertisers expect that even though there are many ways to avoid watching it under normal circumstances that enough ads will get through.
Should advertisers feel that they aren’t getting the airtime they will quit paying television stations for it. This will hurt both viewers (with less programming, though I deliberately left out the adjective “quality”) and the stations (who will obviously get less funds).
There is no contract. Period. But I actually agree with the station man. Automating the removal of advertisements presents a threat to free or relatively free programming. If people want to avoid watching ads they should do it themselves. This should serve to keep free tv out.
As an aside, I swear I heard someone tell me that the FCC was seeking to eliminate broadcast networks (via antennae reception). Is this guy (who told me this) just bullshitting me or is there really something in the works here?
Well, I don’t agree with the station man that it is theft, but that the automated removal of ads is not a good thing.
One thing should be noted in this discussion in regards to so-called “free” television, which is to say over-the-air broadcasting and not cable. The only reason these broadcasters are able to do what they do in the first place is because a taxpayer-funded government agency, the FCC, grants each broadcaster the absolute and exclusive right to use a portion of the spectrum in their market, serving “the public interest, convenience, and necessity,” per the Communications Act of 1934. The FCC divides up the spectrum and allots licenses to use it, and enforces that allotment, using our tax dollars. So we all pay for “free television” whether we watch it or not. Prior to the FCC, and almost certainly in its absence, the U.S. model for over-the-air television would probably never have come to be. There would eventually have been a market-based solution to spectrum allotment, but it wouldn’t look anything like what we have today.
So it is not in any way theft. To believe so is so incredibly . . . different that I literally couldn’t have imagined someone thinking so before reading this thread. The presence of advertising on the air, the lengths of commercial spots, the ratio of advertising to program time, and everything else, is between the nets and the advertisers, period. I defy you to find a single regulation in Title 47 of the CFR (which encompasses all FCC regs) which implies or explicitly describes any obligation on the part of viewers to watch advertisements.
GuanoLad, have you ever worked in broadcasting? I have, and I earned a degree in radio/TV studies, and I can assure you that there is no “contract,” verbal, implied, or otherwise, between broadcaster and viewers in relation to advertising. As others have implied, it’s a gamble–you put it out there, and hope that enough people will watch and buy that it becomes profitable for you to continue. That’s why the whole damned audience-measurement industry and the sweeps periods are so important.
If people don’t want to watch commercials – and many (probably most) people don’t mind, or are at worst apathetic about it – then commercials aren’t really “in the public interest,” now are they? And if they aren’t, then broadcast stations will find their viewership declining and will simply have to shift to a different revenue model. Maybe it means putting all their commercials in large blocks at the ends of shows or at regular intervals, like many European broadcasters do, and consequently providing more realistic audience estimates and different rate structures to advertisers. Maybe it means an end to over-the-air television broadcasting, freeing up that portion of the spectrum for some other use. Who knows? I guess we’ll see.
They could always switch to using solely blatant product promotion.
Along those lines, I think that at the rate they’ve been going, James Bond movies could be offered for free at the theater, with the entirety of the studio’s take coming from their product promotion deals. Not that they would actually give up the opportunity to have people pay to be advertised to, but they could.
pld, correct me if I am wrong, but aren’t frequency bands bid on for ownership? I seem to remember reading that at the FCC site.
Ah, here we go:
I’m not sure how this stands for existing owners of bands, though.
The next trend in advertising is already beginning: ads during the main broadcast. Just watch the bottom of your screen; while you’re watching Frasier, a little banner pops up urging you to watch Scrubs. It’s only a matter of time before they use that time for Procter & Gamble spots instead of network program promotions. Hell, TNN already keeps a permanent “crawler-space” at the bottom of the screen for announcements and such; how long before the other networks do the same?
And the networks are striking back in other ways as well. Just a few months ago, it was announced that networks are shaving redundant video frames out of broadcasts. Sure, it takes a lot of frames to add up to 1 second of video, but if they can razor out enough frames, they can speed up a broadcast and save enough time to insert another 30 second ad every half hour or so. And you’ll never miss the frames they remove!
So, does any of these subversive tactics violate our supposed “contract” in the other direction?
Also, I’m curious as to why this is suddenly such an issue, when VCR technology has been common for 20+ years. If the advertisers and networks haven’t already figured out and factored into their costs that people tape shows and skip commercials, they are seriously behind the times and deserve to lose money for running an inefficient business.
(and dammit, I’m irritated that pldennison beat me in here; I was all set to do a “the airwaves belong to the public” rant.)
They auction licenses, not ownership. Subtle difference. A license to operate on a particular frequency or range is not the same thing as owning it. The people own the airwaves, the FCC oversees them and makes sure things are orderly.