5 ms·

TV Networks Say You're Breaking The Law When You Skip Commercials

5 points by Garbage 14y ago

tzs 14y ago
My first thought on this is what the hell is Dish thinking? According to the news story on this I heard on NPR, those networks get the vast majority of their revenue from ads. Advertisers aren't stupid--if a significant number of people start using automatic ad skipping the advertisers will stop advertising or the price of advertising will have to come way down. Note that this is significantly different from non-automatic ad skipping. I use the "skip 30" button all the time when I'm watching programs on my Comcast DVR, but with that I see a few seconds of the start of the first ad and end of the last ad in an ad block, and I see glimpses of some of the intervening ads. That gives advertisers a chance to catch my eye--and there are several ads that have done so and I have actually went and watched them. So, given that these networks will be very very very opposed to this, I would expect that they would not renew their contracts with Dish. DirectTV could then tout that they carry these networks, and Dish would be forced to drop the automatic skipping or lose customers. Then I noticed that the networks suing are regular broadcast networks as opposed to cable networks. That leads to my second thought--does Dish even have a contract with these networks? My recollection of how it worked when I had DirectTV was that they did have channels for the feeds from the major broadcast networks--but those were only available to subscribers who lived in an area where that network was not available via a local broadcast affiliate of the network. I believe that DirectTV was legally not allowed to offer the direct feeds to anyone who could get that network locally. You had to get it via your local channels (which DirectTV could carry). If that's still the case for satellite providers, then I wonder if these networks actually have any negotiating leverage over Dish? They can threaten to pull their direct feeds--but most Dish customers won't get those anyway and Dish may be willing to piss those customers off in order to offer the ad skipping to the rest of their customers. Presumably, the local affiliates of those networks in each area that Dish is carrying might also object to the commercial skipping, but perhaps for them the fees they get from Dish to allow Dish to carry them might be enough to make up for the lost local ad revenue.

5 points by Garbage 14y ago

tzs 14y ago

My first thought on this is what the hell is Dish thinking? According to the news story on this I heard on NPR, those networks get the vast majority of their revenue from ads. Advertisers aren't stupid--if a significant number of people start using automatic ad skipping the advertisers will stop advertising or the price of advertising will have to come way down. Note that this is significantly different from non-automatic ad skipping. I use the "skip 30" button all the time when I'm watching programs on my Comcast DVR, but with that I see a few seconds of the start of the first ad and end of the last ad in an ad block, and I see glimpses of some of the intervening ads. That gives advertisers a chance to catch my eye--and there are several ads that have done so and I have actually went and watched them. So, given that these networks will be very very very opposed to this, I would expect that they would not renew their contracts with Dish. DirectTV could then tout that they carry these networks, and Dish would be forced to drop the automatic skipping or lose customers. Then I noticed that the networks suing are regular broadcast networks as opposed to cable networks. That leads to my second thought--does Dish even have a contract with these networks? My recollection of how it worked when I had DirectTV was that they did have channels for the feeds from the major broadcast networks--but those were only available to subscribers who lived in an area where that network was not available via a local broadcast affiliate of the network. I believe that DirectTV was legally not allowed to offer the direct feeds to anyone who could get that network locally. You had to get it via your local channels (which DirectTV could carry). If that's still the case for satellite providers, then I wonder if these networks actually have any negotiating leverage over Dish? They can threaten to pull their direct feeds--but most Dish customers won't get those anyway and Dish may be willing to piss those customers off in order to offer the ad skipping to the rest of their customers. Presumably, the local affiliates of those networks in each area that Dish is carrying might also object to the commercial skipping, but perhaps for them the fees they get from Dish to allow Dish to carry them might be enough to make up for the lost local ad revenue.