Ode To The Remote Control & Channel Surfing

from the passivity-made-better dept

Who knew you could write this much information all about the television remote control? The article starts out talking about how people trying to keep on the war in Iraq are wearing out their TV remote controls (now that there are so many news channels to watch), and then goes into the whole history of the remote control and channel surfing - including lots of stats on how people use their remote controls (and, yes, it's true, men are much more likely to channel surf than women). It includes some interesting tidbits about how many TV shows have changed to deal with the remote control (no more opening theme songs, better commercials, immediately segue into the next show...). I also found it amusing to discover that the first remote control was created by Zenith after its CEO decided that "commercials would destroy television". Funny that, just a half century later, broadcasters are claiming that new technologies that get rid of commercials will destroy television. The article also talks about how it took a while for advertisers to learn how to understand that commercials that "interrupt and irritate" weren't getting the job done - and, in fact, encouraging people to channel surf. So many of these developments seem to be repeating themselves again as broadcasters and advertisers try to figure out how to deal with TiVo and other PVR boxes.