Would Satellite TV Providers Ditch Commercials?
from the interesting-battles... dept
With all this talk about the battles convergence creates, one potentially interesting one is whether or not pay TV providers would ever experiment with ripping out commercials from programs. Already, some "premium" channels come without commercials and satellite radio has tried the "commercial-free" game also. However, plenty of existing TV stations come with lots of commercials, leading to the possibility that a pay TV provider could, in theory, offer a DVR service that would get rid of commercials. That, at least, is the speculation after it was revealed that UK satellite TV provider BSkyB has received a patent for a DVR device that skips ads automatically or that can just record portions of shows (such as just recording a favorite band's appearance on a music video station). Of course, it seems a bit questionable as to how this is patentable. Commercial skip technology has been around for a while, and is hardly "non-obvious." Also, BSkyB responds in the article in a way suggesting they just got the patent to use it to charge anyone else who dared to offer such features, while having no plans to offer the feature themselves. Still, it does raise some interesting questions about whether or not part of the battle is going to come from pay TV providers (both cable and satellite) and the broadcasters. There have already been a few very public battles about how much certain channels cost to get included in a pay TV offering -- and it's not hard to see the cable and satellite providers eventually respond by threatening to cut out commercials to get some more leverage in the negotiations.
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What a dumb company name
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Good Luck
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Re: What a dumb company name
http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/otherchannels/bsb.html
Under the circumstances, "BSkyB" doesn not seem such a bad choice for the formal company name.
It is normally just called "Sky" for simplicity.
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Pay TV - Premium? Huh?
My god! That's the whole point of Premium?
If the damn things ever start putting out commercials, and I'm paying for those premium channels, I'm outa here!
The "already" wording is confusing.
In addition, NO ADVERTISEMENTS is the whole point of satellite radio -- both XM and Sirius. They have all those ad-free music channels.
This article was not that well written.
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Re: Pay TV - Premium? Huh?
It's also true that many, though not all, satellite radio channels come without advertising. It's not, as you imply, the "whole point" of satellite radio. In fact, one of the two (can't remember which one right now) launched with commercials on their stations, and only switched later on to commercial free programming.
Both XM and Sirius have also suggested in the past that they would consider adding in commercials at a later date.
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Sky pattents advert skipping...
Sky can say "Arhhh, Mr Generic Box Maker from Taiwan, you can't add advert skipping to your new DTT/HDD box because we've already patented it!"
10% advert revenue to Sky is indeed slight for Mr Murdoch. However, his Sky Digital proposition is about a large number of channels (albeit of crap quality), and those channels will fade away if their precious advertising revenue is threatened.
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skip the problem altogether
Watch 'em when you want, HOW you want and in whatever quantity/order you want. No commercials, no hassles, no cable fees...
I'll never go back. Especially since new shows are 90% reality-tv dreck anyway
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Paying for commercials
I can pay for an XM or Sirius receiver, a few hundred more in add ons, & monthly fee AND ...
I get the privilege of listing to commercials too ?
Oh please, sigh me up for this awesome offer ...
My burned CD's @ about 50 cents ( one time only ) are commercial free too ...
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social work jobs with pregnant teenagers
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