PVRs didn't kill the advertising star - yet

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 27 January 2011 19:22

Opinion and Analysis

The widespread use of VCRs made a lot of us comfortable with the idea of fast-forwarding through the ads. And the emergence of DVRs/PVRs added pristine video quality to the mix. But ads have survived, and at least one industry watcher thinks they'll continue to flourish.

Did you think the fast-forward button was a harbinger of doom for free-to-air TV's business model?

Professional services firm Deloitte's reckons that 50% of TV owners in the US and UK will also own a DVR. Considering the widespread use of Tivo in the US, and the penetration of Sky (with its DVR-enabled set top boxes in the UK, that doesn't seem over-optimistic. And many of the low-priced flat-screen TVs on the Australian market have built-in PVR functionality if you plug in a USB storage device (which can also be pretty cheap).

In my house, little TV is watched 'live from air.' We record almost everything and time-shift it at our convenience, fast-forwarding through the ads (saving about 15 minutes in every hour in the process). Many of the people I speak to either have similar habits, or they obtain most of their viewing via 'Channel B' (in which case the ads have already been stripped for them).

Professional services firm Deloitte's is predicting that despite this, the DVR "is is unlikely to have a material impact on the value of television advertising in 2011."

Why? Two reasons. Firstly, "the majority of viewing in these households will be 'appointment to watch' television, be this sports, a talent show, a soap opera, reality TV, a game show or a news bulletin. This type of programing usually crowds out time available to watch pre-recorded content."

I'm not convinced - find out why on page 2.