Say you're a manufacturer of personal video recorders looking to advertise your product. What's the most attractive selling point? Fast forwarding through ads, of course.Now, say you're a television network that relies on advertising for revenue. Would you play a commercial telling viewers that they can skip commercials?
Well, that seems to be the crisis in Australia, where TV stations are deciding whether to air commercials by LG promoting its new line of HDTV sets with built-in PVRs. The funny thing is, these PVRs don't even have electronic program guides, meaning they're not nearly as easy to use as those in other countries.
The article points out the irony of this debate. If the TV stations decline to air the commercial, LG will get free publicity as the action gets written up in the local papers, and the commercial will probably wind up online. It seems to me like the TV stations should just take the money -- it's unlikely that this will be the last time they get to collect advertising revenue, as it turns out that the majority of viewers don't even really time-shift their programming, let alone skip the commercials.
