Fergus Cassidy

Time for an ad break

I SWEAR to you that they are breeding. The last time I bothered to count them, there were two. But now there are six of them, strewn about a book and manual-filled place that can only loosely be described as the living room.

Don't get me wrong, remote controls are great things and I know you can get a universal one to replace all the others, but I'm very fond of them really.

They remind me of a time when the very notion of a remote control was... em... remote. In those days there might only have been four stations in Ireland but channel-hopping was still the pipe dream of a young teenager.

I even fashioned a device out of bamboo stakes tied together with string. While this primitive device was the required length from the television, it lacked the accuracy needed to ensure an easy passage between Blue Peter and Magpie, and it was also deemed dangerous by those who knew best at the time.

When they did finally arrive on the scene, remote controls were still considered to be dangerous, for very different reasons. I remember doctors and other health advocates expressing concern that changing channels was maybe the only bit of exercise couch potatoes would get. They advised that viewers should think twice about using remote controls. That advice had roughly the same impact as my bamboo and string invention.

The television industry too was very uncomfortable with remotes. Depending more and more on the revenue from advertising, television company executives were concerned about channel-hopping viewers who would be able to avoid looking at ads promoting the latest health product. So maybe the execs were concerned about our health too? Yeah right.

The only thing television companies care about is eyeballs, because that's what the advertisers are paying for, and over the last 40 years or so this became the business model of television. The ads in the middle and at each end of a programme paid off the bills and created a pool of profit that in turn would pay for more programming. Advertising was becoming the raison d'etre of the television stations and increasingly they all became completely dependent on ads.

Most public service television stations have long since left behind the days when the licence fee was the main source of their income. Television stations are totally dependent on commercials, with the exception of Christmas Day in Ireland, when the ads disappear. Strange that the money lenders and traders only get booted out on this one day.

But the logic that advertising pays for the programmes can be seen for the 30-second mirage that it is. Transfer that same logic to cinema and see where it takes us. Ads every fifteen minutes during the film? No admission after the film starts? No going to the toilet during ad breaks?

And what about books? Why not a new reprint of, say, Roy Keane's biography. For the lowly price of Euro2. Sponsored by Kleenex, with every second or third right-hand page containing an ad for solicitors, mobile phones and training equipment manufacturers. It could be a no-frills edition, so beloved of those who 'care' about the consumer.

No the advertisers have concentrated on television above all else over the last 40 years and they are stuck with it. They overcame the humble remote and in later years even adapted to the video recorder. When I say adapted, I mean they adapted it to their liking. Fast forward, for example, is a misnomer and should rightly be called very slow forward.

On the Sky television digital platform with hundreds of channels, there's a neat trick where the ad breaks are synchronised across all channels. Best of all though, is the inability to tape one channel while watching another. Never mind, I suppose, the programme will be repeated in an hour, and then in two weeks and every week after that. If advertising revenue is stumping up for new programmes, then the advertisers must be a very mean lot.

Now if there is a golden rule in business that a company shouldn't depend on a small number of customers for its revenue, then the television companies have skipped it. That was okay as long as the Erin's Gravy train lasted, but in these days of rapidly changing technology it's asking for trouble.

For the era of being able to skip advertising altogether is almost upon us. And I feel the same away about it as I did with the first remote control. Yeeeehawwww!!!! Before we know it, Digital Video Recorders (DVR) will replace the tape versions and the ads will be no more.

The arrival of DVRs and set top boxes like Tivo or Replay will be disruptive in the way that remote controls threatened to be, and the TV companies have cried wolf so much that there is nobody listening anymore.

The new generation of recorders are even being called personal video recorders, which suggests that what we have now is impersonal. These machines are going to seriously undermine the way television companies do business in the future.

Don't mind the ructions about copyright and digital piracy. That's a much bigger picture effecting a lot more than television programmes. The legal stand-offs over the machines has to do with their ability to share stuff over the net and a couple of tricks of cryptographic magic might cure that so-called problem.

It's the advertising industry that has most to lose, where from the flick of a button the ads are no more. Ah but this is very wrong according to Jamie Kellner, Turner Broadcasting chief executive. When commenting last year on viewers skipping ads on TV he said: "it's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial you're actually stealing the programming". Guilty your honour, but I was drunk at the time.

But maybe Michael Davies has the answer. He's certainly got a proven track record in that he produced the hugely-successful Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? series in the US. Davies has convinced Pepsi and Nokia to sponsor a live variety show with no commercial interruptions. The show's working title is Live from Tomorrow and each episode is an hour long and will run for six weeks. Ads will run at the top and end of each show.

Instead of ads during the show, other ways are being examined to bring in revenue. Product placement such as bands performing in front of a big logo on stage, sponsor logos appearing on screen and even charging film companies etc to have guests on the show. Advertisers may be able buy a guest host slot.

Whether this particular venture works our not (ie makes any money), there are sure to be many who want to devise a way of lessening dependence on traditional advertising during programmes. The rewards are huge for anyone succeeding, so we may be in for some 'experiments' shortly.

Professor James Twitchell, author of a number of books on the history of advertising, told The New York Times last week that it "was about time" that advertisers responded to the changes brought by technology, which started with the remote control.

"That was the cross against the vampires of advertising", he continued.

More of a wooden stake man myself.