Blog Post 1

Advertising: VOD vs. DVR

                       
                     “Louis Missika argues that the classic era of tv was a period of absolute domination by producers, editors, and schedulers over audiences, but it has been superseded by the freedoms of new technology” (Miller, 27-28).  One of these new technologies is the DVR which has allowed the viewer to have more control, temporally and spatially, when they watch a particular program.  Amanda Lotz assumes there are five aspects of production in television programming which are “technology, creation, distribution, advertising, and audience research” (Lotz, 46).  The advent of digital video recording of television programs has affected revenue generated from advertising.  The DVR lets you fast forward through commercials which means advertisers are paying for airtime that people are not watching.
                     
                    More advertisements equates to more revenue.  The cost of commercials is based on the length of the ad and the size and demographics of the audience the show reaches.  The TV industry earns about 70 billion dollars just in ad sales, obviously this is an extremely lucrative aspect of television and having viewers bypass commercials will hurt revenue.  To combat this potential loss networks are preventing viewers who watch videos on demand from skipping the commercials.  Additionally cable networks could further increase ad sales by about 400 million dollars if at least 70 percent of DVR users switched to video on demand (Shaw, 1).
                   
                  Television networks, especially the big four, want to encourage people to use VOD instead of DVR.  It is feasible for networks to promote this switch because it does cost the consumer extra to have a DVR.  Also many networks are supplying their video on demand libraries with episodes of entire seasons allowing viewers to catch up on episodes they have missed.  There are benefits to using VOD, for example, if there is not have enough space to record on the DVR, if you forget to record something, or if you have a few shows recording at the same time.  Despite these advantages it will still be difficult for networks to compel consumers to just use VOD because the bottom line is nobody wants to sit through commercials.

Sources:
Lotz, Amanda.  "Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era"
Miller, Toby. "Television Studies: The Basics" 2010
Shaw, Lucas. "Networks Want to Keep Audiences from Skipping Commercials." The Edmond Sun. 2014.