Talk about your lethargic TV viewers!
Yesterday, Disney-ABC Television chief Anne Sweeney said 20% of DVR owners said they prefer to watch video-on-demand rather than use their DVRs.
How much easier can DVRs be? At best, viewers only need to hit the same button twice on DVR. Once to say, “Yes, record.” And then again when prompted: “Are you sure you want to record this?”
Marketers really need to concentrate on these lame TV viewers — perhaps find other messaging. If they are too lazy to deal with DVRs, they are probably too lazy to respond to other media — as well as schlep into their cars to go out and buy products from Target, Best Buy, Kmart, or Whole Foods.
Separately, Sweeney also says viewers of ABC TV shows online are phenomenally happy to grab free viewing in exchange for sitting through four commercials. No word on whether they are happier to do this than watching via DVRs and zapping through commercials.
The only tedious part of the DVR experience, is in fact, fast-forwarding through commercials. Now ABC, with its new VOD initiative, has taken out the guesswork.
You don’t have to zap through commercials –because you can’t. ABC will only give cable operators a VOD program deal if they disengage the fast-forwarding function.
Weirdly, this seems okay for most viewers. Ninety-three percent of viewers say watching VOD with commercials is fine because they can start a program when they like.
No doubt ABC will make it a bit easier for viewers with VOD, trimming back the number of commercials to be seen on a typical VOD airing to perhaps ten 30-second messages.
That would amount to five minutes of non-program interruptions, rather than the 15 minutes or so viewers get via traditional TV airings.
No wonder marketers seemingly are ga-ga over VOD. In particular, ABC gives them what they always wanted — less clutter, which is, not surprisingly, what TV viewers always wanted as well.
It may even lull them into more laziness, making them forget about fast-forwarding — for the moment.
mediapost.com
Yesterday, Disney-ABC Television chief Anne Sweeney said 20% of DVR owners said they prefer to watch video-on-demand rather than use their DVRs.
How much easier can DVRs be? At best, viewers only need to hit the same button twice on DVR. Once to say, “Yes, record.” And then again when prompted: “Are you sure you want to record this?”
Marketers really need to concentrate on these lame TV viewers — perhaps find other messaging. If they are too lazy to deal with DVRs, they are probably too lazy to respond to other media — as well as schlep into their cars to go out and buy products from Target, Best Buy, Kmart, or Whole Foods.
Separately, Sweeney also says viewers of ABC TV shows online are phenomenally happy to grab free viewing in exchange for sitting through four commercials. No word on whether they are happier to do this than watching via DVRs and zapping through commercials.
The only tedious part of the DVR experience, is in fact, fast-forwarding through commercials. Now ABC, with its new VOD initiative, has taken out the guesswork.
You don’t have to zap through commercials –because you can’t. ABC will only give cable operators a VOD program deal if they disengage the fast-forwarding function.
Weirdly, this seems okay for most viewers. Ninety-three percent of viewers say watching VOD with commercials is fine because they can start a program when they like.
No doubt ABC will make it a bit easier for viewers with VOD, trimming back the number of commercials to be seen on a typical VOD airing to perhaps ten 30-second messages.
That would amount to five minutes of non-program interruptions, rather than the 15 minutes or so viewers get via traditional TV airings.
No wonder marketers seemingly are ga-ga over VOD. In particular, ABC gives them what they always wanted — less clutter, which is, not surprisingly, what TV viewers always wanted as well.
It may even lull them into more laziness, making them forget about fast-forwarding — for the moment.
mediapost.com
