Live Commercials Make a Comeback… So You Won’t Skip Them

They’re back! Live commercials, are making a comeback on television. Now if you’re thinking this is just the television industry going retro or just wanting to show young viewers what things were like in the golden era of television, you would be wrong. The live commercial is making a comeback in a move to stop DVR owners from skipping over the spots… the TiVo effect.

The David Letterman show was the latest show to join the live commercial club last week when a live spot for the Mazda 6 was included in the show. TV Week reported that the commercial was produced by Letterman’s Worldwide Pants, using a script from Mazda. Live spots have also been incorporated into most of the late night talk shows including “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.”

Knowing that viewers can’t automatically recognize them to skip over and may even watch after they discover it is a commercial will lead to more of these live spots. Definitely look for an increase in the number of these spots as the year winds down.

The New York Times reported on a live three minute commercial broadcast in Britain earlier this year by Honda in which skydivers spelled out the word Honda… yes live. The idea the article said was to turn advertisements into events. We’ve discussed the trends of commercials here before with the web series type ads, but the idea is really to make sure viewers watch.

Last year Garmin aired a live spot on the “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” the show’s first in 14 years. In a Reuters article about the spot Steve Lovell, media sponsorship marketing manager at Garmin said, “Probably most people had no idea they were being pitched a commercial, it looked like a skit.”

Now that’s dangerous. Nothing can hold a grudge like a viewer who suddenly realizes he’s been duped into watching a commercial. That’s why Kimmel’s spots work so well. There’s no hiding the fact that it’s a commercial; there’s energy, awkwardness and you want to see what will happen.

These days when many of the talk shows and morning news interviews are no more than commercials for new shows and movies or a celebrity hawking a product, trying to pull off live commercials under any premise other than it being a commercial is asking for the viewers to find a way to skip those too.

More Info:

TV Week article here

NY Times article here

Kimmel live spots here

Honda Skydivers article here

Reuters article here

NBC Say Oops to Stopping DVR’s from Recording

DVR blogs like The Green Button were all abuzz about a possible power play by NBC and Microsoft to block viewers from recording NBC shows. Screen shots popped-up EngadgetHD and other sites with the prompt people got when they tried to record “American Gladiators” and “Medium” recently on their Vista Media Centers.

The background is that broadcasters can send a “flag” in the stream of information that is a digital television program that indicates whether or not the program can be recorded. In tracking down the cause of the block there’s some explaining that has to be done because the flags shouldn’t be there.

Microsoft acknowledged that Windows Media Centers will block users from recording TV shows at the request of a broadcaster The problem is that in 2005 the Electronic Frontier Foundation fought successfully in court (ALA v. FCC) to stop the use of these broadcast flags. Microsoft seems to put the broadcaster above the courts and the consumer.

Yesterday NBC Universal admitted that it “inadvertently” blocked some viewers from recording the shows. In an interview with CNet News.com, a NBC spokesperson said: “We made an inadvertent mistake. We’re not aware of any other complaints, and we believe we have addressed the problem.”

Although no other DVR manufacturer reported this same problem, the “mistake” shows us that the networks along with Microsoft or any other electronic manufacturers can flex if they want to. If they want you to not record a program or even not skip the commercials on your DVR, they can.

In an example of another power play, recently DirecTV announced that its subscribers would only have 24 hours to watch pay-per-view movies that they had recorded to their DVR’s. What they are saying is that the content, whether it on the DVR, cable box or anywhere else, isn’t yours. Choose your partners wisely.

Read the CNet story here & here.

Read the EFF story here.