HEADLINE: Audience Research Class Brings Interesting Discussion

"TiVo is sweeping the nation"
"People don't watch commercials anymore"
"The world is coming to an end!"

These are only a few of the statements coming from ad executives offices in the past few years in relation to the "new" practice of commercial skipping.
Unfortunately, commercial skipping is nothing new, at least in the small scale. Working moms have been taping soap operas for evening view since the first video recording devices. The unique idea in all this chatter is the TiVo. Imagine, a televison that you can pre-program to record your favorite shows. The wonderfulness in all this recording, is the ability to cleanly skip commercials to get your full 47 minutes of television. And 47 minutes only.
Listening to both the praises and concerns over the use of TiVo has this blogger convinced. At 10% of homes using TiVo, there is no large-scale encrochment on the use of television advertising.

Even as often as Jaffe says it, the 30 second commercial is not dead. Almost 90% of America are watching prime time shows, and continue to do so even with their 13 minutes of commercial time.

Some say that we should return to a time of product sponsorship, an extreme form of product placement that, though it is being used increasingly often, is still relegated to a "from time to time" status. There is a strong push in the advertising community, that product placement and product sponsorship of television shows is the only alternative in this post-nuclear world of TiVos.