Sledgehammer to Heel, ABC Tries To Hobble Tivo

One of the best things about Tivo is the ad-skipping feature. ABC now wants to kill that and is holding meetings with DVR manufacturers to add a ‘feature’ to eliminate it all together. A feature to eliminate a feature? How zen.

When major corporations suddenly find that their business model is slaloming down the technological curve into obsolescence, they almost always do one thing: bully, strong-arm, lobby and sue anyone they can get their hands on to artificially preserve themselves. You saw it with the RIAA; you saw it with the MPAA. And now network television is getting in on the act, because Tivos kill ad revenue.

It’s a tough pickle for the networks, alright. They require people to view ads to pay for their shows, but technology means people don’t have to watch them anymore. We’re a little unclear how DVRs are any different than VCRs in their capability to skip ads, but whatever: one thing’s for sure, we can probably expect a lot of obnoxious moves to try to trick us into watching ads before the battle’s inevitably lost by ABC.

Oh, hey! Here’s the first one!

ABC wants to kill DVR ad-skipping [Ad Jab]

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