Cable Forum - ITV Player Disappointment

Quote:

Originally Posted by JethroUK (Post 34746804)

i'd still maintain that loss of commercial money (on commercial TV station) is main problem (i wouldn't pay for an advert i know people will skip) - however i would pay a premium for an advert that people *must* watch

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If that were the case, commercial TV would have been killed off by the VCR twenty years ago.

---------- Post added at 15:16 ---------- Previous post was at 15:14 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris (Post 34747108)

Yep - and I gave a reason for excluding Freeview+, namely that it's relatively new and has fewer users than the other two. In fact it was revealed in January that 900,000 have been sold, so if you like we could up the number of '+' users in my calculations to 4.5 million. It doesn't really make a huge difference.

I excluded old-fashioned timer-based home recording (which DVD recorders are, just as much as VCRs) because this has been widely available to households for well over 20 years now, yet ITV's troubles are recent - from which I conclude, people recording ITV and zipping through adverts is not really what's behind their problem.

Actually, skipping ads isn't necessarily a problem as long as they can get the logo up on screen for a few seconds. This is exactly why most ads end on a lingering shot of the product or manufacturer logo.

As has been said above, the main cause for ITV's problems is the fact that there are far more channels. Back in the 80s, when ITV had it's hey day, they had maybe 5 to 10 commercial channels.. Now, with the TV viewing numbers having stayed nearly static, there are over 300 channels to chose from, their potential audience is much smaller.

Also, I read an article that said something interesting. They were talking about ITV's fortunes. They were saying the main problem ITV has is nothing to do with the number of viewers, or the quality of their programming. Their problem is simple: A lot of their advertisers are looking to cut costs, and Advertising is one of the first costs to be cut.