I too see more single sponsored televised shows similar to Dodge sponsoring the Sarah Connor Chronicles. It works too, mentioning it 2 weeks later in a comment.

Other avenues of advertising we’re most likely going to start seeing a lot more of are increased blatant product placements (a Pepsi-ad-running-on-a-Sony-TV-in-the-background-perfectly-centered-between-2-characters-eating-Snickers type product placement), and ads on the lower screen while the show is running. Not the tickers you see on the news networks, but actual moving ads common on networks like Sci-Fi Channel & Nickelodeon when they’re advertising what’s coming up next, only it will be for shampoo. After all, there’s no way I’m going to fast forward through the first 2 minutes of Heroes.

The thing is that television programs continue to get shorter and advertising time continues to increase. The Fringe and soon to be Dollhouse experiments are incredibly interesting. I actually find myself sitting through the 60 seconds (or using them for a quick run a drink) and 90 seconds. It is no where near the annoyance that normal commercial breaks are.

I see a return to shows being sponsored by one advertiser, and perhaps 30 to 60 second breaks twice during an hour program. I think TV viewers would greatly appreciate it.

I agree. The problem is, one of the ways the business could change is that less advertising supported scripted programming will be produced, at least for “free”.

As a lover of “free” content (that winds up costing $100/mo), I view that as a negative, though if everyone were paying as much for content/services as you and I are, we’d still likely get as much scripted programming as exists now.

But I could see “free” TV largely transitioning to unscripted and sports.

As to his points about DVRs, they will change the TV industry, but under the current situation adoption will be slow and it could take quite some time. However, I think if cable central office DVRs, which are now legally possible, and allow any cable subscriber with a cable box to have DVR functionality, get ironed out technically, adoption could speed up a bit.

Advertising is still going to pay for televised entertainment, the business will just have to change.

The “Fringe” example is very intriguing – limit the commercial breaks, identify their length (60 seconds, 90 seconds, etc…), and let advertisers know their commercials aren’t being switched off, even on DVR! It seems FOX gets more dollars per ad in this arrangement, and I have yet to hear an advertiser complain about it.

The “Friday Night Lights” example is also interesting. The program is sponsored by one advertiser, and then runs commercial free as a DirecTV exclusive. DirecTV “earns” money for the exclusive programming by using it as a selling point for subscriptions. NBC can afford to continue the show, despite low ratings, because of the shared expenses with DTV. We’ll have to wait to see how NBC ultimately views the arrangement once they air the episodes. Too soon to tell the outcome, but I’m very interested in the end results here.

Ultimately, I believe the advertising currency – Nielsen ratings – will be challenged by further set-top-box data (TNS DirecTView, TiVo, etc…). Advertisers may start demanding data from multiple sources before they decide where to invest.

On the other hand, when cable news broadcasts started having “crawl,” with unrelated news stories, it bothered me at first, and I was able to ignore it later.

Of course, one can always resort to getting out the duct tape and taping up the lower third of the TV screen! Won’t be pretty, but will be less distracting!

*that* is exactly why his predictions for the TV business are so dire. He believes more and more people will get DVRs, watch programs on their own terms and mostly avoid commercials and that this will produce a lot of drama for the networks.

While I don’t agree with his time frame of three years, I think eventually he will be right.

Without advertisers, the networks are going to have to get money out of the public through higher cable fees, and the show are going to have to put in more and more obnoxious product placement, that are more interruptive than commercials.

Some of us actually LIKE some of the TV commercials, such as Erin Esurance, the Verizon Dead Zone commercials, and some of the Jack in the Box commercials. Heck, I even liked the “Flat Buns” parody by Carls Junior.

On the other hand, I hate annoying commercials, but I can always use that very moment to use the restroom.