Viewers should be given the right to skip a commercial online. Otherwise, online viewers will decline once the hype is gone.
It seems today that major ventures Joost, Babelgum, Boxee, Hulu etc, want to force users to watch commercials online.
This is a major turn off for me. This is the main reason I will never choose to watch TV programs on these media.
I am sure the developers and entrepreneurs have to justify their program, but this will be their own fall. 15-60 second delays are unacceptable because the user is taken away the right to skip it.
I think most will continue to choose cable or satellite as their media of choice because of the advent of DVR. Media Center, MythTV, and others can easily turn a PC into a DVR hence giving the viewer the ability to skip the commercials.
Having viewer watch commercials, is like having search engines showing first a list of their ads, and tell customers "Please click on the link in the bottom of the screen to get your results". It just doesn't work!
So, why are these companies having people watch a commercial instead of showing some kind of an add on the side?
It's just bad marketing strategy. They do not value wasting people's time, and they won't be happy for very long either!
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Watching commercials is no fun. I think we are spoiled by the windows media center which gives us the right to skip commercials. As you know, neither one of us really wants to watch tv in real time anymore because we can't skip commercials.