No free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor shall we go against him or send against him, unless by legal judgement of his peers, or by the law of the land.
What Law of the land says that you have to watch TV advertising ?
Who decreed that we would all be required to “voluntarily” give up one fortieth of our lives to brain washing, mind drilling, mostly irrelevant, ear splitting spam ?
Regular readers would have noticed that I spend a lot of time analyzing why, how, when and how much.
Each of us values his/her life experiences differently.
Economists for some time have been attempting to develop the full-proof “fit all situations” Hedonic Economic Value (HEV) formula.
Just as the smell of the leather in a new car adds to its
Hedonic value (i.e. would you buy a new car that didn’t have the smell of new
leather?) Unpleasant events can cause a perceived or real decrease in the value
of a product. For example a ten minute group of adverts in the middle of
“Psycho” – just before the shower curtain screen would certinaly in the eyes of
most folk be a negative experience. The
disappointment by the viewer has a Hedonic value even if it is negative. We
call this the Compensating
differential.
When I was 5 years old, I saw my first Television
advertisement. It was an endorsement style advert read by the News announcer
before the
Today’s television “endorsements” come a little more frequently – in fact so much more frequently that TiVo made the Ad skip button a major feature of its successful initial marketing campaign.
Alas, as is the norm when the zeros on the end of the dollar price are enough – many companies sell-out; which, of course breeds a new style of company, like VideoReDo who have developed and successfully marketing their advertising removal software.
Two days ago I talked about the lack of time that Americans had as a result of too many content choices.
Yesterday I introduced the concept of future mode time-shifting (no – there is no “Future Mode Timeshifting” Wikipedia entry yet…..) with East Coast users Time Shifting episodes of house into the future (for the West Coast viewers) and kindly removing the adverts.
Today, on a whim I calculated the value of that “skipped advertising – which led me to another amazing conclusion.
On the basis of eight minutes of advertising per hour of television viewing and calculating 85 years of life expectancy with 4.11 hours per day average viewing time (Table here) – advertisers are stealing 1.88 years of your life.
In my case I am now 51 years old and the actual value of one
minute of my leisure time is
$ 0.12 cents.
In my younger days, when the adverts appeared, I leapt to my feet and dashed to the water closet or made a coffee or grabbed a beer, or started making out with my significant other.
But now that I’m fifty, I’m too old to “jump” to my feet, and I know that if I drink too much coffee or beer after 8:00 pm – well lets say – it means more trips to the toilet during the night…… and as for making out…… well lets say that I almost prefer watching the adverts than expending all that valuable energy.
But in reality – I don’t really want to watch the adverts which seem to appear between a range of approximately six minute intervals down to four minutes depending on the popularity of the show.
What can I/we/you do it about it?
Options to extend your life:
Timeshift on a NON-TiVo PVR/DVR WITH an ad remove button that still works.
Or download VideoReDone content via P2P.
Or Go to the Movies…… (No adverts in the middle of a movie YET…..)
Or – Copy the content industry and threaten to sue the bastards.
Here is my suggested Take Down Notice ……
Dear Advertiser,
I have recently calculated the cost to my life span of viewing your un-requested incursions (SPAM) into my private Television/Cable viewing experience. I calculated that the frequency of your advertisements over the years, if it continues statically at the current rate of 8 minutes per hour results in the effective shortening of my life by 1.88 years which represents 686.67 days or 16,480 hours or basically almost a million minutes.
At my time of life according to the
Unfortunately I am no longer young enough and spry enough to leap up and undertake alternative activity (beyond turning down my hearing aid – due to the 25 decibel volume increase – by the way, I used to be an electrical engineer, if there is some way I can help to fix that volume problem thingy, I am willing to have a go). This then forces me to sit in front of the screen and watch content that I did not select or choose. It is true that I could switch stations/channels, however, I might forget to switch back again. So I’m not really sure which is the better choice. Change channels and to forget to watch my show, or watch the advertisement.
So can I ask you to either please switch off your advertising – or if you persist in continuing with this extremely antisocial and rude behaviour – I may be forced to bill you for the 1.88 years [which totals $121,020.66 at today’s rates] which represents a portion of the “compensating differential” that you owe me for reducing the Hedonic Value of my investment in a large screen TV, a 5.1 surround sound video system, a twin lazy boy Rocker-chair (His ‘n Hers) and the fact that the ad-break in Psycho was so long that I fell asleep and don’t know what happened during the shower screen scene.
It has occurred to me that by forcing me to watch irrelevant advertising about jeans for young missy (8 years old) from Jag, something that has no possible interest to me; you are in fact stealing precious minutes from my life.
So either pay up or stop advertising.
It has occurred to me that you might consider this take-down-notice the lunatic rantings of stupid old fart or alternatively – you might elect to respond that under the first amendment, you are merely executing your constitutional right of free speech. If so, I would remind you of two things – my constitutional right to bear arms and that thanks to Ebay, those arms of mass destruction are coming waaaaaay down in price.
In closing – should you decide to do nothing about this letter, I place you on notice that I shall use my next social security check to buy the old folks home, down the road, a computer and I shall install it and configure it for them so that all of their favourite TV shows will be delivered via P2P advertisement free.
Yours faithfully,
A Citizen of a Free World.
Clicking the following link will download “The Value of Leisure
Time Excel Spreadsheet” so readers can make their own estimates of the
individual value of their suit against advertisers.
