The thought first occurred to me while watching TV with a friend as she fast forwarded through the commercials. She was upset she had forgotten to record the first episode of American Horror Story: Coven, which meant she couldn’t watch the rest of the series. I told her I could find it for her online. She replied, “I don’t watch things illegally.” This surprised me because out of the two of us, I’m the one who wants to work in the television industry. Then, for me, it clicked: by definition, skipping through DVR’d commercials is really no worse than illegally downloading, torrenting, or streaming a television show online.
The main thing is: If you don’t watch your show, your show gets cancelled. That is, if a show’s ratings aren’t high enough, advertisers won’t buy commercial slots, so the show doesn’t make money and the network gets rid of it. That’s how it’s supposed to work. The truth is, it’s not like there’s a counter that goes up and down, showing the exact number of television sets tuned into each show. The system is much more complicated and inefficient than that.
Fans of “Community” try to save the show by having a flash mob
Television ratings are determined by the Nielsen company. They take a sample size of how many people are viewing the advertisements, not the show. This is why most networks are hesitant to stream programming on their websites – that individual view will not count toward their total ratings. No matter how many people have legally obtained a show, by either watching live or on a DVR, or buying it on Amazon or iTunes, it only matters how many people have been told that they need to have a Subway sandwich for lunch tomorrow. Increasingly, people want to watch their shows when it is convenient for them to watch them. Right now, DVR viewings are counted in the ratings if they are watched within seven days (and are a household counted in the sample size), so DVRs in general count as legal. But I don’t have a DVR, and most networks don’t stream their content on their websites, so I usually look to the internet. Conveniently for me, whoever uploads each episode (to any of the thousands of available venues) has stripped it from all its commercials.
In fact, when the legality of a show is measured by which advertisements are administered with it, current viewing methods seem even more arbitrary. Illegally streaming a show online that has been stripped of its commercials has the same effect as watching something on a DVR and fast forwarding through commercial breaks. Even if it’s Netflix or Hulu – advertisers don’t care if the whole world is watching. The whole world’s not watching their commercials, so they won’t be lining up to pay the network money. The second option leaves the possibility a viewer might accidentally forget to hit the skip button, but other than that, it seems irrational that one of these methods counts toward the viewer ratings and not the other.
This is why everyone – including networks and advertisers – needs to get on board with advertising-based, legal online streaming. Networks will be able to get precisely accurate page views they can boast about to advertisers, instead of a sample size of who is probably watching. It will be even more effective than the current system. For advertising companies, commercials are both unskippable and can be placed on other, more permanent and prominent places on the website. Viewers are more likely to sit through a commercial when they are under their laptop and less free to leave the room. Streaming is also able to give a much more reliable viewing number than the Nielsen company’s extremely flawed method. This would provide more accurate, and likely much larger, numbers to advertisers wanting to know who has seen their products.
As the ease and convenience of the internet continually increases, so does internet piracy. The television industry in particular would benefit from accepting this change rather than fighting against it. No matter its legality or level of morality, online streaming is too easy and uncatchable to be stopped. Fortunately this can be turned into a system that is more logical and beneficial. It may sound like the insensitive position of “Just Don’t Fight It,” but in this case, it is a solution that is better than the one it is trying to overturn.