DVRs are forcing sponsors to get creative to hawk their products.
Some of the most creative thinking in television these days has nothing to do with comedy or drama. It's about the commercials.
Fueled by a growing sense of desperation, networks are inserting games, quizzes and minidramas into commercial breaks. They're incorporating more product pitches into programming. Two experimental programs without traditional commercial breaks will premiere this fall.
NBC has even called on Jerry Seinfeld for help.
This is all being done to stop viewers with DVRs from fast-forwarding through advertisements, or to circumvent those that do.
Adding to the urgency, this week Nielsen Media Research begins offering ratings for commercial breaks, instead of just the shows around them.
"We all need to become more creative in how we incorporate sponsors into a program," said Ed Swindler, executive vice president for NBC Universal ad sales. "No one on the creative side or the business side wants to make commercials intrusive, but we do need to commercialize efficiently so viewers can afford to get free television."
An estimated 17 percent of American homes have digital video recorders.
Nielsen estimates that in prime time, nearly half of 18-to-49-year-old viewers with DVRs are watching recorded programs instead of live ones. Of these, six in 10 skip through the ads.
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