Chairman of Turner Broadcasting Calls Typical TiVo Use "Theft"
Cableworld is carrying an interview with Turner Broadcasting Chairman and CEO Jamie Kellner. This is an interview about the state of the cable business and AOL Time-Warner's cable networks business. But, midway through the interview, Kellner calls typical use of a device like a TiVo theft. Kellner is quoted as saying:
I'm a big believer we have to make television more convenient or we will drive the penetration of PVRs {Personal Video Recorders, such as TiVo} and things like that, which I'm not sure is good for the cable industry or the broadcast industry or the networks... {Interviewer: Why not?} ...Because of the ad skips.... It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming.
The interviewer then asks, well, what if you have to go to the bathroom or you want to get up and get a Coke from the kitchen? Exactly. The extremists in the broadcast industry probably think that typical use of the channel changer on the TV remote control is theft, too.
This interview is a must read, if only to help understand how extreme some broadcast executive's sense of ownership of his television signal is. Kellner obviously doesn't believe in anything close to the Fair Use provisions that the Supreme Court defined in the Betamax case, which defined viewers' right to use a VCR.