• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, October 17, 2008

I am sure there were mixed feelings when this week Nielsen Media Research announced that six CBS and four ABC prime-time shows added more than 1 million viewers each during premiere week when subsequent seven-day DVR viewing was factored in. The good news was the extra eyeballs; the bad news was that those eyeballs almost certainly sped through most--if not all--the commercials. This is indisputably one of the happiest benefits of "time-shifting."

Also of note last week was the installation of the third DVR in our home. This solves a number of problems--among them the kids, who do not get to watch TV during the school week, but record their favorite shows to watch on the weekends. It means my wife and I don't fight over watching "Desperate Housewives" or "True Blood," on at the same hour on Sunday night, on the flat screen in our bedroom. And I don't have to choose between "Mad Men," "Entourage" and "Californication" in the adjoining 10 to 11 Eastern hour. I can eventually watch them all. But perhaps most importantly, I have enough hard-drive now to record football games in high-def and reduce the time spent watching them by about 70%.

I am sure the networks pat themselves on the back when big games draw big audiences. But sadly, the games are so polluted with commercials (often repeated ad nauseam if not in the same game, then in the next two or three the same weekend--I guess because football fans are soooooo stupid) that they have become unwatchable on live TV. There are commercials before and after the kickoff, after any scoring, during timeouts on the field for anything from defenses the QB doesn't recognize to guys who may never walk again, commercials when the ball changes hands, mandated TV time-outs, coaches' challenges in the pros or booth reviews in college games, two-minute warnings, time-outs to freeze the kicker, etc., etc. This doesn't take into account that everything else that comes on the screen is "brought to you by"--from the starting lineup to trivia questions and obscure performance data to highlights from other games and "plays of the week." All of which you could just as easily live without.

There is a fair amount of down time in football, even without the commercials. Officials have to retrieve dropped passes, teams (at least the few not playing West Coast offense) take time to huddle, or sub in plays and players, and meander their way into kicking formations. This, in combination with relentless commercials, makes football ideal for DVR replay. I cannot only eliminate the commercials and the downtime, I can skip past the asinine booth and sideline commentary, the painful pre-game player interviews, halftime, the long establishing shots of the city or campus where the game is being played--essentially, everything except what happens when the ball is snapped. What on-air live would take three or more hours, I can reduce to a little over an hour.

I am spared the inane sideline reports from the big-breasted, sweater-wearing women pretending they are sports journalists. I don't have to watch a bunch of 300-pounders prayerfully kneeling over a motionless guy they used all of their brute force to turn asunder just 30 seconds before. I don't have to hear another coach going into or out of the locker room say something moronic like: "We just need to execute better." I gratefully miss scorers pointing to the sky as if Jesus had intervened to help them avoid tackles en route to the end zone. I avoid players mumbling so badly that I can't understand which college they went to--or, worse still, expecting me to deduce what they mean when they say they went to "the university."

To be honest about it, the only thing I do miss is the slow pan past the cheerleaders. But even they aren't worth the extra few hours.