Commentary

Will Hacking Into TV Sets And/Or Remotes Be Next?

by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, August 7, 2015

Worry less about if hackers can get into your personal electronic data, and more about whether while hackers can turn up the air-conditioning level in your car to meat locker, blast a radio station or hack your car to a dead stop.

A report in Wired magazine showed how hackers got into a Jeep Cherokee’s software system where they could control all aspects of the car. Shocking? Consider, Google’s self-driving cars have been around for a while.

While we have been worried about personal information getting into the wrong hands -- via hacking of laptops, mobile devices, or otherwise — we could start to worry about the sophisticated software inside other devices. Should we start to fear hacks into our TV sets?

Perhaps not much of personal information would be in jeopardy here. No matter; lots of hacking is about nuisance and general disruption.

New smart TV technology already points in this direction: Samsung TV sets have the ability to store viewers’ private conversations when they’re using voice-recognition remote controls. So what’s next?

TV networks already have their own sly methods of manipulation, which don’t involve hacking. Many have stuffed more commercials in-between shows. Other platforms have been “speeding up” shows like “Seinfeld” to add more commercials.

As ratings erosion continues, TV networks will increasingly need to find ways of promote their new shows. Networks won’t go so far as to “hack” into your TV sets and/or remotes -- but never fear, new ways to get you to watch shows and commercials are coming.

For consumers, traditional TV has been all about choice -- and they’ll want more. But TV networks will want something in return.

5 comments about "Will Hacking Into TV Sets And/Or Remotes Be Next?".

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valery wright from SGVWT LLC, August 7, 2015 at 1:26 p.m.
All the more reason to NOT have regular tv, but #ROKU streaming. I only watch #netflix, no commercials & listen to accuradio opera channel. Let them hack away, I don't give a flying patootey. BESIDES I graduated from high school at TEN and have been a programmer/network engr since age TWELVES, or 55 years now. Anyone comes only my 'puter, notepad, smartphone, i KNOW IT & can follow back / destroy. Defcon ppl are not all 18 yr olds, the REAL geniuses are MY AGE. Worry about US, not 'them'. We DO fight back.
Reply

Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited, August 7, 2015 at 8:46 p.m.

In a word, Wayne, yes.

Leonard Zachary from T___n__, August 10, 2015 at 2:10 p.m.

Ed what say you on this?

"TV networks already have their own sly methods of manipulation, which don’t involve hacking. Many have stuffed more commercials in-between shows. Other platforms have been “speeding up” shows like “Seinfeld” to add more commercials."

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, August 10, 2015 at 4:03 p.m.

Leonard, I don't know about adding spots in between shows as that's normally local station territory----"station breaks". However, there is no doubt that commercialization on TV is slowly and steadily increasing and the effect on comercial impact is negative. In primetime, the networks used to average 6 in-show minutes of ads per hour, now they average 9.5 minutes; in the good old days, the networks aried a single 60-second commercial in their in-show primetime breaks---now it's anywhere from 5-7 spots and on some cable channels much more. What's more, advertisers have been largely at fault. They were the ones who demanded that the networks sell independent "30"s in the mid-1960s and, again, they insisted on stand alone "15"s in the 1990s---in both cases, at half the price of the standard longer units. This was all based on getting better CPMS. No one seemed to care that the number of distinct ad messages per break would go up. It's all been very short sighted and the sellers certainly took advantage, but the advertisers were the ones who opened the floodgates.

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, August 10, 2015 at 4:35 p.m.

Leonard, I forgot to comment on Wayne's statement that "other platforms have been speeding up shows like 'Seinfeld' to add more commercials. I believe he is referring to syndicators who have to do this as the fringe time periods where such shows are aired---on independent TV stations and on cable----traditionally run about 30 % more commercials than is the current primetime network norm. Often this requires some form of compacting as the original versions made for the broadcast networks did not allow for the extra ads. Is this a bad thing? I doubt that most viewers notice----but, in principle, more ads in any break, even at 6PM or at Midnight, is not a good thing.