• by Mitch Oscar , Op-Ed Contributor, September 4, 2007

A couple of weeks ago there was an article in The New York Times, "A Free Variation on the DVR, but No Skipping Commercials." which focused on Time Warner's new free features: Start Over and Look Back. Start Over allows digital cable viewers to begin watching television programs from the beginning, after they have started playing -- i.e., during a half-hour show, for example, viewers can start fresh anytime within 30 minutes of when it began. Look Back, on the other hand, enables digital cable customers to watch certain programs that they missed later on, till midnight. In both instances, the fast-forward function will be disabled.

The remainder of the article discussed other variations on DVR functionality and commercial skipping preventives being deployed by fellow cablers. What got my undivided attention was when the article strayed into the realm of viewing measurement: "Time Warner is also hoping to persuade Nielsen that the shows viewed on Start Over and Look Back should be counted as live viewing, rather than delayed viewing, because the ads cannot be skipped."

The statement immediately reminded me of what Marc Favaro -- once responsible for AT&T's interactive TV deployments for its cable systems (when it was referred to as AT&T Broadband after swallowing up TCI), and now head of sales for the Inspiration Networks -- shared with me after conducting an iTV experiment for a major package goods company. A paraphrasing of his prophetic words: The client got so involved in segmentation possibilities that eventually we created 65 buckets for them, and ultimately after the trial ran, there wasn't enough precipitation in any of them for a meaningful vivisection.

My concern is that we as an industry might be creating a similar situation with so many variations of possible data collection - minute by minute, commercial ratings, program ratings, second by second, C1-7, non-skipping formats, skipping formats but at lower speeds, speed bump exceptions, click stream, mid-tune in, tune in, tune out (a Timothy Leary variation), on-demand, microsited, telescoped, addressable, RFI enhanced, bookmarked -- that we will not have usable data to evaluate the efficacy of the commercial viewing experience.