Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at July 20, 2005 12:24 AM

"My name is George. I'm unemployed and live with my parents."

In one episode of Seinfeld, George had an epiphany...by doing the exact opposite of what he would normally do, his luck would turn around.

I'm afraid a little rethinking has made TiVo pull a Costanza.

FACT: 90% of all DVR (digital video recorders) users skip commercials. Yahoo News story.

That article goes on to point out that "[t]he trends are even more foreboding among the 18 to 34-year-old demographic most coveted by marketers, with 97 percent saying they skip ads all or almost all of the time."

Wow...I'd think that TiVo would run with that fact. Maybe come out with new functionality that helps users skip commercials more efficiently.

SO...what'd they do? The exact opposite.

Earlier this week, TiVo announced plans to display a "symbol" on screen to users when said users are skipping commercials to entice them to watch commercials.

Personally, I don't think it is a good move.

OK...let me digress into a crazy rant. What if TiVo is responding to Grokster? Perhaps they are working on distancing themselves from encouraging users to skip commercials. Isn't skipping a commercial the creation of a derivative work? Don't want to be inducing that, now do we????

Something tells me that at least one of my RTIP compadres has a different take...[to be continued?????]

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