A solution to the Time Shifting killing advertising problem....

I have been seeing more and more articles about Timeshifting TV Shows and how it is hurting the effectiveness of the traditional 30 second TV Commercial. I am probably in the minority but I like to watch commercials. Sure they are not all great but some are and I want to see those. I don't watch them to be "sold to" but rather to enjoy the creative energy that went into them....So anyway since I watch a lot of TV I tend to want to see shows that are on at the same time.

Yes I am "the" person Time Shifting was invented for.

I load up my PVR with all the shows I want to watch and if there are conflicting shows I just record them from other places at different times. This sometimes plays tricks on my mind when I don't recognize any of the local TV News people doing their interstitial's and such.

(anyone notice I am still not getting to my point? OK here goes)

The main argument against advertising and time shifting is that you are recording shows from another area therefor not seeing local ads.

This could easily be corrected (OK I have no idea if this is easy to do but....) by adopting the same model that the Internet uses by matching ads to isp's. When I log onto LinkedIn I see ads for my local phone company even thought it is a US based service and likewise when I go to NBC.com to watch a mistakenly deleted from my PVR episode of HEROES their site tells me I can't view the show because of my geographic location.

Since most people using time shifting are on a digital based televisions delivery system couldn't appropriate ads be substituted in for your location no matter where you watched the show? I know when I call my Cable company they can tell me over the phone if my individual TV is on and if there is a problem so why can't they "geo place" (a word I made up....I think) content to just me based on my location. Sure this could lead to demo based ads but lets start with this.

Sure there would have to be new compensation models for the local stations but at least then cable companies and networks could guarantee their advertisers that their commercials will at least get seen with the shows they paid to advertise with and could probably charge more then that are currently.

Now all you need to do is get PVR / Tivo users to watch the commercials!

saul