"Against almost every expectation, nearly half of all people watching delayed shows are still slouching on their couches watching messages about movies, cars and beer. According to Nielsen, 46 percent of viewers 18 to 49 years old for all four networks taken together are watching the commercials during playback, up slightly from last year. Why would people pass on the opportunity to skip through to the next chunk of program content? The most basic reason, according to Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, a media buying firm, is that the behavior that has underpinned television since its invention still persists to a larger degree than expected. “It’s still a passive activity,” he said." - Thomas Hawk from Bookmarklet

wow, people *really* still watch commercials? I find this hard to believe. - Thomas Hawk

Are people watching these are simply letting them pass over them and taking the opportunity to grab a drink or similar? - Rob Brammeld

I zip through the commercials every time as I get very little time to sit and watch my favourite programmes as it is! If I need a drink or break that's what the pause button is for :) - Russell G

I zip through the commercials myself, but also when the programme is one that I am not 100% into I will run it at up to 3x the normal speed until something that looks good comes on. =P - Travis Koger

If a commercial is good enough I'll rewind and watch it again and again. - teh Dork Knight aka Kenny

Some programmes are better sped up :) - Russell G

I'm still not sure why they aren't running towards online delivery. You can't skip the commercials. Isn't that what you want? - Todd Hoff

Todd: I'm sure someone will then market a box that plays (and records) online shows, allowing you to bypass commercials. - Steve Dorsey

Maybe Steve, but it's not really worth it. The commercials are short so going around them is more trouble than it's worth. Plus it's in the video stream they control using a player they control, so what I would do is make a player that checked if certain commercial signs were seen and if they weren't I would stop playing the video. - Todd Hoff

@Jill, sometimes I forget I am watching live TV and then scream when I cannot skip the commercials and no amount of clicking the skip button will make the commercial go any faster dammit! ;) - Travis Koger

when the dvr can automatically jump threw the commericals then that will be one hell of an invention - VAL D. Zone

In the UK there are advert indicators that pop up as a little swirly square pattern in the corner. Can't be too hard to interpret those. - Rob Brammeld

Rob the player could too and if it didn't see them it would know something going on. Just adding checksums into each frame would be enough. - Todd Hoff

This article is so biased it's unbelievable. Neilsen (who gets paid by the Networks) calculates whether or not a commercial is watched in 60 second increments. What this means is that if you catch the last two seconds of a commercial as you're going into your program, they count that as you watching two 30 second ads. If the headline was that 50% of consumers aren't hitting the sweet spot when they stop fast forwarding, the article would get no love, but using faulty logic, you can reach conclusions that just plain false. TiVo's second by second data shows that 90% of their users are skipping ads in scripted television. Why would the behaviors between the two groups be that radically different, if Neilsen wasn't cooking the numbers as a favor to Universal and other media partners. - Davis Freeberg

Interesting comment there Davis. That would make *far* more sense to me. Even if I'm watching live TV, I'll typically pause it, go do something else for a few minutes and come back only to have that buffer in place to skip commercials. I can't imagine 50% of people actually watch them. That number felt way too high. - Thomas Hawk

It seems like if that's the case that the NY Times should have pointed that out. Sloppy journalism. - Thomas Hawk

Sloppy indeed, they get an industry exec who sells advertising to say that ads are good and then don't even mention the problems with Neilsen's data. Two years ago, the NYTimes ran an almost identical story using the same data. http://www.nytimes.com/2007... - Davis Freeberg

I have owned Tivos (series 1&2), a DirecTV HD DVR (currently), and I have build a few of my own (MythTV and BeyondTV). Aside from the difficulty of setting up a homebrew system, BeyondTV was AWESOME because it actually sensed when commercials were being recorded and allowed you to skip past ALL OF them with one button press. HEAVEN!!! - Steve Dorsey

I always skip commercials. (My thumb is nearly self-programmed to hit the 30 second skip button about 4-8 times.) Before DVRs, I routinely muted sound during commercials. Passive viewing my butt. - Andrew C