I see on Doc Searls article on Digital Hollywood this quote:

Tom McGrath, President of Paramount Enterprises and EVP of Viacom Entertainment Group, said

"We...are heavily dependent on first-run licensing from major TV networks to survive. If you follow through the train of logic that John Taplin started with, it's not a pretty picture.... The evidence from TiVo is basically people just don't watch commercials at all. It's not a question of watching the ones they are interested in or not interested in.... It is a transformation of the industry. As producers we rely on the fact that there is a market for good programming. Right now the penetration of these devices, of VoD (Video On Demand), of this disintermediation, is not so great that we face collapse in the near or intermediate future. But it's something that we think about all the time.

Disclaimer: I added the bold.  So the EVP of Viacom's Entertainment Group is just now realizing that people don't watch commercials?  Hello !  It's called the "clicker" or "remote control" and we've all been using it to flip past commercials for at least the past 15 years now.  And you are just figuring it out?  Even though some bloggers disagree with the convention of using IM speak, all I can say to this is ROFLOL (picture me rolling on the floor laughing out loud). 

And we wonder why these folks have confusion in the new digital age?  They apparently haven't figured out the old remote control age!  A Tivo doesn't really do a damn thing to affect commercial watching -- it's been dead for years only no one bothered to wake up and tell the entertainment industry.  Here's an exercise I'd like to see some consumer marketer try:

  1. Stop all broadcast television advertising
  2. See if it affects your sales at all.
  3. Record much larger profits.
    4. </ol>

    The bottom line here is that convention marketing is dead and has been for a long time.  It feels to me like a con game where advertising agencies tell businesses "If you don't advertise you'll die" but no one has tested the alternative.