If you're upset about the length of the post below in your news aggregator, be sure to vote in the Should Jenny Truncate Her RSS Feed sweepstakes. I'm still searching for a way to provide two feeds, one abridged (truncated) and one unabridged (the full monty) so that you, dear reader, can decide for yourself which style best suits you. Unfortunately, I lack the requisite knowledge to do this myself, and this may be the one situation that duct tape cannot resolve.

Don't take this the wrong way, but you folks haven't been terribly helpful so far in making this decision for me, as earlier this evening the vote was evenly split at 50% for and 50% against. Sigh. Don't make me pull this car over....

(Actually, I really do appreciate those who have taken the time to vote!)

"The study, by Memphis-based marketing agency NextResearch, finds that 73% of PVR users find television more fun, 13% watch much more television, 43% watch somewhat more, and 30% watch more premium channels (Special Release: April PVR Monitor^tm). See the Satisfaction with PVR Chart....

This study is good news for television advertisers in the short term, and also good news for the long term — if advertisers and network executives adjust their business models. For example, 42% of PVR owners no longer "channel surf," but over 70% are using interactive program guides provided by the service for watching live, and 58% are using interactive program guides for recording. This means that rather than focusing on merely capturing the attention of viewers, or expecting them to watch a new show that follows an old favorite, networks are going to have to convince people to program a show to be recorded. This is going to become very important to networks, especially since 44% of PVR owners no longer pay attention to channels.

Here is one obvious idea: work with PVR developers so that people can press a single button during a promo to schedule a show for recording. I own a TiVo, and often, when I'm watching a show, a promo will appear for a show I might be interested in. Unfortunately, I am also too lazy to pause and then go through the trouble of setting that show to be recorded. A "one-click" system would mean I waste more time with the boob tube....

Unfortunately for Kellner, a lot of people have already trained themselves to ignore television commercials, just as most people ignore the banner ads on the Internet. Indeed, I would not hesitate to say that the vast majority of advertising simply goes unnoticed. [You didn't hesitate - Ed.] ReplayTV didn't invent the concept of people ignoring commercials, they merely made it obvious. [Note to network executives, here is an obvious idea to defeat 30-sec skip functions: vary the length of bumpers, promos and the commercials themselves.]

The next couple of statistics that Ad Age notes are the crux of the issue. Apparently, people are only willing to watch advertisements that are entertaining or for products that they are interested in....

Advertisers have plenty of options. It may require people like Kellner to actually think, or something, but marketing is not going to curl up and die, no matter how attractive that thought is. If anyone needs to worry, it is the video rental business, since the study found that 56% of PVR owners rent fewer videos since acquiring a PVR." [LawMeme]

Uh-oh... I feel another lawsuit coming on.  ;-)

Actually, Ernest collated many of my own thoughts in this article (go read the whole thing), so thanks to him for saving me the time! Even though he mentions some new models the television industry could begin implementing yesterday, I've been mulling over in my mind a combination of Ads.com (I used to think it would be AdCritic.com, but they're headed in a different direction apparently), Emergent Music, and Amazon wish lists.

Being a student of popular culture, I actually like a lot of ads. Not most ads, but enough of them that I know many a jingle, recite taglines, and even research some of them on the web (especially for music). In fact, I'd love to see a study of which commercials can be recited verbatim by Gen Xers and see how they bind my generation together.

I also have a digital video recorder, so I'm in a bit of a bind. I almost always skip commercials when watching recorded shows, but it's mostly due to a lack of time. TV schedules haven't shifted to meet my busy schedule, and the tired "commercials after the credits, at 14 minutes after, at 27 minutes after" format isn't in my daily routine because it just doesn't fit. That's just not the right time to try and catch me.

But if the ads were targeted and I could watch them when I wanted to in the ways I wanted to, that would be another story. What would be even more incentive would be popularity rankings for commercials so that I could see what was creating buzz right now. AdCritic used to list the ten most popular commercials right on the front page (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, I'm looking at you, Ads.com). I found some pretty good ones that way, and often I would forward their URLs on to my friends.

Think out of the box and mix it up with the internet, especially news aggregators. I'd subscribe to a feed equivalent of Daypop's top 10 commercials, especially because I don't have to watch them - it's still my choice. Heck, good/funny commercials like the Lee Jeans Commercial (warning: don't click if you think naked, talking butts are not funny) find their way on to Daypop's Top 40 anyway. And if my trusted buddies think a commercial is good, well then, I'm all over it. Don't even get me started on the idea of sending me commercials I've approved through RSS enclosures....

Let's add in my wish list, though. Just as with Napster, there are incredible marketing opportunities here if executives could just pull their heads out of the sand and gaze forward instead of backwards. They weren't even on the dock when the boat left for that one, but here's their chance to pull to the front of the pack. Work with DVR manufacturers and Amazon to create mega wish-lists that interact across mediums, along with delivery of focused advertising.

Say the expansion pack for the game Apples to Apples is on my wish list. My ReplayTV knows this, so it pushes ads for similar games to me, as well as sending coupons/discount notices. If I subscribe to such a feed in my news aggregator, maybe they appear there, too, along with a "see similar" cross reference. When 60 Minutes wakes up and does a show about what a great game this is, a notice pops up on my Replay and asks if I want to record it (Ernest's one-click publishing - dude, patent this idea fast!).

That's just one idea, but it could be extended to work with other mediums, too, such as books, library book reviews, PDAs, cell phones, video games, etc. As with every other new technology or service these days, they'd have to work out the privacy and technical issues, but it would certainly be money better spent than on ridiculous lawsuits that further alienate the customers they're trying so desperately to keep.

Good news for YACCS users (all 14,500 of us and growing!). Hossein has modified the code to run faster, so if you haven't already upgraded, please do so now. It's incredibly, no-brainer easy to upgrade and if you don't, you'll start seeing reminder messages in your comment boxes starting Monday, May 13.

Good news for YACCS wannabes - Hossein is again taking new signups after May 13. This is one of the best free services available for bloggers, so I highly recommend it. Among its many wonderful features is the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed for your comments, so they appear right in your news aggregator!

I'll be adding my name to the donation list, too, because it's that good.