On a recent trip to Los Angles, Rob Guenette, the newly appointed president and chief executive officer of Toronto-based Wolf Group, was struck by the vibrancy and range of advertising in every corner of the city. It got him thinking about the supposed death of traditional media, which at the centre of the media universe appeared to be alive and well.

‘I thought, wait a minute, why is everybody predicting the death of 30-second TV? Other than the hype and a lot of talk – rhetoric in come cases – I don’t see where 30-second TV is dying.’

Indeed, while the advent of new technologies, particularly the personal video recorder, has spurred some to declare traditional commercial spots all but dead, there is growing and strong opinion that, in fact, the opposite will occur: that the PVR could turn out to be a boon to commercial production.

Central to this logic is the notion that PVRs such as one offered by Bell ExpressVu in Canada will attract significantly greater numbers of viewers to television as a whole.

Top-line PVR’s give users the ability to surf the 500-plus-channel universe and find programs that are meaningful to them using name or title searches. The system then retrieves and stores appropriate programming digitally, up to 60 hours worth, on a hard drive.

It also allows viewers to zap past commercials instantaneously while watching time-shifted programs, something that has been giving shivers to commercial producers the world over.

But proponents say the PVR will attract viewers who would have otherwise missed their favorite programs.

Ian MacLean, vice-president of iTV Lab, a division of Montreal-based Media Experts, has been studying the PVR since the two vanguard brands, TiVo and Replay TV, were launched in the U.S. He says the technology will attract ‘that coveted light TV viewer’ – high-income professionals who are typically too busy to watch TV.

‘What that means is that busy guys like me are now watching more TV because we can,’ MacLean says.

According to iTV Lab research, PVRs increase viewing per week by 20%, to 18 hours from 15.5 hours. At the same time, the average household records 11 hours of programming each week as compared to four hours in a non-PVR household.

While this indicates a large increase in time-shifted viewing and a proportionate spike in commercial zapping, MacLean prefers to see the glass as half full rather than half empty. In other words, with more viewers watching more programs, every commercial will have a better chance of being seen.

According to an iTV Lab white paper, the assumption that commercial production will become obsolete presupposes three factors which its authors deem as ‘highly’ unlikely: that all households will have PVRs; that all television viewing will be time-shifted; and that all commercials will be avoided in time-shifted programs.

‘Some ads will be skipped certainly, but let’s say you’re watching the time-shifted program, if four out of the 10 ads in that show are not skipped, those are four commercials that would otherwise not have been viewed had the show not been time-shifted,’ MacLean says.

Ultimately it boils down to good creative, says Guenette. ‘If the 30-second story is interesting, relevant and memorable, of course [consumers] are going to watch it. Zapping has been going on for a long time,’ he says, pointing out that remote control has been allowing viewers to avoid commercials for decades.

‘The great stuff will still hold the attention of a consumer and you’ll want to watch it again.’

The iTV Lab argument, particularly concerning the ubiquity of the PVR, is lent credence by a recently updated version of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ Future Plan, which projects that 60% of households will have some type of PVR functionality by 2010. While significant, that figure is still well short of total dominance.

Meanwhile, there remain questions as to when the public will get up to speed on this new technology. Initial sales have been sluggish in the U.S. for TiVo and Replay units.

Replay’s slow start led to a buyout by Santa Clara, CA-based SonicBlue last year. Replay is also the target of a lawsuit on the part of the major U.S. networks opposing the just-released Replay4000’s ability to swap programming Napster-style online in addition to its ad-skipping functionality.

TiVo only has around 300,000 subscribers and there is speculation that the company could run out of money by February.

So does that mean the technology is in danger of finding itself next to the eight-track tape player in the Museum of Home Entertainment Units that Almost Made a Difference?

Not likely. Already Microsoft has launched its own version called Ultimate TV and Sony has plans to begin integrating PVRs into its TV sets.

As it stands today, the most significant barrier to wider adoption is cost. It is expensive to buy a system and it is expensive to subscribe to the 500-plus-channel universe.

But Howard Rosen, CEO and executive producer of Roadhouse Productions in Toronto, says it’s only a question of time before we see a decrease in costs met by an increase in public awareness. At that point, all bets are off.

‘You’re looking at the education of the marketplace with all these incredible gadgets and toys. It’s really more a matter of everyone catching up to it,’ he says.

Still, Rosen remains optimistic for the future of commercial production. He recalls a time when both advertisers and filmmakers were wringing their hands over the introduction of the VCR.

‘Everyone said, ‘Well, that’s the end of feature films and that’s the end of television,’ ‘ he says. ‘But it hasn’t been. The nature of the businesses has changed; the economics have changed.’

On the other hand, Bob Kennedy, partner and senior editor at Flashcut in Toronto, sounds a note of caution. Kennedy has been studying the PVR on behalf of the Commercial Producers Association of Toronto and believes the risk could be significant.

While it’s true that only a minority of VCR owners use their boxes to time-shift programming, he says, the PVR technology is not the same.

‘With PVRs, 60% of your viewing is time-shifted and 88% of that is zapping commercials. It’s not the same technology [as the VCR]. It’s much, much simpler to use and it’s tailored towards that. People really need to pay attention to that,’ he says.

‘Once the price point gets low enough and people start to understand what the benefits are, it could move quite fast.

Ultimately, though, the bottom line is that just because people can steer clear of commercials, it does not necessarily follow that they will.

Already commercial producers have been playing with new ways to expand their business, whether through long-form branded productions or variations of the 30-second spot. One model projects a time when a short spot acts as throw to a longer more involved production that can be accessed online. This is something BMW experimented with last year through BMWfilms.com, featuring top film directors and narratives in which the automaker’s brands played a central role.

Such an expanded role could mean good news for an ad industry suffering under tightening budgets and audience fragmentation.

-www.itvlab.tv

-www.wolfgroup.com

-www.BMWfilms.com