The remote control, DVR, and streaming shifted ad-viewing control to viewers

Evidence

The diminuendo had even forced the traditional advertising industry to up its game over the decade’s first century. In the long years of prime time’s uncontested sovereignty, and before the remote control, viewers could be expected to sit through commercials or, at worst, go off to get a snack of something they were being shown. The remote had done some damage to that fixity, but now a veritable revolution was relocating real control and choice in the hand of the viewer—at first through DVRs and the effectively unbounded selection of digital channels, and then streaming. Faced with unprecedented competition, advertising, as in the 1980s, was forced to become more intrinsically entertaining in order to have any chance of being effective. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1104

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Network market power let broadcasters raise ad load because viewers had no less-advertised alternative — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 477; The free-TV contract shifted against viewers as advertising proliferated — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 514; The remote control and VCR broke advertising’s assumption that viewers could not avoid commercials. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 629 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• DVR ad-skipping drove advertisers to disguise commercials as show content #expands (0.85) — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 394
• The rise of personalized web consumption ended broadcasters’ power to compel attention #expands (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 921
• Commercial-free premium television reemerged as a refuge from chaotic advertisement-saturated media #complicates (0.70) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1106