TV networks are pissed about a new DVR that can automatically skip over all ads in recorded content, no fast-forwarding necessary. Ha, fuck them, right? Fuck TV ads, right? Okay, well. I hope you love product placement and want to marry it.

Everybody hates ads. Fine. But. Ads are also the reason that television is free. (Uh, except for cable. What's your excuse, cable? Fuck you.) If you do not personally want to pay for the production cost of all those stupid idiot TV shows that suck that you love so much out of your own pocket, then you must accept the fact that there are ads. (If you don't accept it, that's fine too, but that's also why Adbusters has the highest newsstand price of any magazine except Gold-Plated Magazine Monthly.)

In short, Americans are too stingy not to have ads on TV. So if a device such as this catches on to the point that it seriously imperils TV ad viewership (plain old DVRs are already doing this, but quite as dramatically as this device would), one simple thing will happen: product placement on television will SKYROCKET. You think it's bad now? (Yes, it is.) Imagine it quadrupled, or sextupled, and spread into every last corner of every last show on every last network until virtually nothing appeared on television without being branded and sponsored.

Ads between shows are annoying. Ads in shows are worse. At least keep the poison sequestered in five-minute blocks. That slick little DVR could fuck up everything. You don't have a responsibility to sit through television ads. But you do have a responsibility not to bitch about what happens if you don't.

[NYT]