Reflections on TiVo.

I pride myself on not being caught up in consumer culture. I went five years between computers. I reluctantly "upgraded" only after several newspapers I read online could no longer be accessed with my primitive browser. I do enjoy sports in the commercial media, especially tennis, baseball, and basketball. Nonetheless, I have always reasoned that I can escape the temptation of the products offered even if I must endure the offenses to intellect and sensibility that advertising routinely inflicts. But my quiet confidence was shaken recently when I saw an ad that inspired a set of powerful fantasies I could hardly resist.

The product to which I allude is the personal video recorder (PVR), marketed most heavily under the trade name TiVo. TiVo apparently uses a hard disk much like a computer's. One can program it to record a show and then sit down to view it a few minutes after the show has started. TiVo continues to record even as the viewer watches. When ads begin, one can rapidly fast forward past them. TiVo, in short, seems close to being the ultimate VCR--able to tape programming minus the commercials.

As I pondered TiVo, several further thoughts came to mind. Won't major television advertisers--a roster of the most powerful economic institutions in the world--conspire to eliminate this product? Or has capitalism finally produced its ultimate contradiction: not a class but a consumer good that will undermine the future profit prospects of all other corporations?

Unfortunately, such fears or hopes were premature. A recent feature article in Toronto's Globe and Mail provides news I should have anticipated. Fortunately, that news came in time to save me TiVo's purchase price. According to the article, advertising megacorporation Omnicom Group, Inc., of New York has

   formed an alliance with TiVo to explore new forms of PVR-resistant
   advertising. Some say the answer is to make the ads part of the show. The
   Gap, for instance, might outfit the cast of Friends with its new spring
   clothing line. Or a small ad window might pop up during the program.
   Another possibility is that commercials will get shorter. Most people
   probably wouldn't bother skipping a five-second ad.

Commercial television is already moving aggressively in this direction through product placement ads. Another recent column in the Globe and Mail reports comments on a new industry trend--associative marketing. This term means "that the show was invented for advertisers who want to buy product placements as well as commercial spots." The paper reports:

   That's why you are about to see Doritos, Reeboks, and cans of Bud making
   implausibly frequent appearances in the harsh Australian Outback. They
   coughed up $12 million each to get their products in the show.

More ominous for me are the many ways commercial culture's continual incursions degrade sports and their presentation. TiVo might allow me to zip through the many "TV timeouts" now built into the very rules of college and professional basketball (as well as other sports), but the perpetually changing billboards on Celtic telecasts are a visual distraction. Nor is commentary and analysis enhanced by perpetual references to the Dunkin Donuts dunk of the game or the Diehard starting lineup.

The transition to the TiVo era may even add to the commercialism most viewers and spectators are confronted by. The many TV timeouts--still valuable on regular television--will now be supplemented by those five-second spots and other visual tricks intended to be TiVo-proof. Those too stubborn or too penurious to spring for TiVo will now be further cursed by a double dose of commercials, thus increasing the pressure to purchase the new gadget.

If there is a lesson for me in my TiVo saga, it is that no market purchase is ever going to extricate us from consumer culture. Merely because many consumers--and I am not alone among sports fans--want commercial-free media alternatives, market choices can't get us from here to there. The airwaves are a finite space. Some of that space might be reserved for noncommercial broadcasts which would compete on even terms with commercial media. This has been the practice in some other cultures and eras, but today corporations have appropriated the entire space. And the price of entry is willingness to participate in the game of continually getting and spending.

Even worse from my perspective is the ways in which the increasing commercialization of sporting arenas at all levels influences much of the younger generation. High school and college students could easily view commercial sponsorship of sports, with its own rules and restrictions, as both normal and inevitable. When the Black Bears strike their corporate deals and embrace the commercial logos in their arenas, more than school finances can be shaped. If I can harbor, however fleetingly, the hope that one can buy oneself out of the worst excesses of the culture, how easy can it be for a generation whose elementary texts, gymnasiums, hallways, and entertainment media are draped in commercial symbolism to question the fundamental values of that culture?

I am impressed that this generation still includes many who have challenged some of the worst excesses behind those cheery commercials and flashy logos. They fight to keep the symbolism of their university logos from adding legitimacy to corporate sanctioned sweatshops. What we all need to consider now is how to foster a public space for sports, recreation, entertainment, culture, and political dialogue not dominated by commercial concerns. TiVo will not get us there.

John Buell lives in Southwest Harbor and writes regularly on labor and environmental issues. He invites comments at [e-mail].