What you will find in the article:
- Nova will ban skipping adverts on catch-up viewing from 16 November.
- The restriction applies to all of Nova’s linear channels and pay-TV programmes.
- Viewers will not be able to pay to skip adverts.
- The ban does not apply to programmes recorded on viewers’ own devices.
- Nova cites the need to fund its own productions and stabilise its revenue.
From 16 November, it will no longer be possible to skip adverts when watching catch-up of all Nova’s linear channels, namely the main Nova channel and the themed channels Nova Cinema, Nova Action, Nova Fun, Nova Gold, Nova Lady, Nova Krimi, the online channel TN Live and the pay-TV channels Nova Sport 1 to 6. In practice, this will mean that if a viewer wishes to play back a programme from Nova’s archive and attempts to skip an advert block, this will not be possible and the service will force them to watch the entire break.“We are responding to a situation where investment in our own content is constantly growing in an unstable television market,” explains Nova, which had announced this move well in advance, although at the time Prima introduced it, Nova had not publicly anticipated it.
It will not even be possible to pay to skip adverts
Nova’s approach differs slightly from Prima’s. Whilst Prima gave IPTV and streaming service providers a free hand in how they would technically block the ability to skip adverts and allowed this feature to remain if the user paid for it, Nova has the same requirement for all pay-TV service providers: to completely disable ad-skipping when re-watching its linear channels.“Thanks to advertising revenue, we are able to invest in our own content. In a situation where production costs are rising in the long term and the television advertising market is unstable, preventing ad-skipping is therefore one way of ensuring further investment in our programmes,” argues Nova.
Some viewers object that they already pay a substantial monthly fee to their service provider for IPTV and should therefore have the right to skip adverts. They even cite the payment of the licence fee as a reason.“You pay the fee to the operator so that you can watch television via their service,” explains Nova. “Licence fees only apply to Czech Television, not to commercial channels like ours,” it adds. Until 16 November, it will be possible to skip adverts when watching Nova channels on catch-up; from that date, it will no longer be possible even in the first minute of catch-up viewing – a method by which viewers of rival channel Prima had been circumventing its ban on skipping adverts. Nova will not introduce a fee for the option to skip ad breaks.
Ad-skipping will still be possible when recording programmes via PVR
The ban on skipping ad blocks when watching TV programmes on catch-up is important for commercial TV stations because of the way TV viewing figures are measured, which determines how advertising is sold. Clients purchase so-called GRPs (Gross Rating Points) from broadcasters, which represent a specific number of viewers. A campaign then runs on television for a set period, and individual adverts are broadcast repeatedly until the client has exhausted the guaranteed number of viewers they have purchased. Audience measurement has long since ceased to focus solely on live television viewing, but also includes catch-up viewing of programmes up to three days after their live broadcast. If a viewer skips an advert whilst watching a programme on catch-up, it is not counted towards the viewing time, and the broadcaster must replace that unwatched block, thereby losing revenue.
However, the ban on skipping adverts during catch-up viewing is not a panacea. It only applies if the viewer is watching the programme via an IPTV service and is not recording it onto their own hard drive. “If you record a programme using DVB-T2/S2 on your own set-top box or a television with a PVR function (recording to a USB drive or external HDD), then no one can restrict your ability to skip adverts,” points out Elektra Cheb, a company based in Cheb which provides television reception services to viewers in the Karlovy Vary Region. However, for programmes where catch-up viewing is provided via the IPTV provider’s cloud, skipping adverts will not be possible.
Source: televizniweb.mediar.cz