Life before DVR?

Spending time at my mom’s house in Boston this week, I was transported back in time… by watching TV without a DVR. I had to make a point of remembering to watch PTI at 5:30pm EST and had to deal with not being able to fast forward through commercials. I had rushed through a shower to make sure I was sitting for the start of the show (what can I say? I love PTI), but mentally knew I could finish my post-shower routine during the first break. As they were winding down the first segment, and the first commercial hit, I immediately left the room, hung up my towels- etc. I say this because it hit me that commercials- more than ever- are just an excuse to do something else. I know this has always been the case, but it’s such a start contrast leaving my DVR cocoon back home and having to watch live TV.

Interestingly, I just realized, I also left my HDTV behind at home, but somehow that doesn’t bother me as much. My mother has an old 27” Sharp standard definition TV, which is just fine. I love my HDTV, but even watching the end of the Lakers game last night, the contrast from DVR to non-DVR was much more stark than HDTV to standard-def TV.

DVR is a life changing technology- along the lines of cell phones, the internet, etc- things that you wonder how you lived without before they existed.

And being in ad sales, my mind immediately goes to the billions of dollars that are spent on TV commercials. What a waste of money. It’s been talked about to death that we live in a multi-tasking world, but I started this blog post during the 1st commercial break and finished it during the 2nd because I literally could not sit still and just watch the commercials. I suppose I could have also channel surfed, but I would love to know if there is a way to figure out how much money is being wasted on commercials that people never see. It’s now the 3rd commercial break and I honestly just struggled to remember any of the commercials during the show. I recall Castol motor oil, but just because that happened to be on during the last commercial break when I thought “gee, I wonder if I remember any of the ads”, and the iPhone, because that was just on. Other than that, pure wasted money.