Fast forwarding advertisements on Belgian TV will be made impossible from today – IT Pro – News

Today, a new advertising model for Belgian digital television viewers is being rolled out. This will make it impossible in the future to fast-forward commercial breaks during delayed television viewing. Recordings will now precede a minute of non-forwardable commercials.

“With these recordings, it is possible to skip intermediate commercial breaks,” emphasizes Wilfrid Celis, chairman of the Belgian Association for Audiovisual Medicinea, on the VRT. To accommodate disappointed viewers, the functionality that allows you to watch TV programs for seven days is also being made free.

Not everyone will notice the change right away. The change will be activated from today at a group of 230,000 Telenet customers. According to Celis, this concerns Telenet customers who have the latest generation of TV decoders with voice control and who received a letter in August about the change. This will be followed by the customers of Proximus and Orange, but when exactly has not yet been announced. Celis says the change is because broadcasters need the advertising model to support local programming.

Early August Telenet was the first telecom company to announce that it would use a new advertising model from the end of September and initially at VTM, VTM3, VTM3, VTM4, VTM GOLD, Play4, Play5, Play6 and Play7. In a later phase, the other channels would follow, including one and Canvas.

Then suggested Telenet that the increasing flushing of advertising is putting investment in local productions ‘under pressure’. Channel groups reportedly recorded a decline in the share of live TV viewers at the expense of streaming and delayed TV viewing. In these cases, advertising is also flushed faster, which makes it less interesting for brands to advertise via television channels.

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