A small media battle between FTV Prima and O2 TV recently rekindled the debate over the ban on skipping commercials from viewing back from the IPTV archives. Prima gave the operators an ultimatum and agreed with them that there would be high fees for the possibility of skipping advertising, or that this television must be canceled or reduced.
The new agreements – and the resulting end of Prima’s O2 TV stations – were to take effect on March 1. But the limit is eventually postponed by three months. “We have decided to meet the requests of some operators, for whom the implementation of a new technical solution is complex with regard to their platforms for various devices. We set the deadline for the introduction of new rules to limit the rewinding of commercial communications at 1 June 2022. We believe that this decision will also give us enough time for operators to fine-tune and test the solutions being prepared. At the same time, it will allow everyone to explain the planned changes to viewers and customers,“Says Vladimír Pořízek, commercial director of the Prima group.
Prima also designed four models of what ad skipping might look like in the future. We quote:
- Users will be able to skip TV ads during backtracking after less than half of the ad unit’s playback. For example, if it is eight minutes long, the viewer will be allowed to rewind after three minutes.
- The standard TV commercial during the follow-up will be replaced by the current other online advertisement, in the range of only 1.15 minutes in four advertising blocks per hour, which is almost three times less than the viewer is used to.
- The operator has redeemed the rights to skip the ad in retrospect, so viewers can continue to watch Primo as usual.
- If the operator is unable to secure any of these options (for example, for technical reasons), it must disable ad rewinding during program playback. Viewers will see all commercials as they were played in standard airtime.
At the same time, the television wants to update the program schemes so that they would be in the archives when viewed in retrospect exact beginnings of shows and there was no danger that the viewer would play the recording, which was supposed to start at 21:00, for example, but it started five minutes later due to commercials.
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