NBC Goes All Clockwork Orange On Commercials

The experiment resembles a scene from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. Subjects wear black-netted vest with tubes sticking out of them. Sensors measure sweat and eye movement. A monitor picks up the change in heartbeat, an accelerometer tracks movement caused by a chuckle, and a respiratory band gauges chest and abdomen movement from a gasp or sigh. No, this isn't torture, although some people would probably find watching commercial after commercial on fast forward cruel and unusual punishment. It's a new experiment from NBC (with a group called Innerscope Research) to see how much people engage when watching commercials on fast forward, as many people with DVRs do. According to the New York Times, the findings have been just what NBC hoped for: "the test subjects were just as engaged while watching fast-forwarded advertisements as they were while viewing opening scenes from the NBC show Heroes on regular speed." (hmmm...I'm not sure what that says about Heroes...) But the tests could have huge future implications for the networks and their rates, as advertisers have refused to pay for viewers who fast-forward through commercials (it's a new world now that Nielsen can provide infomation about who watches ads vs. programs). I find this fascinating because I had been convinced that the only solution to this was to integrate advertising into the programs themselves, like the old '50s sponsorship model. Next study for NBC? Pinpointing which commericals generate the most engagement in fast-forward mode.

[Photo: CLOCKWORK ORANGE, Malcolm McDowell, 1971]