It won't happen, it's too reactionist a technology.

What will happen is ther way we pay for 'TV' will change. Currently we take the ads becuase it pays for the TV, and a huge majority of TV is still not watched on TIVO/PVRs. When you watch live TV you're stuck with ads. You cxan be clever and start watching stuff late, but the miajority won't. They'll settle down in front of LOST and while away the extra 10 minutes because they want to talk about it tomorrow at work. As long as that ethos exists, advertising revenues will flow.


Technologically however. htat's unsustainable. All of us here are to some extent of a generation where by TV is not naturally an on demand medium. We have bred and nurturedtolerance to advertising. Next decades generation won't have that tolerance., They'll grow up on IPTV and Video on Demand. The concept of a channel in our sense will be alien to them. At that point hte Foxs and ITVs of htis world are screwed. And htey're shitting themselves over it ( this is a good hting, since it makes me rich writing conferences ).

To be conspiratorial about it, even the govt are in on the act, hence the loosening, in the UK at least of the product placement laws. We'll still be pitched to. It'll just be subtler