Appointment viewing will live on

Human beings are creatures of habit and appointment (viewing) is a habit that they have perfected over the many millennia they have inhabited this blue dot we call Planet Earth

It was 1998. We were at a global conference of one of America’s biggest advertising agencies, Foote, Cone & Belding. The chairman of the holding company (True North) announced that we ad folks would have to rework our agendas since TiVo was going to destroy the 30-second television commercial. The digital video recorder had entered the market in 1997 and offered great features like recording any programme, playing back when you want, and lo and behold, you could skip the ads. Fortunately for the 300-plus gathered in the hall, the worldwide creative director, Geoff Thomson, allayed those concerns saying that