The only thing keeping broadcast and basic-cable alive is cable companies not sending out actually breakdowns of commercials being watched vs. fast-forwarded through. That revelation is why companies like the New York Times are having trouble getting ad revenue.

The New York Times used to be able to get a goodly amount of revenue from banner ads. Then, someone came up with Adblock. And Flashblock. And Google Adblocker. And NYT kept records of who was running Firefox (presumably running Adblock) and who is runnin IE or Safari.

If I'm an advertiser, I want to pay for as close to the actual number of people who see my ad as possible. Just because NYT gets 2 million hits per day doesn't mean that an ad on the front page is seen 2 million times. If 50% run Firefox, it's only 1 million.

A Nielsen rating is obsolete because it is just tracking programs watched with some breakout of time-shifting. As TiVo revealed during the Super Bowl incident, the technology is out there to track what is watched when, how many times, with precision. That is the Holy Grail of advertising.

Most people are running some kind of Scientific Atlanta box. These aren't the old cable boxes of 1988. They can potentially track how many people are watching at any given moment. How many people are watching NBC at 8:22 p.m.? What percent of the audience fast-forwarded through the 4th commercial break on Fringe?

It will be interesting to see whether cable companies start collecting this usage data - if only to hold over networks heads as extortion for better rates.

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In theory, you need to buy a package from them that gives you 43% more bandwith than you actually needed. Let's say you knew you only needed 1,000kb/sec in transfer. You could use your router to limit your speeds at this level, and subscribe to a plan that would give you 1,429 kb/sec in transfer. But this means that you aren't using 30% of the bandwith that you are paying for, and i doubt their plans work like this

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