Let's hack television by getting rid of all commercials

"OK, I know what you’re thinking. Watching television is probably the most efficient way to waste your time."<p>OP then goes on to not even attempt to refute this. I'd rather watch television die completely and work on something more fun and useful.

Let's hack television by ... not watching it at all.<p>Just imagine how much time you'll have to do stuff.

For those of us who get everything from iTunes/Netflix/etc, this happened already.<p>Beyond the personal time cost of commercials, there is a larger societal cost to commercials which is nigh-impossible to quantify. Swift-boat commercials kept Bush in office a second term, and soda commercials influence children towards obesity. They put perceived truth up for the highest bidder, and while they work imperfectly, billions would not be spend on ad campaigns every year if they did not yield the intended result, externalities be damned.<p>I'm not naive enough to think corporate and political propaganda would disappear without television advertisements. But for better and for worse, they create a stronger gravitational distortion in public awareness than all the other forms of propaganda combined.

You fail to address that most people time-shift television and skip commercials with their DVR.

This must be one of the most content-free blog posts I've read recently. Or did I miss something? I can't seem to find more meat than what's already stated in the title.

Personally, I mute commercials, and I'd rather burn the energy to do that, than have my consciousness sucked away by being forced to listen to their drivel.<p>I only watch a really limited amount of TV anyway. Fringe, Big Bang Theory, local news, pretty much.<p>The hard part of this would be connecting some crowd-sourced mute intelligence to the actual mute button on the TV.

"Now, I’m going to throw something out there that might seem kind of crazy."<p>You managed to write a blog post that hypes up your proposed solution to "hacking" TV...then don't even have a solution? You suggested that we get rid of commercials. That's not a solution, that's an idea everyone's had at some point.<p>Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry and is an inherent facet of capitalism that can't just be "hacked" out of TV, whatever that means.

Nowdays TV became something not worth to have. All those movies, shows, news and popular scientific stuff you can find in the internet. I don't have TV set at home and It's great, no shows that make you stupid. Instead there is silence, good music or nice chat with people you live with. Ow, I like it so much. :D

To anyone that's interested: I've updated the article, taking some recommendations into account and I invite you all to give me one more shot.<p>This version provides a more detailed solution and discusses other companies such as YouTube and Netflix and how these companies are trying to solve the problem.

I always had the idea to do the reverse of what Shazam is doing with commercials now. Offer a feature to where you take a fingerprint of commercials and are able to fast forward through them. Obviously, Shazam has a bigger market of offering value add to advertisers.

Why not similarly - create a Chrome plugin - that clicks on all ads (for sites you visit) yet, does not display any?<p>Thereby funding the content you live, yet killing the ad-flocked web

Let's hack television by getting rid of television.

What the hell does "hacking the norm" even mean? What the do you mean "hack television". What does hacking even mean in this context? Is it a quick and dirty fix that addresses the main problems without heavy consideration of side effects, is it malicious action through unintended use, or is it a vague call to action?<p>All I see is the identification of a problem, and a half assed solution that doesn't even address the reason why the problem exists in the first place. If this what hacking is, then I don't want you, or anyone ever hacking that would effect me. I would settle for good old fashioned change

It's not TV. It's HBO.

I wonder why he didn't mention Netflix or Hulu or any other such service at all in that entire post.