Noah's News Commentary of the Night:

So over the last couple weeks the issue of whether television advertising is sustainable in the light of TiVo and other machines which make it easier to skip commercials. For example this article on lawmeme was one of the more popular links last week. However, as lawmeme also points out people don't watch commercials that much anyway as pointed out in this article. Already advertisers are trying to find new ways to get around the notion of the 30 second commercial, mostly through product placing, as discussed in this column.

All of this got me thinking, what sort of commercials would get me, a dedicated commercial skipper (read a book, change the channel, go to the bathroom, etc.) to actually watch a commercial. And then it hit me, there's another paradigm for commercials which we've seen this year. BMW commisioned half a dozen highly skilled moderately famous directors to make 6 minute shorts featuring cars and put them on their website. I highly recommend it, most of them are good, and wong kar-wai's film "the follow" is really quite amazing, i've watched it maybe a dozen times.

So why not do the same thing for television commercials? Instead of a bunch of 30 second clips, you sell a full 5 minute block to some big company who has an army of directors making good short films featuring their products. I wouldn't miss them if they were good...

(Don't forget, you heard it here first.)